MacBook Pro or Mac Mini as music server

Nolitan sorry about the militant name my freaking IPhone thinks it is smarter than it really is. While typing my last post I corrected that militant 7 times and it still messed up

I have tried both and the 2010 Mac Mini kills the Macbook pro. I have a 2010 Mach 2 Music mac mini and it is the best transport I have ever had especially with the Mach2 Music Modifications. I now have a Mac mini where the internal switching power supply has been removed and now runs on a battery. The battery is a huge improvement. It has come very close to my turntable. I cannot convey how deep and wide the soundstage has gotten,how perfect the tonal balance and did I mention the detail stuff I have never heard in the digital domain . I am very happy. You should check out www.mach2music.com

Can you say battery powered 2010 Mac Mini.

Militant,
My mach2 Mac Mini, has the following mods. 1 Mach2 software tweaks. Next 40 vortex 2 40gig ssd internal hard drive. 8 gigs of ram, 4TB oyen raid 0 external hard drive w/ oxford chipset, there recommended FireWire and USB cables, an additional external 2.5" SSD vortex 2 in another oyen digital enclosure w/ oxford chipset. I do most listening from the big drive but I copy files for serious listening from the big drive to the small external SSD drive and all this of course all on a battery except for the big drive.

You should not use the internal drive on the Mach2music to store music. I found out that degrades the excellent sound of the mach2music server. One of many tweaks that is done to the Mac Mini is lowering the CPU processing. The 40 gig hard drive inside the Mach 2 server does several things. It reduces vibration, lowers power consumption, allows the operating system to access operational files quicker which lessens usage of the processor chip, and lastly it lowers the noise floor by great amount. If you put music on the internal drive during playback you end up using more of the computers internal resources to retrieve music files at the same time running the music player and operating system. You should go to www.mach2music.com for all the info. It has been the best digital I have ever had.

Those DACs you mentioned are only as good as what is feeding them ie the Mach2 Mac mini.

In response to Onhwy61 the mach2 mac mini is the best transport I have ever owned. I have had tried over 32 different CD set ups over the years from DCS to highly modified Marantz SACD players and I currently own a HRT Music Streamer Pro. I have had hooked up the many different DACS with a standard Mac Mini and with the Mach2 the big bang for your dollar is the very front end before it gets the DAC. I have tried the following DACs; 1)Wyred For Sound DAC-2, 2)The Zodiac,3) Ayre QB 9, 4) the Audio Research DAC 8, 5) Benchmark, 6) Berkeley, 7) Arcam rdac, 8) PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC & Transport, 9)Cambridge Dac Magic 10) The Burson, 11)Music Streamer II+ and 12) Music Streamer Pro. I kept the cryo treated music streamer pro. If I where to rank these DACS I have tried in my system. I would say they all do different things but the keep in mind the Music Streamer Pro that is dual differential balanced with asynchronous USB input using the highly regarded Texas Instruments Burr Brown PCM 1794 and additionally gets its power from the Mach2 mini which is battery powered which kills the other DACS. But to be clear the Mach2 Mini even with the using only the headphone jack as an output did somethings better the standard mac mini with the most of DACS on the list. The output was a little lower but it for surely had better tonal balance and deep and wide sound stage. The sad thing is I can have any digital front end I want and I think what currently I have in my system is the best I have heard in my system. Is it better than my vinyl rig? It is scary to say this but now it comes down more to the recording than the format. With all the previous digital setups a so so vinyl recording recordings always sounded better than my previous digital set ups, but now I have some recordings that can sound better either way depending on mastering of the recording. Do not get me wrong when Two of the same quality pressing and recording on CD or Vinyl, vinyl still sounds better to me.

I use Amara Pro and Pure Music. The Amara sounds a little better than the Pure Music. I have tried as many music players as I could get and those two sound the best. Pure Music is a bit more stable and not buggy like Amara.