Mac Mini audio quality?

David,

I just did the very thing you described. ..I "ebayed" my two Sony 400 disc changers and replaced them with a new Mini. To accommodate my 600 cds, I purchased a LaCie 250 GB outboard HD and directed iTunes to store all of music there. I ripped all of my music using Apple Lossless. On the recommendation of the salesperson at the Apple Store, I purchased an outboard CD/RW Drive ($75 at MicoCenter) so as to not prematurely age the CD Drive in the mini. Better to wear out this cheap external drive then to have to send the whole mini back to Apple after wearing it out by extracting 600 cds.

Thus far, it has worked flawlessly. ..My pre-amp (Bryston BP25) does not have a DAC, so I purchased a Musiland MD10 DAC and connect my Mini to it via optical output. As for sound quality: though i can't promise you that my ears are always up to the task, my system certainly is capable of revealing subtle differences whenever they exist. To my ears, there is no discernable difference b/w music played from my Sony CDP555es Changers and music played from the Mini routed through my DAC.

My setup:
Musiland MD10 Digital/Analog Converter
Bryston BP25 Preamp
Bryson 3BSST Amp
Vandersteen 3A Sig Speakers

The sound is incredible. The setup is dead silent (no hiss, or hum), no cross-talk b/w channels, terrific dynamic range, etc. etc.. I would challenge any golden eared audiophile to tell a difference b/w this front-end and some mega-thousand dollar esoteric Single disc CD player. ..And the convenience of being able to quickly create playlists to suit a particular mood, party, etc... is just too cool. I'm having a ball. Generally, I navigate my library using Front Row. It's fun playing a disc and seeing the Album Art displayed on the monitor with the Artist and Track name scrolling across.

My only wish at this point is to find a smaller LCD monitor. The 15" Envision that I bought on sale at Comp USA15" is too big. If I can find a 8-10" monitor, it would be ideal. Unfortunately, apart from touch-screen monitors (expensive) I don't think such a thing exists.

Wow. this is EXACTLY what I just bought my new mini for!

I have a decent home theater setup and wanted to use the mini for music. After searching high and low for a mini-toslink to toslink cable (apple store was out of stock) I finally got my mini plugged into the Elite 82TSX. For video I bought a DVI-HDMI cable and the quality is outstanding on my 50" Samsung 1080i. The deciding factor for me to buy the mini was Front Row, if you haven't checked it out yet.. The mini came with a simple 6 button remote which I was able to program the self learning remote on the Elite to take over for. The GUI w/ front row is much more "home theater" feeling which is what I wanted. I didn't want to have to fumble with a computer mouse just to play music. Apple Lossless is perfect, I've even been experimenting with DTS files and playing 5.1 surround encoded music through Front row. I'm happy with it. The only thing I wish the itunes back end supported was FLAC format, Apple lossless is great, but I have a couple hundred gigs of FLAC files that itunes won't read, I CAN play them through VLC, but I want to stick with the super slick interface that front row offers. As far as quality, the mini with an optical cable will give you ten-fold better sound than an ipod. My receiver has an ipod cable and the music sounded horrible.. the mini with the digital audio connection playing a decent ripped MP3 sounds great.

On another note, which Polks were you getting? a friend just bought an all polk setup and he's a little disappointed. He went with the Rti10's I believe and a 505 sub. I went with all Cambridge Soundworks, and we both aggree that the Cambridge sound a little nicer. Not to mention the Newton P1000 sub will rattle the 505 right back into the box it came out of. 😉

Good luck with your setup, buy the mini, you won't be disappointed.

Ohh, I should mention, the only problem I'm having so far is, whenever I play a DVD through front row, it changed my video output res, and surfing the web @ 1920x1080 is REALLY difficult because every thing's so tiny. Also, some times when I come home and fire up the receiver, it doesn't recognize any video input through the HDMI even though I've set my power settings to NEVER sleep, the only cure is to hard boot the mini. :-/ I'm hoping someone here will have a solution.

