Computer Do Over

gmood1 - if you are going to compare machines, you need to compare all of the machine, not just the cases. the pc's you listed are baby machines: small ram, slow processors, and i didn't see any cd/dvd drives included. compare that to the mini that has firewire, superdrive, 4gb ram, toslink, usb, etc...
sure a mac costs more, but you also get much more. as for a tower over a mini: why? what can a tower do that a mini can't in the world of music server? i don't want my hard drives in the machine, i want them separate from the box. if you want a tower, get a mac pro with 2 g5 processors, huge power supply, and you can get them used for $500-$600 on craigslist.

audioguru1 - how can you say that a pc is better than a mac for audio? if all you do is use the mac to read data off the hard drive and you let an external jitter device and dac handle all of the conversion, it is a bold statement saying a pc is better. i had a guy at rmaf tell me that a certain hard drive sounded better than other hard drives. This guy was full of S*&^. you also hear people say that ssd sound better than hdd. Again, this is also BS! i have seen many "custom" pc machines at ces and RMAF that were many thousands of $$$, but the best music server (pc/mac based) that i have heard was using a mac with the amarra software.

Rbstehno,

When I mentioned tower, I was referring to a media server
not just a music server. And in that world a Mac Mini isn't
the best machine for the job.

Why does a tower have to be a Mac? Is it the only PC on the
planet that can do what a person needs or wants?

I run only one internal drive in my main media server. All
of the other HDs are external.

For the cost of a full blown Mac mini, you can build a much
better PC.Higher quality memory, CPU and more hard drive space are just a few things. The tower is nearly infinitely
upgradeable. A Mac Mini is not. Let's face it, there's only
so much you can do with it before you'll need to buy a new
one.

I can drop in a new MOBO,video card, CPU or power supply
when the time comes and continue to rock without worrying
about proprietary parts. You can't do that with a
Mac..sorry.

I am using a MAC Book Pro laptop computer as my music server. The MAC has 4 GB RAM and the 120GB solid state drive. I am using the Seaport Free Agent Go Pro 500GB external hard drive to store my music files (a 2nd one for backup).

The MAC is connected to the Furman AC-215 power conditioner. The Furman is required so the MAC does not interfere with the audio components. See www.furmansound.com/product.ph.

I suggest you look at a MAC Book Pro laptop computer. Click on my system for more details. I am a PC person and this is my first MAC computer. It is very easy to use and iTunes does a great job of managing the music.

gmood1 - i think a mac mini would be a good media server, not just a music server. like i said earlier, i don't want my computer in the same room as my audio or video. so in this case, i am not going to go out of the mac/pc straight into a preamp/processor or tv/projector. why you only need a mac mini, for example: i can use itunes for video and audio. in my house, i can stream music and video to multiple locations and each can have a different source. i do this by using airport express devices and apple tv's. i use the mac mini as a true server: it holds my music/video repository and streams the bits over the network to any location i want.
also, you say the mac mini isn't any good in the media server area. if all i want to do is stream data from a server, stuff i have ripped or downloaded, there is no difference.
for any server, you want to use external drives or preferable a NAS unit. again, the mac/pc can be anything. memory could be an issue if you are streaming to 12 locations probably, but i have streamed to 4 with different sources over wireless and GigE with no issues at all.
macs might be a little more expensive but you get what you pay for.

Rbstehno...I never said you couldn't use the mac mini as a server. I do understand what your getting at about the streaming... I do something similar .. except its with all Windows units.

Comparing manufactured units ...the Macs may rate well, compared to something built specifically by an individual that's using premium parts of choice..you would have a hard time coming to the same conclusion about getting what you pay for. ;-)

I have a good friend who uses a Mini for his HTPC. He likes the Itunes for audio, but I recently turned him on to XBMC as his audio/video front end. It is a different level of media server open source software. XBMC is by far the front end of choice for guys doing the media server thing on Linux or Mac over on AVSforum.com. It gives you eye candy that the plain vanilla Itunes front end just doesn't match. It's also highly configurable.

If you haven't tried it, you're missing out on one neat program. I use Windows Media center with the Media Browser plug-in along with XBMC on a secondary HTPC.

The one area Mac OSX seems to lack in.. is having all around Media front-end playback support. There's no 1080P support for Mac nor is there automatic Meta-Data retrieval for movies/TV shows ripped into a Mac server. All of this has to be done manually . Even the ripping process is more complicated to play DVDs back on OSX from hard drive compared to Windows.

For a hardcore Home-theater/audio PC guy it's not the best option unless you plan to run Win 7 dual booted. This is one area where Windows performs admirably and there's no question about that if you look around.

In a nutshell, if all I were doing is playing music..the Mac Mini is fine. For all around playback, a dedicated Windows HTPC/server can't be beat IMO. No single OS does everything well, that's just the nature of the beast.