Mini Mac as audio server?
Thx Gunbei... I think I'm going to pull the trigger. I like the DVI output->EDTV Plasma/iTunes concept. I've been using Edirol UA-1Ds for USB audio, but this seems like a good opportunity to pick up a waveterminal and do a comparison (I gather the U24 does not, like the Edirol, resample to 48 kHz sampling rate). Should be fun to play with in any event. |
By iPod mini, do you mean iPod Shuffle? That is the new one--the iPod mini has been out a while.. iPod Shuffle has no display -> no track selection -> :( Gunbei, RAID 5 is a lot more efficient than mirroring and gets you redundancy... B'sides, given how bloody long its taken me to rip 700+ CDs (I'm about 70% of the way done), I am *not* doing this again. $1K for the new Buffalo thingamajiggie (don't worry Tvad, more computer talk) seems a small price to pay for piece of mind... Hot swappable drives, etc. With the RAID 5, it only nets you 700 GB of storage or so, but it is NAS as well, so I can get at 'em from anywhere on my home ethernet... |
After doing some further research, I think I'm actually going to use one of the Waveterminal U24s. I'm curious though, since the Edirol is just a USB audio device (i.e., routes audio out to USB and converts to PCM), how can you say the Grace is better if you don't know whether it has a USB? Better at what? What is the Grace? |
BT=bluetooth... wireless. The mini has a DVI out--plugs into my HDTV so I can run iTunes from the couch. The visualizer on a 42" plasma is pretty trippy. It is not a complete computer... Needs an audio interface like the Waveterminal, needs a keyboard/mouse and monitor. It is really marketed at those Win users who already have keyboards/mice/monitors, or so I am told. |
I've got an apple BT wireless keyboard & mouse. For couch-type use, however, I think a BT trackball would be a better "fit"... unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to find one... I've got the miniMac attached to my reference rig... The USB out through the Waveterminal goes to a dCS Purcell/Delius combo, which then goes into an ARC LS-16 Mk II, and into a pair of ARC VT-100 Mk IIIs biamping Proac 3.8s. The quality of the sound is pretty stunning, and the accessibility of songs is hard to beat... You might also consider the Airport solution, which would allow you to operate the iBook from your listening position. I gather there is some way of using the Airport Extreme to output PCM or something. Haven't tried that. BTW, Apple just (quietly) lowered the price of the build-to-order options on the miniMac, dropping the price of a maxed out mini (airport/BT/wireless kbd and mouse/1.4 GHz processor/1GB/80 GB HDD/Superdrive) from about $1350 to about $1220. |
Fishpatrol is right on. I've used the mini to playback some 720p and 1080i files, and the fan kicks in almost immediately--it is quiet for a computer, but it is audible to me 9 ft away without any soundtrack. Apparently iTunes doesn't require the mini to think hard enuf to get hot and bothered. It will sit there quietly pumping out tunes w/o any background noise. |
I'm guessing you didn't get the fan to kick on. Mine's a 1.4 GHz w/1 GB, but it takes a lot--like HD video rendering--to get the fan to kick on. I'll run iTunes/visualizer without hearing a peep. When it comes on, its audible. Trust me on this one. Dunno what the MDD is, or how fast, but the mini is basically a G4. Its got a DVI output, which works great for me and the plasma in my living room. Yeah, needs some more disk space, but that is what NAS is for... |
My NAS is hardwired ethernet. iTunes pulls wav files through w/o any stutters. Took me a while to figure out how to automatically tag the files (which show up as just song title w/o artist or album) from the directory structure, but thanks to applescript, its now working fine. As far as 802.11g, the answer is probably "it depends." 802.11g runs in the same spectrum band as 11b, so if you have bad interference issues with 11b, 11g is probably going to have some issues as well. That said, it is supposed to run faster in an ideal setup. Ideal set up, in this case, meaning short distance, no walls, low interference, etc. It will be totally environment dependent. 720p playback causes my mM fan to turn on, even with nothing else running. For those who are interested, there is a Mac-specific subchat on the http://www.avsforum.com website on HTPCs that has a lot of info in it. |
1 mbps? That does seem slow... I thought the nominal spec on 11b was 10 mbps. Does the Airport let you change channels? 11b in the US runs on either channel 6 or 11--the channel nos. are 5 MHz apart, but you need a 25 MHz channel, so 1-5 don't work (bleed into a band that isn't wifi), 6-10 don't work (interfere with either 6 or 11), and the ones above 11 bleed into a band above the wifi band. You running an industrial plywood heater? Microwave on all the time? 2 GHz cordless phone? Seems like a bad connection... Lots of neighbors with WiFi? |
Fishpatrol--I've never seen data rates given as megabytes per second; I did mean megabits per second, but I'm guessing that if you are reading some log, its probably also megabits per second. Gunbei--I would love it if keeping my ethernet cables straight was as simple as color coding... I've got normal ethernet cables with gray jackets and crossover cables with blue. No standard there, unfortunately. 802.11b = MAX of 10 mbps. 802.11a/g = MAX of 54 mbps. The maximums are pretty difficult to obtain in real life. Airport is 11b, AE is 11g. I recall that the Audiotron community indicated there were problems (stutters, etc) with 11b when trying to pass wavs wirelessly and would expect the same result with an Airport and iTunes. Oddly, normal ethernet is 10 mbps and passes wav fine... Golix, the Apogee may be a fine piece of gear, but its not a panacea. I've got a dCS Purcell and Delius in the same room as my miniMac. Spending $1K on an Apogee DAC is a really dumb idea in that context when I can spend $150, get a Waveterminal U24, and pass bit perfect data to my dCS stack. Please don't take this the wrong way, b/c you may be the exception, but Apogee people are like fundamentalists--they love their gear to the extent that there is now only one true God. I also highly recommend use of RAID, although I may have gone overboard--I'm using a 1TB HW RAID 5 NAS, a Dell Powervault 745N, inside a vCab acoustic rack. Not a cheap solution. Just backing up isn't enough. I've had at least four major disk crashes with large capacity internal and external drives in the last two years. The last one meant reripping 300+ CDs. I feel much more comfortable with RAID 5 and a backup. As far as anecotal stories re: compression formats, there was a guy on head-fi that was trying to compare EAC ripped wavs and Apple lossless outta iTunes. He claimed he uncompressed the Apple files into wavs and found that they matched, bit for bit, with the EAC ripped version. He conclusion was therefore that iTunes is a decent ripper. My conclusion would be that, if that is the case, its hard for me to believe that Apple lossless sounds worse than a wav, since it is a wav. Although, I have not compared and stranger things have happened. |
Actually, its Eric... My house if far less color coded w.r.t. ethernet cables, I got gray, blue, yellow, white, green, orange, red... I never thought, as joe-average-consumer, that I'd be acting as the IT department for a home network that involves three desktop PCs, one mini Mac, one tablet PC, two laptops, one Xbox, one PS2, one NAS, four routers, two serial port servers, one USB server, one 802.11 AP, three audiotrons, and one CD30. I have IP address conflicts in my friggin' house. |