GL.
-Dom

PS. I've heard not so good things about Yamaha receivers.. Look into a Denon or a Pioneer Elite. 🙂

-Dom

I'm no audiophile (thank god) but use the mini for all my audio playback. Using an external dac it sounds excellent. Your receiver has a built in dac and as you already connect your cd player through the receiver's dac you should not notice any drop in audio quality (provided you use a lossless format), it may even sound better.I used to have my ipod connected to my hifi and the mini + DAC sounds much better.

Re: Flac files - I use Xact - this converts flac and monkey lossless to either aiff or wav files which Itunes can then convert to apple lossless. As all these formats are lossless there should be no (or very, very minimum loss).



intel core duo 2 imac, intel core duo mac mini 5th gen 60g ipod Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I'm no audiophile (thank god) but use the mini for
all my audio playback. Using an external dac it
sounds excellent. Your receiver has a built in dac
and as you already connect your cd player through the
receiver's dac you should not notice any drop in
audio quality (provided you use a lossless format),
it may even sound better.I used to have my ipod
connected to my hifi and the mini + DAC sounds much
better.

Re: Flac files - I use Xact - this converts flac and
monkey lossless to either aiff or wav files which
Itunes can then convert to apple lossless. As all
these formats are lossless there should be no (or
very, very minimum loss).



intel core duo 2
imac, intel core duo mac mini 5th gen 60g ipod Mac
OS X (10.4.8)

True, you can convert FLAC to other formats (MAX is good for that as well) however, wouldn't the final outcome be a transcoded file which is worse than encoding w/ a lossy format in the first place? Plus it would suck to have to convert 200 GB of FLAC files, I'd like to see itunes support this in the future, but I don't think it will ever happen because they own their own Lossless format technology why would they support a free one? :-\ In the end the consumer loses.

I take it you already have a Mac, right? Then I wouldn't buy a Mini, just Buy an Apple TV and hook it up wirelessly to your mac. That cuts the cost in half and you can still listen to your music on your computer.

Just a suggestion

Dean

True, you can convert FLAC to other formats (MAX is
good for that as well) however, wouldn't the final
outcome be a transcoded file which is worse than
encoding w/ a lossy format in the first place? Plus
it would suck to have to convert 200 GB of FLAC
files, I'd like to see itunes support this in the
future, but I don't think it will ever happen because
they own their own Lossless format technology why
would they support a free one? :-\ In the end the
consumer loses.

When Transcoding between 2 lossless formats there should be no loss in quality. In effect you are recreating the exact original source and then encoding it with the Apple lossless codec, so at no point should a drop in quality occur.

As for converting the FLAC files to M4A, a quick google search found 2 programs to batch convert files, with both being only for Windows. If that isn't an option then your going to have to convert each one by hand...

Mac Mini 1.6 Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.7)

.."an audiophile (than I can no longer find) that claimed that there was a huge difference in sound quality between his high end CD/DVD player and the Mac Mini, both using optical outputs.

Well, not to be provocative, but as a recovering audiophile, I can tell you that such boastful claims are the norm in the audiophile community. Yet, when blinded to what they are hearing, it's remarkable just how little difference "golden-eared" audiophiles are actually able to hear b/w amplifiers, cd-players, pre-amps, etc.. ..Much of the "big" differences they claim to hear are - in truth - a figment of their imaginations. I somewhat doubt he was able to hear ANY difference, and extremely skeptical that he heard "huge" differences.

All I can say is that I have very good hearing (as measured by an audiologist) AND I have a very revealing "high-end" two-channel Audiophile system, and I cannot hear one speck of difference between "apple Lossless-encoded" music files that come from my MINI (via optical cable => DAC => Preamp) and those played (through the same system) directly from my NAD CD player.

I take it you already have a Mac, right? Then I
wouldn't buy a Mini, just Buy an Apple TV and hook it
up wirelessly to your mac. That cuts the cost in half
and you can still listen to your music on your
computer.

Just a suggestion

Dean

I already own a mac, but I wanted to manage my entire music collection on the mini instead of carrying it around on my full powerbook HD. AppleTV was an option I considered, but the drawback is, with a mini I can browse the internet, download more music, use other players (VLC to play FLAC) as well as a bunch of other tasks tht you cannot do with Apple TV.