Anyone got Mini Mac sound impressions?

[Tim D]

I.e. I've searched and found impressions and the consensus is that it is obviously very quiet, but others say it can ramp up if driven hard, the CD can be noisy, or that there is a high-pitched whine, etc. I figure a lot of these impressions may be unit to unit and theres already reports of use of different model HD's, etc, so I'd be interested to get a gathering of info here.

Curiously, if the reports on the elevated noise from ramping up CPU use is true, I wonder if it is just better to get the lower-end CPU model (i.e. if they are based on the same fab), since essentially it'll just be an 'underclocked' model, and go for the RAM.

Finally disregarding dumping the sound output out digitally for a moment, how does the built in audio fare.

 

[Wodgy]

I just took the plunge and bought one last week. So far I really like it. This is my first Mac -- I'm not one of the nutty Apple fanboys -- but it's a nice little unit.

I'm going to write up something after I've had it for another week or two, but I can answer your questions fairly well by now.

The fan speed is variable, based on the CPU temperature. In most cases the machine is exceptionally quiet, more so than the transport of my old Sony NS500V DVP. You can hear soft raindrops on the roof when using it. The quiet is almost eerie, really. If you do something that requires a lot of ongoing calculation (playing games, etc.), the fan will speed up and get somewhat louder. This does not happen when playing music, web browsing, running multiple apps, etc. It seems only dependent on CPU usage. At top speed, which I've only had the fan up to a couple times so far, it is about one third the noise level of my old PC, which was not super noisy, but this is certainly much better. The unit I have is the faster one. I suspect the top fan speed will be slightly less with the slower unit. There is a jumper on the motherboard to underclock the faster machine to the slower speed if you want to try it -- I'm not going to.

The built-in DVD/CD-RW drive is noisy when it's operating. Compared to other DVD drives I've heard, the noise level is only slightly above average, but when the computer itself is practically silent, the DVD drive noise seems to stand out more. When playing CDs it's not bad because the drive is just spinning and humming along, but when accessing data CDs it's noisy. I just have the default drive, not the upgrade SuperDrive that can write DVDs. I suspect that would sound different, but it's hard to say if it would be louder or not.

The built in analog audio is quite good. The highs are not harsh, and the sound is pretty organic. It's certainly good enough to live with, but I will need some more time to fully evaluate it. There is no discernable noise or static from the headphone jack. Apple is probably using a Wolfson DAC, similar to what they're using in the iPod, though perhaps without the built in headphone amp. The unit can power headphones fairly decently, but it does not play excessively loud even at max volume into low impedance cans, so I suspect HD580/600/650 users would need a headphone amp, though I cannot verify that at the moment.

Sitting on a shelf, the Mini is very unobtrusive. If you put a CD jewel box on top of the unit, it's only about a half inch wider than the jewel box on all sides. It would fit into a living room easily.

Most people have said that the machine needs more memory than the default 256MB, but I'm not sure that's true for music playback. I've been quite surprised just how fast the OS is, even with the default memory configuration. It is faster when running multiple applications than my old Pentium III laptop with 512MB of RAM and Windows XP. In general the whole OS just feels snappier than Windows XP.

 

[cupples]

I've been using my Mac Mini for about a week now, and I'm very happy with it! It's basically met all my requirements for a computer - quiet, fast enough for word processing, email, surfing, watching video and listening to music.

As Wodgy says, it is very very quiet - I spent lots of time and money trying to make a quiet PC, and this is much better, with no messing around involved. At idle it purrs very quietly, you would need a completely silent room to notice it, and it certainly isn't noticeable when playing music. I've found the DVD drive (the standard one) to be quiet too, less noisy than my previous combo drive ( a Sony) which used to vibrate so much I could hear it in the room below... I think the rubber base of the Mini helps to prevent vibrations being transmitted, which is a great idea. Occasionally the fan speeds up a little, whenever there are two or three programs running, but it's not much of an increase in noise, and it's not a particularly prominent noise, unlike some fans. The hard drive is whisper quiet, as you'd expect with a laptop drive. However, I've got a Seagate in an external enclosure which comparatively sounds like a jet taking off, and I can't get it to spin down and go to sleep, so the peace is shattered when it turns on...

I like the analogue audio output for one main reason - it's really quiet. My PC with a Santa Cruz picks up all sorts of interference, but there's none to be hear here. In terms of actual sound quality, it's quite decent, not startlingly good, but certainly very listenable. It's better than any onboard sound cards that I've heard. If only it had a digital output...

I have 512Mb on the Mini, and most things seem to fly along. OpenOffice runs faster than on my AMD2200 machine, Opera web browser is about the same, except when I'm doing something like ripping a cd, when it slows a little.

For the average user, the Mac Mini is more than adequate for day-to-day tasks. I've been recommending it to friends and family because it's so damn easy to use - no setting up this and that, no finding drivers, no taking it apart, no crashes (yet...) no virii, no spyware, and everything just works. I'm very pleased!

Andrew

 

[drminky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy This is my first Mac -- I'm not one of the nutty Apple fanboys --

..he he he that's what we all said..you're on a slippery slope now, boy!

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by drminky ..he he he that's what we all said..you're on a slippery slope now, boy!

