Help Me select Mini

CPU speed doesn't matter, RAM does. A solid state drive is said to help. Buy the bottom of the line mini and have it shipped to Other World Computing (OWC). You set up an order with them in advance and give Apple the OWC mailing address with an RMA. Have them install 8gb RAM (cheap) and replace the hard drive with an SSD drive of 120gb or more. Buy from them a cheap optical hard drive USB enclosure, and they will install your original HD in that and copy all the contents to the SSD. Now you have a backup of your operating system, and even some storage space to back up your music if you like. The new mini's don't have disk drives, so you'll need to buy an external one from OWC if you don't have another means of reading your CD's for burning purposes. I bought a blueray compatible external drive so it could be used for playing movies of all types. My external hared drive, on which I store music, is firewire - allowing the USB to be dedicated to just the DAC. Good luck, Peter

I have had all three processors and, the Core I7 sounds the best. Do not use thunderbolt. You will find that a firewire 800 is much more quiet then then thunderbolt. I have played with several thunderbolt drives, and one drive had both thunderbolt and firewire800 and the firewire 800 connection sonically speaking sounded much better. I spoke to several engineers and they told me that the data transfer rate was faster with thunderbolt but that there is a microchip that is on the thunderbolt cable that must be powered and they think that it is interfering with the sound. The guys who mix music on macs are sticking with firewire800 until the sound issues with thunderbolt get worked out.

I have had all three processors and, the Core I7 sounds the best. Do not use thunderbolt. You will find that a firewire 800 is much more quiet then then thunderbolt. I have played with several thunderbolt drives, and one drive had both thunderbolt and firewire800 and the firewire 800 connection sonically speaking sounded much better. I spoke to several engineers and they told me that the data transfer rate was faster with thunderbolt but that there is a microchip that is on the thunderbolt cable that must be powered and they think that it is interfering with the sound. The guys who mix music on macs are sticking with firewire800 until the sound issues with thunderbolt get worked out.

Get the version with i7, 8GBytes DRAM and 256GB SSD.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Why would 256gb SSD be preferable to 64gb if storing music on an external drive? Under most circumstances I'm using less than 1/3 of the drive - all that is really on there is the OS and the music software I'm using.

Haven't tried a firewire drive - ended up with a Thunderbolt drive because my previous audio computer was a macbook air and it didn't have firewire. I haven't noticed any "noise" other than the fan on the drive itself. If using something like Amarra doesn't it play from cache memory anyways- i.e the drive is purely for storage?