[jburchett]

Hey Everyone

I have a 2011 Mac Mini (a Mach2 Mini, modded for audio playback) that is starting to show its age. I'm a little bit behind the times, as I found happiness with a system and stopped bothering to keep pace. Now I've got upgrade fever again.

Anyone have any good/bad experience using a recent Mini or heard any respected feedback? Is there a preferred version of Mac OS? Any opinions on 4-core vs 6-core processors for audio, or (even better) data regarding that?

Also, any quality information you can point me to regarding modifications? (This will be sitting in my audio chain exclusively, so I would like to remove non-essential functionality if it could potentially improve performance)

OR

Another computer that would work way better? (I'm not married to Apple)

OR

Is it time to say screw it and get something like Aurender? I am only considering that direction if it means a big jump in sound quality. I admit, I have absolutely no experience with these products. Their ease of functionality looks nice, but not a huge selling point for me without a significant upgrade in what comes out of my speakers. Would love to hear your experience and opinion on these in terms of SQ compared to just running a mini, laptop, etc.   

My setup:

External HDD --> Firewire --> Mac Mini --> USB ---> DAC/Amp/Speakers

Not interested in NAS and only starting to consider streaming services. Right now just pulling files from my external HDD (which I would like to upgrade to SSD) into my player and out to the DAC...

Thank you for any and all feedback!   
   

 

[simon wagstaff]

Not sure if this is useful. I have used a Mac Mini Core solo from years ago with Decibel via optical cable into various AVRs with no issues and excellent sound. It would stumble sometimes on 24/192 files which I could remedy by using Amarra. Not sure how much RAM.

Recently upgraded my office Mac Mini and moved my 2012 Mac Mini with hdmi output to the big rig downstairs and started to have issues with both Decibel and Amarra. I am now using Vox and everything sounds great.

I am not convinced that upgrading or modifying a Mac Mini will improve the sound. Its mainly the settings and software in my mind.

Just my two cents, your YMMV for sure.

[JLM]

After months of research just scored a used 2011 optimized mini (moving from a MacBook Air/iTunes/10ft USB cable to gain more storage including hi-res and better sound quality) - probably in the ballpark of what you have.  By optimized I mean dedicated power supply, maxed out memory/storage, Audirvana 3.5 (beta), better USB cable, and back up RAID.  Seller convinced me it's as good as any sub $3000 purpose built server (he replaced with a $5500 European speciality server).  Note that I tried a Small Green Computer but with Roon/ethernet connection sounded no better than my MacBook Air setup.

Sorry can't help you with your question about the latest minis. 

[JohnR]

Hey Everyone

I have a 2011 Mac Mini (a Mach2 Mini, modded for audio playback) that is starting to show its age.

What do you mean by "show its age"? Is there some sort of malfunction (eg fans) or is it slow in some way?

Anyone have any good/bad experience using a recent Mini or heard any respected feedback? Is there a preferred version of Mac OS? Any opinions on 4-core vs 6-core processors for audio, or (even better) data regarding that?

I use Audirvana+ on a 6-core mini sometime on my desk, although I can't say whether it's better or worse than anything else. However I personally wouldn't have bought that machine just for audio.. which brings us to...

Is it time to say screw it and get something like Aurender?

Network based streamers do have the inherent advantage that they aren't trying to do lots of other things at the same time. (Apart from the networked aspect which leads to multiple players / better storage management etc). You can start with a Raspberry Pi and work up from there. Roon was mentioned in your other thread, which gives you everything in one ready-to-go ecosystem. UPnP/DLNA is more of an adventure.

No right answer here.

[jburchett]

Thanks for the replies! Still doing a little research, but if I end up buying a new mini I'll post some comments on it.

What do you mean by "show its age"? Is there some sort of malfunction (eg fans) or is it slow in some way?

   

Sometimes playback is glitchy or stops. I've used multiple players and the issue seems to be with the computer. It also runs slow and has other random functionality issues. 


Still open to any comments or suggestions. Thanks!

[brj]

If you want to move on regardless, that's fine, but if you do want to try and figure it out...

With those symptoms, the first thing that springs to mind is that you might be running out of RAM.  iStat or similar monitoring apps would let you know very quickly.  Adding RAM to a computer of that age would be pretty cheap as well.

If there was an actual hardware failure of some kind, the Apple Hardware Test might shed some light:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

(My 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini still runs without issue, but I maxxed the RAM and moved to an SSD immediately upon getting it, which provides more than enough compute power even for convolving impulse response filters with my audio stream at DSD256.  I dual-boot into either a stock Mojave or audio-tuned Mavericks OS image.)

