[jrebman]

This is going to be my first foray into the Mac world, and as I'll explain, I have to do things a bit differently, so the final working solution will have elements of both Windows and Mac.

The issue is that I'm blind and use a screen reader to access my computer, and many years ago when Apple dropped the ball on accessibility, people put their resources into supporting the Widows platform, so the Windows screen readers are far more advanced than anything on the Mac..  There is actually only one choice for the Mac, the Voice Over program built into OSX and abbove.  It has plenty of problems and I highly doubt it will work with any audio apps, or even reasonably well with a web browser.  So, that most likely means running boot camp and some flavor of Windows -- and I'll try like hell to avoid Vista.  I tunes is more or less completely inaccessible, but parts of it have been made to work, the problem is that as fast as developers can crack the nut, Apple goes and changes their code (and the things they do in iTunes would cause any programmer type fits if they saw how it was written, but we'll leave that alone for now.

So, here's what I'd like to do and as I have no idea what a Mac Mini is capable of, some of these questions may seem extremely stupid to most of you, so please bear with me.

1) I would like to use a Mac Mini as a server for both Slimserver (or Squeezecenter) for streaming to the SB in one system, and some other program like winamp, foobar, etc. for streaming to a local USB DAC.  The system should be headless, but if I put it up with the main audio system, it can probably connect to the LCD TV.

Any remote control has to be done with either an accesible Windows program, or a Windows laptop running a browser.  This is no problem with slim server (haven't tried Squeeze center yet)

Another issue is ripping.  My guess is that none of the Apple native ripping programs (we've already ruled out iTunes) will work with Voice Over, so ripping to a USB/FW drive from the PC and porting the drive over to the Mini is probably going to be the solution for this, and again, I have no idea if this is possible or not, and if so, how to go about it.

I think that's enough for now, and once I get a feel for how all this might work, then I'll work towards implementing everything.

I really like the idea of a Minias a music server, possibly one for each system, and I think once past the initial hurdles this will all be worth it.

Thanks,

Jim


P.S. -- Can squeeze center stream music to the USB port without an SB or Duet?

[Crimson]

I'm not a Squeeze Box user, but I can offer the following:

On the OSX side of the equation, you can run both Slimserver to stream via ethernet/wifi and an additional player application to output to a USB port, but not the programs you mention (winamp, foobar, etc). Your options would be to either use an OSX player (VLC, Cog, etc), or run Windows on the Mini.

Your ripping requirements are not an issue as long as the external drive used to move the files over is formatted using FAT32, and the LCD idea is great in that you won't have to run the Mini completely headless.

It's a shame that Apple/iTunes is lacking in accessibility, as it's great for feeding multiple systems both wired and wirelessly.

Good luck!

[Rashiki]

Why would you want a Mac if you know it'll cause you grief?

If you just really like the tiny form factor and don't want to deal with the non-Apple alternatives, you could get the Mini, buy a copy of Windows XP and install bootcamp to dual boot into Windows.

-Rob

[jrebman]

Rob,

Sorry, I didn't make that clear enough, but that is my actual intent at this point, I just didn't know what the fallout vis a vis storage peripherals, etc. would be.

I know this is all a little fuzzy at the moment but I'm really just trying to get a vision of how this is all going to work.

I'm really thinking a dedicated mini for each of the two systems, both connected to my home network is going to be the nbest all around solution.  This would also let me play discs directly from the cd/dvd drive when auditioning a disk before ripping, adding to the library, etc.  A real bonus would be if my wife could play her movies directly from the computer to the TV as well, then we could totally eliminate a spinner and put that much more into a really good DAC.

I just have no reason to work with DVD movies and various displays, so really have no idea how well these things work.

Really, I just need to get a Mini and start playing.

You're right though, why do I want to even worry about a path that at best is going to be far more complex for the sake of "piurity".

Thanks for all the info so far.

-- Jim

[Rashiki]

If you're using SqueezeCenter, you don't need to use iTunes. I personally can't stand the iTunes UI, but I think that the SqueezeCenter UI is tolerable.

There's also a software version of the SqueezeBox called SoftSqueeze. You could run this on your Mac and control it from the PC browser using the SqueezeCenter UI. It plays through the standard sound output, so a USB DAC should work.

If you're using a PC for ripping, you could make it the SqueezeCenter server and just use the Macs as output devices. Although if that's all your doing with the Mac, you might as well just get a SqueezeBox.

I have used a Mac Mini (and old G4 version) as my SlimServer server and it was fine. I would rip CDs on my PC, then copy them over the network to the Mini. I tried to upgrade to SqueezeCenter, but the G4 didn't run it very well, so I started using the PC as my server. The newer Minis would probably be fine since the Core2Duo is much faster than the old G4.

 -Rob

[K.C.]

You'll find very active forums with lots of folks willing to answer Mini questions here: http://123macmini.com/