How to set up a Mac mini for music only?

Doggie - these drivers are not the problem that you say they are. Takes a minute to install one and then you are done. The reliability and sound quality of the M2Tech solution makes it worth a minute of your time.

The XMOS interface does not need drivers for Mac, but does for PC, so it isn't much better. I have mine running and its a lot more sensitive to USB cables than the M2tech. There are always tradeoffs. My M2Tech-based interface is solid and works great with all 5m USB cables. Beats every XMOS interface, even in integer mode.

If you want the best sounding USB interface, its Empirical Audio. It wins every shootout, including the latest:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1398132150&&&/Absolute-top-tier-DAC-for-standard-res-R

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

"Unlike Steve, I don't find the older Minis a good match - I've found in my PC builds that a faster i7 QuadCore sounded better than my Atom based servers so I'd say go for the fastest CPU you can get."

I don't understand why that would be. Playing music on a computer can't be all that resource intensive for a modern PC. CD's came out in 1982. If you rip one to an equivalent lossless file, why would you need all that processing power?

Disclosures plz

zd542

It's not something I can explain. I don't know how to explain why Windows 8.1 sounded better than Windows 7 to me either. As you said, even an Atom processor has more than enough power to play back music files but there was a noticeable improvement when we upgraded the music server.

Steve
Yosemite has broken compatibility with a lot of proprietary audio drivers including Myteks and Weiss. And you should also remember that when Mavericks first launched, there was no driver from M2Tech for almost 6 months IIRC. Hence my recommendation for an Audio Class 2.0 compliant device.

PLUS the ability to use Integer/Direct/Exclusive mode also provides a notch up in playback.

10-25-14: Zd542
"Unlike Steve, I don't find the older Minis a good match - I've found in my PC builds that a faster i7 QuadCore sounded better than my Atom based servers so I'd say go for the fastest CPU you can get."

I don't understand why that would be. Playing music on a computer can't be all that resource intensive for a modern PC. CD's came out in 1982. If you rip one to an equivalent lossless file, why would you need all that processing power?

There are countless design differences between fast i7-based computers and older Mac Minis. Which can in turn affect electrical noise, waveform quality, and ultimately jitter in countless unpredictable ways. So the resulting differences in sound quality most likely have nothing to do with processing power in itself, and can only be determined, um, empirically :-)

Best regards,
-- Al