[jtwrace]

Hey jtwrace - a security key/dongle?  What protected software are you running just for a music system?  Is that ProTools I see on the left if your monitor, or something that just resembles it?

Just curious. I wish I never saw this cursed thread.  Must . . . resist . . . urge . . . to . . . tweak . . .   

The iLok is for Amarra which is what you see running on the left side of the screen.

[dublin78]

Hi. I am contemplating adding a computer based source to my system.

Does any one know how the Vortexbox (standard and fanless) compares to the Mac Mini?

I would probably use the USB out to my main system, and then wirelessly stream around the house using Squeezebox or Sonos.

Are Sonos still top in terms of quality (via coax digital)? It would be easy enough to provide a clean power source for either.

[cr_otmopo3ok]

Hi jtwrace,

I have exactly the same setup as far as MacMini (late 2009) and 2x 2TB Iomega Firewire drives and i have a question for you:

It seems when I'm playing the music (using any player) AND using the computer at the same time everything is fine.
As soon as I step away and let my monitor turn black (to save power) i hear dropouts in music every 2-3 minutes which last for 1-2seconds. I watched and listened to the setup and identified that these Iomega drives stop spinning (or slowdown) after a while and once the player runs out of pre-buffered data it wakes them up and it takes 1-2 seconds for them to wake up.

I tried setting the External Drives to 'Never Sleep' in Preferences and even tried an App "Keep Drive Spinning' which accesses drive every 60 seconds to prevent it from sleeping but the problem still persists.

I googled the issue to realize i'm not alone with this issue (even with different external hard drives) but no resolution. Someone suggested playing with buffer size in player to either very small or very large but I haven't tried it yet.

I just thought that with such high-end music-only setup as yours you wouldn't tolerate such annoyance, so you either don't have it or managed to configure it to work.

Any suggestions / ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[NekoAudio]

You can keep your drives awake by querying them every so often. One way to do this would be to create an AppleScript that lists the contents of a directory on your drive every X minutes.