[remilard]

I'm hoping the mac people can give me some guidance here.
As you can tell from my sig, I have an external dac. I trust the way to go is mac mini plus airtunes. With airtunes I have to use itunes right? Does itunes play apple lossless gapless? Also I may be inheriting an ibook so if the music is on hard drives connected to the mini will it be easy to play music using the ibook if everything is on the same network?

Anything I'm missing? Anyone want to tell me I'm stupid for going this route?

 

[gerG]

I don't have a minimac, but I think I can share some info:

Airtunes with an airport express works great for getting the bitstream out.

If you turn on sharing within itunes on the main computer, and have itunes running, any computer on your network will be able to access the library. Very slick feature, btw. It will not let you copy files, just play them.

I don't think the mini has much HD space, so an external firewire drive may be needed.

There is software to use airtunes without itunes, but I don't have a link. Check with blessingx.

I don't know about gapless. I also have not figured out how to upsample or use an external software equalizer with itunes. Maybe something out there, but I haven't looked very much.

With my wireless network, everything just stops when the microwave is turned on. The more wireless jumps in the process, the more vulnerable it is. Example: internet radio routed wireless to a laptop, wireless back through the router, then over to an airport express = asking for trouble.

Good luck.

gerG

 

[bangraman]

I've never worried about gapless since I do very little Dance and Pink Floyd listening. I think though I have noticed the odd gap. If you put yourself on a network and take advantage of the power of Rendevous with iTunes, it really is a breeze to stream music throughout your home. Nomad is one of the involved Mac iTunes experts I can think of to ask about the gaps. I've left my Mini where I'm working at the moment so can't tell you for sure now.


I'm going this route, albeit with just one Mac so far... and I don't think it's stupid. Some people have pointed out that the Mac lacks a '10 foot' (i.e. TV-friendly HTPC visual front end) but it's not an issue for me. I'll think about involving more Macs when I've had time to play with everything properly. My fingers have only just finished recovering from the cuts they've recieved from heatsinks and badly finished cases trying to put together ******* near silent Wintel PC's, and that's before spending several days so far messing around with ASIO drivers, foobar front ends, etc. I had the Mac set up in an hour, even while making tea and lunch inbetween and struggling with an unfamiliar plasma screen, and had iTunes going in 'real unmolested' 44.1khz, 16-bit audio out to optical through a firewire soundcard about 10 minutes.


There's lots of cool stuff you can do with minimal hassle after the initial set-up. Remote control from bluetooth mobile phones, etc. I'm just scratching the surface myself.

 

[rhythmdevils]

I think macs are great, so im not going to tell you your stupid.

If you have one computer set up with itunes and all your music, its really easy to send it across your network to all the others in your house. And it doesnt skip or anything.

As far as I know, there is no way to get rid of the gaps. They drive me crazy though. Supposedly Quicktime says that its impossible, even though windows media player does it fine. So I think quicktime is just lazy and arrogant and they've got kind of a monopoly going for them, so they probably dont care.

But if anyone knows how to fix the gaps, do tell! or maybe i'll make a new thread at some point...

 

[3lusiv3]

This looks interesting:

The miniMate, MicroNet's new external disk drive and port replicator...
http://www.micronet.com/General/minimate.asp


I should have a couple of Mac Mini's to play with soon.

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3lusiv3 This looks interesting: The miniMate, MicroNet's new external disk drive and port replicator... http://www.micronet.com/General/minimate.asp I should have a couple of Mac Mini's to play with soon.

That's very cool. I wonder how a 3.5" drive (it must be a 3.5" inside if there's up to 400Gb of capacity) works in terms of noise?

 

[3lusiv3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman I wonder how a 3.5" drive (it must be a 3.5" inside if there's up to 400Gb of capacity) works in terms of noise?

Yeah, some big drives can be pretty noisy. It has no fan so it would only be drive noise. I'll look out for any reviews.

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by remilard Anything I'm missing? Anyone want to tell me I'm stupid for going this route?

No way! AirTunes is neat!

Form what I remember the DAC1 has no problem re-syncing with the AirPort Express station, but do a search on the topic here. Some DACs are a wee bit slow, resulting in loosing 0,5 seconds when you manually skip tracks. When you just "let it run trough" there is no gap, at least I never noticed one. The only real problem you could run into is reception, but then again the mini is so neat & silent that you could put it up by the rig if you happen to live in a steel-concrete environment and have five microwaves...

Regarding the HD space you have already been shown that docking station you can put under the mini, I've just seen a second model with more ports by another manufacturer (keep an eye on endgaget.com). You can just stack those whenever you run out of space.
I think this is what bangraman was talking about:
http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Clicker/

 

[remilard]

Thanks for the input guys.

I wish gapless were easier but its not really a deal breaker. I figure 10% of my collection maybe needs gapless so I'll just find a way to flag them and get off my fat behind and use my dvd player as transport for those if it bugs me too much.

