Which SSD do you recommend for Mac Mini?

sfraser · « **Reply #20 on:** 27 Jan 2011, 03:50 pm »

Quote from: dmccombs on 27 Jan 2011, 03:45 pm

I not familiar with a squeezeserver, is this a PC based server?

We have tested this many ways. We have lots of mac minis and SSD drives in stock, so equipment isn't an issue.

We have done tests where we take a stock mac mini, listen to it, then upgrade the SSD. The difference was noticeable, but since it takes a good 60 minutes to do the upgrade and re-set everything up, we wanted a quicker way to A/B things.

We also took a stock mac mini and one where we just upgraded the SSD. The software setups were identical. Again the difference was clear, and the machine swap took only ~2 minutes.

In each test we used the same cables, DAC, software setup, etc...

Darrell
www.mach2music.com

Any speculations why? because I dont have any... as far as i know the SSD does not have any high fidelity bit tags. (just joking).

Yes the squeezeserver software was installed on a ASUS MB with a i7 CPU and Linux OS.
I was using a Benchmark DAC, Bryston Hardware and PMC monitors.

dmccombs · « **Reply #21 on:** 27 Jan 2011, 03:58 pm »

I'm not an engineer, but I speculate that the SSD drives help in two ways.

1) The draw less power and therefore throw less electrical noise back into the system.

2) The read and writes are so much faster the CPU has to wait on disk I/O less. the less the CPU waits or timeslices, then more accurate the timing of the music playback.

Darrell
www.mach2music.com

low.pfile · « **Reply #22 on:** 27 Jan 2011, 04:18 pm »

@Mike Gillespie, an adequate size for your SSD depends on what you plan on storing on that drive if it's only Applications and the OS you can get away with 30GB if the Mac Mini will only be used as a music server. I use a 60GB SSD from OWC and it currently has applications and OS totaling 11GB. Though my imac is a multi-use system, not music server only.

@All
MikeG currently has 3.5TB of music...replacing his traditional HDD with an SSD would be impractical, no?

And for those others also reading this thinking about swapping out their HDD for and SSD, it would be great if those who mention that sound quality is much improved when the music is stored on an SSD--please explain the playback process. Because it can't be the typical: open your player and click on an album/playlist. If you have a music library larger than the capacity of the SSD you likely have to transfer then desired music to the SSD. My point is that though there sound quality improvement, there likely is a compromise in usability, due to the additional steps necessary. Unless your music library is very small. Though if you can limit yourself to just under 1TB of music you can get an 1TB SSD for a mere $2.5k http://tinyurl.com/4q5nk7r

dmccombs · « **Reply #23 on:** 27 Jan 2011, 04:58 pm »

Quote from: low.pfile on 27 Jan 2011, 04:18 pm

And for those others also reading this thinking about swapping out their HDD for and SSD, it would be great if those who mention that sound quality is much improved when the music is stored on an SSD--please explain the playback process. Because it can't be the typical: open your player and click on an album/playlist.

Actually, yes... The gains I spoke of were done while playing the music off a conventional external firewire drive.

Darrell
www.mach2music.com

sfraser · « **Reply #24 on:** 27 Jan 2011, 05:15 pm »

Quote from: dmccombs on 27 Jan 2011, 03:58 pm

I'm not an engineer, but I speculate that the SSD drives help in two ways.

1) The draw less power and therefore throw less electrical noise back into the system.

2) The read and writes are so much faster the CPU has to wait on disk I/O less. the less the CPU waits or timeslices, then more accurate the timing of the music playback.

Darrell
www.mach2music.com

If number 1 above is correct, then it is highly subjective to the host the SSD is installed in. ie don't expect the same results across platforms.

Number 2 is a toughy, SATA 2 bandwidth is 3Gbs, continuous reads of a FLAC/WAV file off a mechanical drive is a drop in the bucket...unless the system in extremely busy doing other read/rights to the hardrives using the same controller. It should be safe to say that either hard drive can deliver the file contents to the sound card buffer in a order of magnitude faster than required, therefore latency/jitter should not be an issue (internally) .

I guess my point for number one above is, if your hearing a difference, it is not the drive or drive technology itself that is causing the difference...it's the drive interaction in the local environment. And thats going to be highly dependent on the local environment. And should not be an issue at all for hosts that stream music to remote players.

Cheers,

low.pfile · « **Reply #25 on:** 27 Jan 2011, 09:40 pm »

Quote from: dmccombs on 27 Jan 2011, 04:58 pm

Actually, yes... The gains I spoke of were done while playing the music off a conventional external firewire drive.

