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My friend had the early 2009 MacMini and a Cary DAC. He drives it with the Hi-Face USB converter. He upgraded to the 2010 MacMini and he said the difference was noticeable.He sold me his 2009 MacMini (which I now use for non-music server things) and he says the $300 upgrade cost was well worth it.
Has anyone confirmed that a 2010 Mini sounds better than a 2009 Miniusing a DAC other than the Tranquility?
If both Minis are outputting a bit perfect data stream(same playback software) into an Asynchronous USB or Firewire DAC that is properly isolated from any PC noise, why should the 2010 Mini sound better?
Have you tried using the optical output on the mac mini? Benchmark has a several tips on their wiki on how to get bit-transparent playback with Mac OSX.http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/wiki/index.php/OS_X_Audio_Playback_-_Setup_Guide
There is no optical out on the new Mac Mini. It seems they replaced it and combined audio-out with the HDMI.
The power supplies are VERY different in these two models. The 2010 model has a much quieter noise floor.
Once again, If both Minis are outputting a bit perfect data stream(same playback software) into an Asynchronous USB or Firewire DAC that is properly isolated from any PC noise, why should this matter?
Your time machine drive needs to be separate from your data drives if you truly want to backup your music library. With large libraries you might be disappointed with the NAS performance even with a gigabit network, but this all depends on the performance of the NAS box.
Not all NAS boxes are created equal, and the performance of the network card and drivers are limited compared to a mac mini or a respectable desktop. It's the difference between an ARM processor with an inexpensive NIC, vs an Intel processor with NIC that can offload the processor. Both will get the job done, but one will do it a lot faster.I've found that two external mobile drives are ideal over the various NAS solutions I've tried. I prefer the mobile drives since they tend to be silent and without wall-warts. I now have one drive for the music and another for the Time Machine and decided to setup an offsite backup solution (backblaze). I consider this a less expensive, more flexible, more reliable and easier solution than a NAS if you allow your mac mini to perform the role as a file server and a source. My mac mini strictly is a file server though, most here on AC seem to use it as a source. To play the role of the source, have a few airport expresses, apple tvs and a Wadia iTransport all with different roles and with different results. So now the solution isn't as cheap and some solutions still stream the music... When more high-res music becomes available, I will probably pick up a second mac mini to be a dedicated source or consider something like the Bryston BDP-1 which needs to be both user friendly and support the major lossless formats.
Hi everyone,Couldn't tell from the Rankin post above if performance was due to the 2010 model or a SSD. Any thoughts? I will build from latest model but wonder if a SSD will make the difference I think it should (no whirring physical/electromag, etc...). Or would more $$ put into the power supply be a better bet?Thanks in advance!Jim
