2. digital
  3. 1303091601

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
vrock
2 posts
 
Volume question... if I'm using the Mac Mini and Arcam rDac going into a mixer board 30 feet away and in the next room, can the remote pad/pod app allow me to control volume without having to put another rf remote controlled volume box in the mix?
rbstehno
1,455 posts
 
ssd is way overkill for a music server. right now, i'm using Pure Music and i have it setup to read the song into memory and then it plays the song from ddr. you can see the light go on for a couple of seconds then the song starts then the disk light goes off. i have 2-2TB disks attached to the mini (1 for backup) and if i swapped that out for ssd (2TB), it would be many $$$ and a waste. plus, the ssd's that you buy for pc's are the cheaper kind. as the dealer you buy it from if they over-provision the storage? a good ssd ($10k) will over-provision up to 50-100% for longevity. see if you buy a 128GB ssd and how much room is allocated to you out of that 128GB.
tubesrule's avatar
tubesrule
100 posts
 
I have a sealed box (June 2010) mini MC270LLA.
I want to try to fix it up myself, and get it as close to the Mach2Music as I can. What are the best steps to take?
More to discover