Darrell
www.mach2music.com

Thanks for the clarification Darrell. I did interpret your earlier post that the quality improvement was achieved by having the entire iTunes library(music files) located on the SSD. My mistake.

I have both SSD and SATA disc in my iMac as well as an external FW drive(music files). Because I have the OS and iTunes installed on both the SSD(default) and the SATA I can run iTunes on either, therefore I should be able to compare the drives. I'll add that to my list of things to do

cheers,
ed

Atlplasma · « **Reply #26 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 01:19 am »

Finally installed my 60 gb SSD and 8 gb of ram. But there is an issue. iTunes does not want to display the contents of my music library, which is stored on an external drive via firewire.

I've tried updating the file location in preferences (even switching to a second backup drive) and relaunching iTunes with the option key held down, but nothing is working.

Also...

I use iTunes in combination with Pure Music, but I don't think that is the issue.

Ideas?

srb · « **Reply #27 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 01:51 am »

If I'm correctly understanding your progression, you have installed a new SSD drive for your OS but did not re-image the drive from an image backup, but instead performed a clean install of OSX and iTunes?

If that's the case, changing the Preferences to point to the external drive will enable any future ripping and importation to that drive, but the new iTunes database is empty and you will have to import the songs from it (File > Add Folder to Library). iTunes doesn't "monitor" library locations like some other players.

Steve

Atlplasma · « **Reply #28 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 02:05 am »

Hi Steve.

You are correct. I did not create a disk image. I had planned to but the SSD did not not want to slide into my external enclosure. Rather than force did I decided to go with a clean install.

I'm not sure if there is room to import everything back to the SSD. It's "only" 60 GB.

Any other options?

Steve

jtwrace · « **Reply #29 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 02:13 am »

Do you use SuperDuper! ?

If so, get a kit to connect the new SSD to your Mac and just clone the drive. So simple.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

srb · « **Reply #30 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 02:15 am »

With your Preferences set to point to the external drive for the "iTunes Media folder location", the importation will write the database information to the small database files on the OS drive (SSD), but the song files themselves will remain on the external drive.

Normally you would have "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library" checked. Then when you import from another location, the files will be copied to your external drive. Because the files are already on the external library drive, I wouldn't expect it to make an additional copy there, but I've never tried this particular scenario.

Steve

PeteG · « **Reply #31 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 02:33 am »

Quote from: Atlplasma on 7 Feb 2011, 01:19 am

Finally installed my 60 gb SSD and 8 gb of ram. But there is an issue. iTunes does not want to display the contents of my music library, which is stored on an external drive via firewire.

I've tried updating the file location in preferences (even switching to a second backup drive) and relaunching iTunes with the option key held down, but nothing is working.

Also...

I use iTunes in combination with Pure Music, but I don't think that is the issue.

Ideas?

I’m having the same problem but I only upgraded the memory have not put the SSD in yet.
Using firewire for the external drive.

jtwrace · « **Reply #32 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 02:36 am »

Quote from: PeteG on 7 Feb 2011, 02:33 am

I’m having the same problem but I only upgraded the memory have not put the SSD in yet.
Using firewire for the external drive.

You probably don't have it seated fully. Does it also blue screen?

Remove the RAM and make sure it goes all the way in. It takes more pressure then you think..

Atlplasma · « **Reply #33 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 03:07 am »

I had a problem with the RAM as well and had to re-seat the chips. They appeared to be installed correctly but the system did not recognize them. If someone else is doing planning this upgrade, I would advise telling the unit before replacing the cover.

PeteG · « **Reply #34 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 03:22 am »

The RAM is fine, I been using other players like Decibel, Audirvana and Cog with no problem, its just itunes w/pure music. I also have the external drive path in the “itunes music folder location”.

PeteG · « **Reply #35 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 11:21 am »

Could the problem with itunes be that I'm using FLAC files?

Atlplasma · « **Reply #36 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 11:28 am »

iTunes does not support FLAC, but Pure Music allows you to play them.

Atlplasma · « **Reply #37 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 03:06 pm »

With help from Channel D support I'm now able to access my music files. Everything was hunky dory once I remembered to reinstall the HiFace driver.

The 8 GB of Ram and SSD certainly help with performance. I've only had a few minutes for listening, but the playback is very pleasing. My initial impression is that there is more "air." Notes on piano tracks just seem to hang on and then fade away.

PeteG · « **Reply #38 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 04:35 pm »

Since Pure Music supports FLAC I thought I was OK.

Atlplasma · « **Reply #39 on:** 7 Feb 2011, 04:47 pm »

Check this out.

http://www.channld.com/support-troubleshooting.html