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Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini

I have a 2007-2008 MacMini that I use exclusively as a music server on a third system with the stock HD. I am considering replacing the stock HD to an SSD. The stock HD makes noise that is audible often enough to draw unwanted attention to itself.

I'm looking for experience-based thoughts and commentary on the various SSDs that are available for this replacement. I'm using SnowLeopard and iTunes 10 with Pure Music for playback of AIFF files from a peripheral HD (which is silent).

So far, my research on this seems to get a bit confusing. For example, Other World Computing offers two levels of SSD, one over 50% more $ in price (and 25% larger 40 Gb vs 50 Gb than the other (offering a longer warranty, etc.) And I know there are several other manufacturers of SSDs out there with varying price points and related benefits.

This MacMini isn't used for anything else than serving music, ripping files, streaming audio, playing Netflix downloadable movies, and the occasional download from iTunes.

Your points of view are appreciated.

:) listening,

Ed
istanbulu

Showing 3 responses by aplhifi

aplhifi
515 posts
 
Second the Jriver! Nothing is close, IMO!

No go for SSD, sorry to say.

Best,
Alex Peychev
aplhifi
515 posts
 
Tbg,

Perrew, having had two prior Windows servers, my expectations are the opposite of yours.

Having MacMini 2010 here, my experience is the opposite of yours. I have installed Win7 (x64) on the MacMini and run it with Jriver and ASIO4ALL. Since I can run both Mac OS X and Win7 on the same MacMini, to my ears, Jriver/ASIO setup outperforms iTunes/PM playback in every respect. I also find Jriver much more user-friendly compared to iTunes.

But even with Jriver/ASIO, the MacMini is still inferior (both sound and internal hardware) to a "cheap" $700 Core i3/HM55 Toshiba laptop. And I love my external 2TB (Barracuda XT) RAID enclosure connected to the eSATA port of the Toshiba! If Firewire was that great, why the internal drives of the Mac use the SATA controller? Very strange!

Mac is extremely nice; great OS/exterior/convenience design, and there were number of reasons why it sounded better than Win based players, but that is now history, IMO!

What is MacMini? It is an outdated Core 2 Duo Intel-based laptop. It is packed to the micron so there is no space for proper filtration (suitable for high quality audio) of the “million” switching charge-pump regulators inside. On the top, Apple decided to make things even more convenient for the user with a built-in 12V LiteON main switching power supply. Apple did a very fine job again (very sleek), but that was not intended and obviously does not serve very well when it comes to high-end audio. IMO, again!

Look at this picture here. It shows Mini-ITX motherboard for Intel Core i3/5/7. Look at the little round things called filter capacitors and count how many they are. And look at this here showing MacMini 2010 motherboard. As you can see, there are NO large filter capacitors. Al they use is the absolutely minimum required value of Tantalum capacitors (ask around how they sound for audio apps). Why? No space.

Best,
Alex Peychev
aplhifi
515 posts
 
Dmccombs,

An internal SSD is way better than a regular hard drive, sonically.

According to several trusted audiophile ears I've talked to (both Win and Mac users), there is no difference they could hear with internal SSD against HDD.

Even with a 5400rpm 8MB buffer HDD, burst-loading of the entire audio track to the system main SDRAM takes a second or less. What about Barracuda XT drives with 64MB buffer? HDD jitter? No such thing, IMO! And let’s not forget that the SSD also has a SDRAM buffer, just like HDD.

It does not matter where your audio file is stored; it is always double buffered (at minimum); first in the storage device own memory buffer, and again to the main system memory. So I do not see a reason for SSD to sound better than HDD.

Best,
Alex Peychev
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