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Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini

I have a 2007-2008 MacMini that I use exclusively as a music server on a third system with the stock HD. I am considering replacing the stock HD to an SSD. The stock HD makes noise that is audible often enough to draw unwanted attention to itself.

I'm looking for experience-based thoughts and commentary on the various SSDs that are available for this replacement. I'm using SnowLeopard and iTunes 10 with Pure Music for playback of AIFF files from a peripheral HD (which is silent).

So far, my research on this seems to get a bit confusing. For example, Other World Computing offers two levels of SSD, one over 50% more $ in price (and 25% larger 40 Gb vs 50 Gb than the other (offering a longer warranty, etc.) And I know there are several other manufacturers of SSDs out there with varying price points and related benefits.

This MacMini isn't used for anything else than serving music, ripping files, streaming audio, playing Netflix downloadable movies, and the occasional download from iTunes.

Your points of view are appreciated.

:) listening,

Ed
istanbulu
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Istanbulu, I bought a Mac Powerbook Pro with an internal SSD largely to be a music server and at several pros' suggestions. I have since found Pure Music played in the memory mode, largely negates any drive impact. The music is read into ram before being exported to the dac.

As such I would not bother with a SSD. Nor would I be very concerned about the internal HDD's capacity. An external hard drive reading into the ram before a song is played sounds the same as the SSD's feed.

I will probably get a Mac Mini and a nice storage drive and control with an Ipad, first generation.
dmccombs
112 posts
 
Tbg,

Are you assuming that SSD drives do not help when using Memory Play, or did you test it? If you tested it, it would be great to hear your impressions.

We have specifically tested this and found that using an SSD drive helps the sound, even when using Memory Play. I can't explain why, but the results were clear.

Now SSD drives are much more expensive than a regular hard drives so most people will decide it is not cost effective to use for external drives (although I use one and some of our customers do too.) I can't blame them, but our A/B tests showed a noticable difference.

Darrell
www.mach2music.com
perrew
299 posts
 
03-07-11: Almarg

..it would certainly seem conceivable that replacing an hdd with an ssd might affect (and hopefully improve) jitter levels and noise levels on the signal supplied to the dac.

The keys in that senetence are "might" and "hopefully", those are not reassuring words.
When you optimize the computer for music playback the access speed of the drive might be a non issue so controlled test with SSD vs. HDD should be made, one easy way would be to take once Mac mini with regular internal HDD and connect an external SSD. If the external sounds better we might extrapolate that to an internal SSD sounding better, but if the external SSD sounds worse or equal it might be the interface connecting the drive. Since Macs use USB or FW for external I would wager the internal HDD on Sata might outperfom.
perrew
299 posts
 
Dmccombs,

have you tried a linear PS and can you elaborate how the sound changed when going from a HDD to a SSD?
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
03-08-11: Perrew
When you optimize the computer for music playback the access speed of the drive might be a non issue so controlled test with SSD vs. HDD should be made
Agreed.
One easy way would be to take once Mac mini with regular internal HDD and connect an external SSD. If the external sounds better we might extrapolate that to an internal SSD sounding better, but if the external SSD sounds worse or equal it might be the interface connecting the drive.
I doubt that any meaningful extrapolation could be made. Regardless of where the music files are stored, the internal drive will be in use supporting the operating system and programs. And its circuitry will still be present and active, generating noise and causing (to at least a small degree) voltage droop, voltage fluctuations, signal crosstalk, ground-bounce, and other effects that could ultimately affect (to at least a small degree) the jitter and noise levels of the output signals of the Mini. All of those effects will differ between an ssd and an hdd, with little predictability.

Regards,
-- Al
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