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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
jylee
306 posts
 
I agree with Alex. I use a Mac at work, at home, and I prefer to use Mac to PC whenever possible. For music application it's a different story. After trying my Macbook Pro and Mac Mini, it became evident that iTunes and the Core Audio stack is optimized for convenience, not fidelity. I had to reconvert all my music from ALAC to FLAC when I finally switched to JRiver, but it was well worth the effort.
dmccombs
112 posts
 
Perrew,

You killing me man. Please read what I wrote and quit "extrapolating". Take my words as they are written. There is no hidden meanings... I never mentioned any preference for either power supply. I never said we didn't A/B test internal drives.

We have A/B tested internal SSD vs. regular HD. We build Mach2 servers every day. It is easy for use to listen to a Mac, swap the drive and listen to it again. We also have plenty of Mach2 servers around to compare to stock.

Internal drives are typically small compared to folks 1-2 terabyte libraries. If have a small library you can store it internally.

Happy Listening,
www.mach2music.com
perrew
299 posts
 
Dmccombs, thats not my intention:-)

Without extrapolating then, why do you not have linear PS or battery on the server?

So how did the internal HDD compare to an internal SSD?

SSDs are getting quite large so with two of those you can cover quite large librarys.

Im just trying to learn here how to best optimize my server.
dmccombs
112 posts
 
Perrew,

An internal SSD is way better than a regular hard drive, sonically. The only thing to decide is how big you need (or can afford).

I hope my comments regarding the value of SSD vs a regular hard drive have been helpful. I'm sure others will chime in.

I'll skip the power supply questions so we don't derail the thread.

Darrell
www.mach2music.com
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 letÂ’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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