[dB Cooper]

The first thing that jumps out at me is Firewire. If you are in fact using Firewire external storage, your old HD may have something to do with it. I would recommend cloning anything stored on a Firewire drive to a new drive, not just because the FW protocol is obsolete, but any FW hardware is by definition old. Hope you have all those tunes backed up. The other previous suggestions are valid though. Certainly, if your Mini supports more RAM than is in it- and user upgrading of RAM, which I think yours does, do it.

4 vs 6-core shouldn't matter. 4 should be more than enough. I have a 6-core Mini (the current one) because I use it for general computing  purposes also. I haven't attempted to evaluate my playback apps' resource use because audio playback for the most part isn't that difficult. Your hardware only has to deliver an intact bit stream to your DAC. The task you are describing can be handled by a Raspberry Pi.

There is a low-overhead version of Linux designed for audio playback called, appropriately enough, Audiophile Linux. Might be worth an experiment.

[jburchett]

The first thing that jumps out at me is Firewire. If you are in fact using Firewire external storage, your old HD may have something to do with it. I would recommend cloning anything stored on a Firewire drive to a new drive, not just because the FW protocol is obsolete, but any FW hardware is by definition old. Hope you have all those tunes backed up. The other previous suggestions are valid though. Certainly, if your Mini supports more RAM than is in it- and user upgrading of RAM, which I think yours does, do it.

4 vs 6-core shouldn't matter. 4 should be more than enough. I have a 6-core Mini (the current one) because I use it for general computing  purposes also. I haven't attempted to evaluate my playback apps' resource use because audio playback for the most part isn't that difficult. Your hardware only has to deliver an intact bit stream to your DAC. The task you are describing can be handled by a Raspberry Pi.

There is a low-overhead version of Linux designed for audio playback called, appropriately enough, Audiophile Linux. Might be worth an experiment.

Yes, my thought is to get an external SSD for storage if I keep a similar set-up. When I put this system together, the conventional wisdom was to keep everything off of the USB bus except the DAC (hence the FW). Not sure if that is just audiophile lore or has some real effect. I'm sure I experimented with it at the time, just the results don't really stick out in my mind. (However, I could definitely hear audible differences when switching between different USB ports for the DAC).

As you and brj mentioned, I also considered increasing the RAM. But I've fallen out of touch a little bit and wanted to see what was out there and what I might have overlooked. Maybe challenge some of my assumptions. The Raspberry Pi and Audiophile Linux are both great suggestions and just the kind of thing I was hoping to find out about. Thanks! 

     

[jburchett]

If you want to move on regardless, that's fine, but if you do want to try and figure it out...

With those symptoms, the first thing that springs to mind is that you might be running out of RAM.  iStat or similar monitoring apps would let you know very quickly.  Adding RAM to a computer of that age would be pretty cheap as well.

If there was an actual hardware failure of some kind, the Apple Hardware Test might shed some light:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

(My 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini still runs without issue, but I maxxed the RAM and moved to an SSD immediately upon getting it, which provides more than enough compute power even for convolving impulse response filters with my audio stream at DSD256.  I dual-boot into either a stock Mojave or audio-tuned Mavericks OS image.)

Excellent! Thank you!

[JLM]

To be specific about my setup:

Dedicated mid 2011 mini, 2.7 GHz i7, high sierra 10.13.6, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD (operating system) & 1 TB SSD (media), TeraDak power supply, Oyen RAID with (2) 1TB SSDs, and 1.0 meter Wireworld Silver Starlight 7 USB cable.  Currently have 1.3 TB of music on board ranging from Redbook to DSD128.

[jburchett]

To be specific about my setup:

Dedicated mid 2011 mini, 2.7 GHz i7, high sierra 10.13.6, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD (operating system) & 1 TB SSD (media), TeraDak power supply, Oyen RAID with (2) 1TB SSDs, and 1.0 meter Wireworld Silver Starlight 7 USB cable.  Currently have 1.3 TB of music on board ranging from Redbook to DSD128.

Your basic set-up sounds like an upgraded version of mine. Are you connecting to your DAC via USB?

[fridays]

Have you ever upgraded the OS on this machine, I dont know how or if I can look at the scripts that were written for mine, thus I hesitate changing anything
With my old OS 10.6.8 I cant upgrade players like Amarra or Audervana

[dB Cooper]

Redundant

[AllynW]

I'm a little late to this tread but I'll post anyway.  I didn't want new apple product, I'm old school I like being able to upgrade RAM & HD's. So I purchased a used late 2012 MM off Amazon for a little over 3 bills. I popped in RAM and an SSD and a bit later got a copy of OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion.  I've had enough of software downgrades.