Mini Mac as audio server?

Depends what else is happening on the network and what kind of files you're sending. If you're playing back uncompressed audio and grabbing a couple shows from easytree.org, you'll probably have some problems.

Can I ask why you're still buying a CD player instead a DAC? Just to bypass the pre?

Definitely no room for a PCI card in the mini, or in any other recent Mac besides a tower. Firewire and USB are the only way out. I have a Tascam US-122 (USB) that I use for a little home recording. Works fine for recording demos and messing around, and playback certainly sounds better than plugging into the headphone jack. But A/B it against a mid-line Arcam and the Tascam wasn't even close.

I'm considering the Apogee USB MiniDAC, which is a big step up in price at about $1k. It has features I just wouldn't use, but if the sound quality's really up to snuff, I'd pay it. Anyone have a chance to demo this, or any other USB DACs? I'd love to turn my Mac into a media server.

11b iBook sitting about 6 feet from the Airport, direct line of sight, still super slow. A little less than 1MB/sec, I think. With a 800MB folder of FLAC files, that's gonna take a while.

Great thread over at Ars about HD playback on various Mac systems. A bit off-topic, per se, but let's say it's close enough. Gonna have to pay El Gato a visit before the Broadcast Flag, crawls to the top of the hill.

Well, I'm talking beyond my knowledge here, but I haven't seen a computer upsample to 24/96. If you've had really good results with oversampling compared with 16/44, maybe that's worth considering. Also, if you're ripping a CD at 48x, your bit order might not be as pristine as you'd wish. But if you get a good initial rip, you should have good playback every time. Just with there was an EAC equivalent for the Mac.

Hitchhike, my iBook's fan kicks in when the going gets rough, heavy work in Photoshop or other really processor-intensive tasks. The fan is certainly audible, though not bothersome if I'm also listening to music at the same time. I've heard similar reports about the mini. Silent during normal tasks; when it's working hard enough to kick in the fan it's definitely audible. For normal iTunes playback, I wouldn't expect it to be an issue. If you're playing back a full-quality divx file from the hard drive, it might be a different story. In short, your mileage will surely vary with the task.

In-store yesterday with a Mac mini 1.42 w/512 RAM, I took it to task. iTunes playing music, large-size visualizer, QT playing back a trailer, Photoshop Elements 3 rasterizing a PDF, and me goofing around in Pages. With this little RAM, switching between apps was exceedingly slow, but once to an app it performed admirably. Never actually heard the fan, and I did stick my ear down to it once. (You know, trying not to look too suspicious.) Obviously there was plenty of room noise, but I can sure hear my iBook's fan when it kicks in, noisy room or not. I'd take this as a good sign.

I dearly want to sell my MDD Tower, it's noisy as sin. But for what I'm likely to get for it, it's a pretty lateral move. MDD: faster, room for internal drives, PCI slots, more RAM slots. Mini: smaller form factor, iLife '05, much quieter...

How-to at Engadget as well:
http://features.engadget.com/entry/1234000057028826/

Several new websites trying to create a home theater software package to use with the Mac mini. Hopefully they'll actually get some programmers and not just people sending lists of this-is-what-it-should-do.

If playing back 720p video doesn't crank up the fan, I'd be real impressed. Maybe even enough to sell my setup. (MDD = Apple's "Mirrored Drive-Door" G4 tower; mine was co-released with the first G5s. 1.25Ghz, faster video/HD, DVI, and a case full of fans)

Does a NAS accessed via 802.11g deliver the goods in a reasonable amount of time? Transferring files by 802.11b is agonizingly slow.

I've set up my iBook back-to-back with a PowerBook (11g) and still gotten the same ballpark speed. I agree this seems super-slow. No cordless phones around, no WiFi signal, etc. Haven't really tried channel-surfing for a better speed. But then, Mbps is 1/8 as fast as MBps, right? So 10Mbps = ~1.25MBps and actually I'm doing pretty well. It's fine for web surfing; my cable connection tops out well before the Airport does.

Finally tried to network via FireWire (not Target Disk mode) from the iBook to the G4. Worked like a breeze and wicked fast (Just turn on the ports in the Network pref pane). Definitely my method of choice from now on if there's no Ethernet available.

Hoping to head to CompUSA in the next day or two and check out one of the Syntax Olevia LCD HDTVs, since they sport a standard computer DVI in. Hoping they'll be amenable to hooking one up to a Mac for a test or two. Grabbed a couple of the HD samples at divx.com/hd to try. Really hoping to be wowwed. That's nice, once in a while.

Gunbei, actually I just ran a FireWire (400) cable from the iBook to the G4 Tower. Opened up the Network prefs. From the "Show" dropdown select "Network Port Configurations". FireWire should be listed as an option (only if you've plugged in the cable). Make FireWire active.

You have to do this on both machines, of course. I started with the Tower and then did the iBook. It sets up DHCP like a regular network. I couldn't "see" the iBook from the Tower, but the iBook easily "saw" the Tower. Logged into the home directory and started copying files over. Easy cheesy. Then ejected the networked drive and unplugged.

Airport = 802.11b, Airport Extreme = 802.11g, no surprise they'd be fast enough for gaming. The more data a game has to move over the network, the harder it is to keep multiple systems in sync. So they try hard to require as little network activity as possible for low pings, etc. (At least, with FPS games that come on CDs, as opposed to MMORPGs where much of the world can exist on servers).

Check my math here, but I believe full CD quality is 1.44Mbps. 802.11b's ideal rate is about 10Mbps. So yes, that should be plenty to send full-quality audio files. But what happens when other traffic hits, say you're downloading a file at the same time? Does the computer compress the files on the fly? Does audio playback stutter? And will it do the same thing under all conditions? Wireless is cool, I use it all the time. But I'm definitely not above running an extra cable to get 100baseT.

Went to MicroCenter the other night to look at

No worries Gunbei, though I believe this is a new feature in Panther (10.3). Target Disk Mode is still nothing to sniff at. Just nice to escape a shutdown.

I only wish iTunes did Shorten/FLAC playback, mainly for all these EasyTree shows. I've read mutterings about not all lossless compression schemes being equal in playback: Apple's Lossless sounding worse than FLAC, etc. Anyone have a story on this that's more than anecdotal?

Any such thing as an ATX case built just to house FireWire drives? $80 per external FW case is absurd.

Golix, are you using Apogee gear? Any reviews?

Gunbei, most big companies buy ethernet cabling in bulk, slice off what they need where they need it. Belkin sells a rainbow of choices. Happy happy CAT 5.

Edesilva, regarding Apple Lossless I'm mostly interested in playback, AL vs. WAV. Does decoding AL dirty it up somehow. Don't know what I'm looking for or how that comparison would be made. But if I'm going to move to a Mac for playback, I only want to make that move once.

I've been looking at the Apogee MiniDAC as well. Seems like the Waveterminal would sure open up the options. You're happy with it? (And where'd you find it for $150?)