You may be right

Honestly, I'm more and more impressed with the system (both the machine and the OS) the more I use it. The quietness is addictive, and the whole machine just feels fast and polished. The little details add up, like the beautiful text rendering on CRTs, being able to drop files and text snippets onto an application even if that app isn't already running, obviously very efficient memory management, the scripting menu available in all applications and the services menu available in most, being able to copy over the Firefox and Thunderbird profiles from my Windows machine and just use them, no changes needed, etc. I'm also very impressed with the software. iPhoto 5 is incredible, OmniOutliner is very good, and TeXShop is simply the best, fastest, and most usable TeX environment I've ever used. (The amount of time that latter application will save me almost makes the machine worth it just for that.) It's also nice having Unix apps like xfig, Eagle, and the Gimp available. It probably sounds odd, but the Mini just feels civilized. There's an article in this month's Fortune where someone refers to OS X as a cross between a Porsche and an M1 Abrams tank. I'm starting to understand where he's coming from.

 

[jamont]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy You may be right Honestly, I'm more and more impressed with the system (both the machine and the OS) the more I use it.

I'm an Apple basher from way back, but you're making this sound really tempting... Please keep us posted on your experience with it.

 

[AdamWill]

wodgy: the Firefox profiles thing is down to Firefox, not OS X (you can copy profiles across Firefox on any OS, basically). And I find OS X text rendering, XP Cleartype (remember, you can turn Cleartype on for a CRT monitor and you'll get anti-aliasing, it's not just for LCDs!) and Linux fontconfig-with-autohinting rendering pretty much identical in terms of quality. Can't fault you on the other points, though.

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamWill wodgy: the Firefox profiles thing is down to Firefox, not OS X (you can copy profiles across Firefox on any OS, basically). And I find OS X text rendering, XP Cleartype (remember, you can turn Cleartype on for a CRT monitor and you'll get anti-aliasing, it's not just for LCDs!) and Linux fontconfig-with-autohinting rendering pretty much identical in terms of quality. Can't fault you on the other points, though.

About Firefox, yes, you're right.

As for the text rendering issue, Windows XP ClearType looks poor when used on a CRT. It doesn't look terrible, but it also doesn't look good. It is only an improvement because the stock XP font rendering is so poor. John Platt, the researcher at MSR who developed ClearType, doesn't himself recommend using it on CRTs. In contrast, Mac OS X looks great on a CRT. I agree with you that the Linux font rendering system is getting better too, and indeed I now consider it better than XP on a CRT, but it still lacks an equivalent to the full-line composer (ATSUI) that sets whole lines at a time on OS X, so the kerning is not quite as good. Linux is slowly getting there though. As I've said in previous threads, I respect Linux but find it unusable for most people. OS X is a really nice alternative to that. It's like Unix for the masses. Imagine being able to just drag an application's icon to a folder on your hard disk and it's installed. (No bullsh*t about running an installer or dicking with package managers and dependencies, even for things like the Gimp.) It's impossible to really appreciate how cool and slick this is until you actually experience it.

 

[3lusiv3]

Thanks for your impressions about the Mac Mini.

I use the Terminal app a fair bit and I like how you can drag and drop a folder into the Terminal and it inserts the path to the folder. It saves a lot of typing for us slow typists.

I installed iLife 05 on my PowerBook this week and like it a lot. I use iPhoto all the time and find it extremely useful.

 

[drminky]

I used to be a mac basher from way back. I'd been using pcs since my dad first bought a 8086 back in the mid 80s. It wasn't until a couple of years ago my work at the time switched us onto mac/osx, that I finally thought...'hey this is really cool!' They may not be the fastest workhorses around, but what they do, they do with style!

Nowadays, the only time I ever use wintel is in internet cafes when I'm travelling

 

[jimkuhr]

I've had my Mac Mini for about two weeks now. First of all fair disclosure, I worked for Apple from 1984 through 1995 so I do have a bit of bias. Of course I also worked for Microsoft from 1995 through 2001 so the bias should be about balanced out by now given the intensity of Microsoft

Must like the other posts, one of the things that has impressed me the most about the mini is how quiet the unit is. When playing CD's I don't find the CD/DVD drive to be very noisy at all, however I have ripped my entire 400 disk collection to iTunes so I don't use the CD drive much either. Running off iTunes it's dead quiet, once in a while I will hear the hard drive click as it starts to spin up but it isn't often and certainly hasn't bothered me. My personal bias is that the audio out is pretty good however I did purchase an M-Audio Transit and noticed a small but noticable improvement in overall clarity of the sound. Much easier to place individual instruments and the higher frequencies seemed to have a better presence.

For $499 or $599 depending on your preference it's pretty hard to go wrong with this puppy as a quality music source.

Jim

 

[RacerX]

I echo everyone's comments about the silence of the mac mini. I've had it 2 weeks now and am planning on transferring my music library to it. It's so much quieter than my gaming/ windows media center 2005 PC and my linux box.

I also used to be a PC snob, but my 12 inch G4 Powerbook was a revelation on the elegance and rock-solid stability of OSX. As soon as the Mini was announced I was hooked. I was so hypnotized I even bought a 1Gig Shuffle to go along with the mini.

Somewhat expensive hobby we've got here, eh?

 

[AndrewTosh]

I agree with Wodgy for the most part. It is very quiet, except for reading discs. I don't think the analog out is that great, though. With my Etys, I can hear some hiss. I'm sure with headphones that don't block outside noise this wouldn't be as noticeable. It's not horrible, just a bit annoying.

Overall though, it's a nice machine. I have mine upgraded to 512MB and it does the stuff I need to do without any problems. I'm also no Mac zealot. I have been using Linux or Windows for my whole life basically, but I don't really have time to tinker with Linux or fix all the inevitable problems that come with running Windows. I go to class and work all day. When I come home, my Mac mini is a pleasant machine to use.

I'd recommend it to anyone, as long as they are comfortable with the performance. I wish it were a bit faster, but fast Macs are really out of my price range. If performance/cost is your #1 priority, go build an Athlon 64. If you aren't too worried about that, then the mini is a pretty good deal.