That HD dock thing is snazzy but I wish you could buy it empty and use your own drives, like bangraman said they must be 3.5" and as we all know it would be fairly easy to go over the noise floor of the mini with the wrong choice of 3.5" drive.

For now I'm going to use a 160 gig ide drive I have laying around in a firewire enclosure, any recommendations for a good enclosure (good = quiet and enough cooling ability for a drive that will spin up intermittently [music only on the drive])

 

[devwild]

The newer usb/firewire hub/stand/dock Oliver mentioned is indeed empty and you can put your own hd in it. I would say such an item would be a good choice, since the mini is painfully limited on ports.

Edit: Here it is: http://www.macpower.com.tw/news/2005/04/25/948

 

[bangraman]

I've not added external storage for the Mac Mini as when it comes back from where I'm working now, it'll talk to additional NAS. I put my 1Tb NAS in the loft, but the only place where the guys could place it safely was above my bedroom and I can hear it at night. I thought about enclosing it and piping air out of there but it's just too much hassle. So scratch that idea and it looks as though the NAS will be going back to my datacentre and I'll be upgrading the low-noise server I thought I'd retired to a silent one.


For the other audio related PC's, I've resorted to 2.5" drives throughout. The biggest problem with 3.5" HDD's is vibration, and many have a screeching noise that they exhibit while spinniing. It's not noticeable in a normal PC, but when you drastically cut PC/PSU noise HDD noise rapidly becomes the #1 problem. With external hard disks, vibration causes any surface on which the drive enclosure is resting to become a sounding board. Damping is a must. The thing is that all of the popular damping solutions for 3.5" drives on the market are designed to fit into 5.25" drive bays.


I wonder if the 3.5" drive mount on the port replicator is damped? You know, I doubt it somehow.


I've not seen much in the way of reasonably priced external enclosures which prevent vibration from passing through the case. My relatively low-cost solution for vibration at least is Foculpods (or any high-performance Sorbothane component) as far as the external backup HDD's for my utility PC's are concerned. In any case though, all the 3.5" drives I have are IMO too noisy for me to use in a "living room audio PC" context.


For the silent server upgrade, I'll probably be striping 4 or 5 100Gb 2.5" drives, each mounted with a Nexus Disktwin (or failing that, the Smart Drive enclosure) with a Belkin 2.5">3.5" converter.


As far as a Mac Mini is concerned, for near silent 160~200Gb class storage what you may have to do is to pick from one of these and add two 2.5" drives with converters:

http://www.cooldrives.com/firen.html

Maybe specifically this one:
http://www.cooldrives.com/dual-drive...ini-1394b.html

(Although that fan may need replacement/removal... with 2.5" drives, it could probably be removed)

 

[Nospam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by remilard ... any recommendations for a good enclosure (good = quiet and enough cooling ability for a drive that will spin up intermittently [music only on the drive])

This is the smallest 3.5" drive enclosure I've found. It's mostly aluminum, which acts as a heat sink, so you don't need a fan. However, to be on the safe side, I would only use Seagate or Hitachi mechnisms. The Western Digital mechanisms I've got all run very hot (and loud), and the Maxtor isn't that much better.

http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDeta...501223;c:36232

 

[EdipisReks]

my 250 GB Seagate is only audible when it's actively reading, and it's barely audible in the aluminum enclosure i use.

 

[remilard]

I will be using a 160 gig Western Digital for now, the plan is to replace it with a seagate/samsung in the future and use the WD for backups but I can't do that right now on top of the cost of the mini (and I started playing tennis again and that has sucked a lot of money out of my wallet). Like I said, only music on the drive, while it isn't as quiet as the 40 gig samsung I have it is only barely audible with my ear within a couple inches and the case open unless it is reading/writing. It will only be used for music so writing will be a one time thing and it will spin up to read fairly infrequently.

My question would be, do WDs tend to run hot period, or only if they are reading/writing frequently? The entire thing would be unpowered except for when I listen to music which averages an hour a day and almost never more than 3 hours in a row. I expect to replace the drive with samsung/seagate as soon as I have income again, which will be July.

Do you guys think I can get away with a fanless enclosure without damaging the drive under these conditions? I can always get a drive with a fan and put it in the closet and run a long firewire cable, although this solution is far from ideal.

Bangraman, I'm seriously considering 2.5" drives for the future, I need to perform some informal cost-benefit analysis.

The empty mac mini pod thing might be the way to go for a 3.5" solution. I would like to hear from some people about its acoustic properties (it says it will be released soon) but if it can cut a few decibels it might just allow me to use samsung spinpoints and hit the mini's own noise floor or better, which would be the goal.

Again, thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[Distroyed]

I really like the mouse of the mac mini's. A single button and no scroll wheel - genius!