Well, I've decided to sell my Mac mini that is a total rebuild by Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio. It was his personal unit that he filled with well recorded wav files. Many high res, that he brought to shows to show off his Overdrive DAC. I'm using the hard to get Paul Hynes LPS.
It's a great server. I"m running Amarra right now, but it can run anything that a Mac can use. The reason for this is that I'm getting a new The Memory Player with built in DAC (guess I"m selling the Ayre QX5 DAC/streamer now also, lol). My friend has auditioned every server on the market other than a couple of the new ones that are yet to be released. It beat the Aurender N10 which is the best server I've heard until this new unit.
I have loved the Empirical Mac mini, as I was able to rip songs for my portable DAP and I ripped some of my music onto the internal SSD wiht the built in drive. What I have learned that the Mac needs is the proper hard drive and the best LPS you can get to allow it to be a true high end server that can be used with even ultra high end systems. I took the server to a friends house. He runs a pair of Vandersteen 2's, NAD separates and an Codex DAC/headphone amp with inexpensive Audioquest cables. A fairly modest system I think. My server woke the system up big time. We were shocked at how low the noise floor was and that allowed so much more detail to come out. He has the Bluesound system right now. He was also able to use the Vault to play his own music through the Mac. Since I don't love the look of the Mac and external supply, I put it in the cabinet that has doors on it and just use the TV screen to remotely control it, lol. I just never put it on the net as Steve has turned off everything but Bluetooth and that includes all teh programs that aren't needed for music as they all affect teh sound quality.
