Mini Mac as audio server?

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.

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.

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

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!

Just got my Mini Mac and I'm using it as music server as I type.
iTunes does do WAV, no problem. Why bother bwith Edirol when you can get Firewire and/or USB interfaces for Apogee's line of convertors?
I'd save the money for the RAID and get those instead, you ears will thank you! You could always get two harddrives as they are cheap enough and use one for back up only.
Fish, I think replay will stutter.