2011 Mac Mini - Is SSD worth it?

Well, by getting the conventional drive out of the same box with the CPU in it, you're essentially removing all moving parts from that enclosure. With a SSD (and now that they've inexplicably excised the optical drive), suspect that there are no moving parts left at all; everything will be electronic, nothing mechanical. Hence, a more inert box.

Whether this makes a lick of difference sonically, I have no idea. But there's at least a plausible theory behind it, no?

As far as I am aware it's simply a matter of people having reported in many cases that they obtained improved sonics with an SSD, with the rationale and explanations being speculative.

In addition to the possibility of reduced vibration to which Mezmo referred, other speculative possibilities would involve differences in electrical noise within the computer, which could ultimately affect jitter and/or radiated rfi.

In referring to electrical noise I am not only referring to noise that may be generated by the drive itself, and by fluctuations in its current draw from the power supply, but also to changes in noise that may be generated by digital components such as the cpu chip, its associated "chipset," memory, etc. The timing of the activities of those other digital components will presumably change somewhat as a result of the much faster response times of an SSD compared to a mechanical drive.

Those kinds of effects will have little if any predictability, but the point is that it is conceivable that there could be a difference.

Regards,
-- Al

Should speed up your boot system, program loading speeds, and system performance as well. SSD is supposed to be significantly faster than standard HDs. I don't own one, yet, so I can't comment factually. Sonically, I dunno.

My rationale is as follows. An SSD consumes considerably less power than a mechanical drive. In fact, in some instances it has been specified that an SSD consumes about 17% of the power that a mechanical drives does. Moreover, there isn't the big power drain with an SSD that occurs when the drive spins up. The former puts less burden on the power supply and the later leads to less noise generation. All in all, better sound.