Mini Mac as audio server?

Striping and mirroring with removable portable drives. Who would have thunk it 10 years ago? And a music source to boot. Cool.

Hey Ed,

Mac-Curious?

Welcome aboard, heheh.

So you saw the info coming in from MacWorld and their new announcements, eh? Cool!

I'm not sure, but I think you should have no problem playing WAV files through iTunes. I downloaded an album from Magnatunes.com in WAV format and burned it to CD. I never played it through iTunes though. Every CD I import through iTunes I do so in Apple Lossless format, and that's what gets burned onto my iPod.

RAID 5?!! Wholly shit! Not taking any chances with speed or loss of data are you?

On initial launch, iTunes will ask you to locate the library from which you want to import all your songs from. In OSX, just navigate to that folder and import those songs. You'll then be able to organize them according to genre, artist, album, etc. in iTunes.

As for the Edirol, I'm no help there. I've been hearing questions about how best to interface it with a Mac, but still no answers.

I use a fast multi-processor machine at work for Photoshop retouching, but at home a hotrodded Apple Cube works fine for me when using iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, and sometimes even Maya. But, this Mac Mini occupies about one fourth the volume of my little Cube. Pretty neat. I can see it being an ideal web hosting machine, data or music server.

I'm waiting for an announcement that a university is buying 10,000 of these little fellas to cluster into the fastest computer on earth.

That's what the one terabyte Firewire drive is for!

This has turned into a great thread guys. Great info and links. Keep 'em coming. Thanks!

Fishpatrol, so you made sure the "Built-In Ethernet" [green] was turned on in your Network Preference pane? How did you connect the firewire drive between the two computers? Regular ethernet[blue] cable or a crossover[gray] cable?

Regarding Air Ports. I've never used them, but when I was a serious Quake 3 Arena player online, a guy I knew in Ohio was playing through an Air Port on his Powerbook and was getting excellent frame rates. He said just about the same as running direct into his hub. Video speed for online gaming is always a critical element, and if he found an Air Port sufficent, my guess is that it could work in some applications for audio. Blue Tooth may be better though.

Duhhh?!! Hooking up a Firewire with an ethernet cable? What have I been sniffing? I only use the damn things all day. I think I need to go home and listen to some music. Work must be making punchy, heheh.

Fish, yeah, I've done what you said, but in OS9. I gotta give it a try they way you arranged it under OSX. We were wondering how to do that here at work.

Thanks for the explanation!

Ed, is that right?

I just assumed so because all the ethernet cables at work are blue and the ones I bought were as well. And all the gray ones I've seen were crossover.

Damn, I can't trust Office Depot for jack then! LOL!