Help Me select Mini

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?

It is a good idea to get a large SSD so that you can put multiple OS images on it. Often, the good S/W players need fresh OS installs to sound good for each new release. Amarra for instance. Things get mucked-up with both the OS and the player S/W if you do multiple installs on the same image.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio