How to set up a Mac mini for music only?

"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

FWIW I thought my 2012 i7 2.6GHz QC Mini sounded better than my other 2010 C2D 2.4GHz. Plus the Atom vs i7 on the PC side - I started seeing a pattern.