Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini
Tbg, agree, I would love the convenience of just using Itunes. Imagine if it had the capability of the Sooloos with grouping and searching. As for FW Im not convinced by what Ive heard. I use a Plextor, one of the old really well built ones for ripping. And have a BR drive for movies since Steve dont fancy the BR format. I have ordered the Server version of the mini which has 2x500Gb 7200rpm drives inside so that should be able to hold most of the music, extremely convenient. Then I have Plex with external drives for movies. |
Perrew, No, I did not comment on the linear power sound quality at all. I simple said I did not do A/B tests between SSD and regular hard drives, when using the linear power supply. When we did A/B tests between SSD external hard drives and regular hard drives, we used stock Mac Minis and our Mach2 units. In the A/B tests, we used the same cabling, external HD enclosure, Mac, software and music. We simply swapped out the hard drive in the external enclosure. We used Memory Play in these tests since this is always a big debate. We normally use a Firewire enclosure that has the Oxford chipset. When using a regular hard drive, we get a nice sounds stage, good detail, low background noise, good dynamics. It is way better than USB set ups we tried in the past. When we swapped the SSD in for the regular hard drive, the noise floor was quieter. The dynamics improved, the width of the soundstage got better and the depth of the soundstage was much better. The sound was tighter too (i.e. cymbals had more definition). I'm not saying everyone should run out and buy external SSD drives. They do sound better, but the price increase is significant. You may have other things in your system that need addressing. The internal drive is a no-brainer, although you must be careful in doing the swap. The cost to replace the internal drive is reasonable and the gains are very noticeable. Darrell www.mach2music.com |
Darrell, I just extrapolated from that the mach2 has switching PS you preferred that? So if I understand you never A/B the internal HDD vs. internal SSD?, couldnt this have been easily done by having a stock vs. a Mach2? I dont see why youd wanna use external drive for playback when you can use internal? Cheers P |
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 |
