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MacBook Pro or Mac Mini as music server

Currently have apple extreme server. Also using the Olive Media Olive 4HD and Olive 2.
Thinking of adding either the latest Macbook pro or the mac mini as a music server for my cd collection.
Which of the two would be better suited to my task ?
I'm leaning towards the macbook pro 13" with 2.3 GHZ but then at almost half the price the Macbook min 2.4 is a steel but i wouldhave to add keyboard, a monitor and a mouse so cost would be close to the macbook pro.
Anything else am missing here ?
For the Dac, i plan to use either an I-Nova or a Bel canto designs dac 2.5. An esoteric D-07 is also not far fetch.
Would greatly appreciate some advice as i'm just starting out on this hobby (computer audio) just now.
Thanks guys-
nolitan
thesoundhouse
250 posts
 
Militant,
My mach2 Mac Mini, has the following mods. 1 Mach2 software tweaks. Next 40 vortex 2 40gig ssd internal hard drive. 8 gigs of ram, 4TB oyen raid 0 external hard drive w/ oxford chipset, there recommended FireWire and USB cables, an additional external 2.5" SSD vortex 2 in another oyen digital enclosure w/ oxford chipset. I do most listening from the big drive but I copy files for serious listening from the big drive to the small external SSD drive and all this of course all on a battery except for the big drive.
thesoundhouse
250 posts
 
Nolitan sorry about the militant name my freaking IPhone thinks it is smarter than it really is. While typing my last post I corrected that militant 7 times and it still messed up
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,347 posts
 
The Zodiacs, Wyred, Benchmark, Berkeley and Esoteric are all very good D/As. When you get to the $1,500 and up level your choices increase rapidly. I'm not saying that the loaded Mini is not better than the stock unit, it's just that unless you are going for an SOTA type system your money is better spent on other components. Just my opinion.
thesoundhouse
250 posts
 
Those DACs you mentioned are only as good as what is feeding them ie the Mach2 Mac mini.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,347 posts
 
True, but then again the Mach2 is only as good as what follows it. It goes round and round in a circle as a never ending chain. In the end different people decide differently where to spend their scarce resources.
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