Music from hard drive better than CD?

C'mon guys, Apple is better/worse than Win in *some* circumstances. For HT/audio use, I think the Mac fits great--I bought a mini. Relevant decisional included:

1. Form Factor. Apple wins on this count hands down. I'm not ashamed to have it in my living room. Most Win boxes are ugly and, while there are some competitive SFF PCs, you are pretty much stuck with rolling your own guts for those. That gets costly and requires some technical savvy I'd rather apply somewhere else.

2. Ambient Noise. The mini is quieter, hands down, than any Win box I've run. Yeah, you can invest in heat pipe technology for a Win box or try to upgrade components, but why? The Apple is perfect for this kind of duty. Yes, you could also go with a quieter laptop, but I have to believe (unmitigated opinion based on use of desktops and laptops for 20 years) the reliability of the mini is better than any Win or Apple laptop in the long run.

3. Screen size. Tongue in cheek. I've got a 61" pioneer elite plasma on the wall behind the stereo. Why do I need a display, whether it be laptop or otherwise. (Ever see the visualizer in HD?). I think a lot of folks attaching a PC to a stereo are in the same boat. The Apple has a DVI out, which makes the connection pretty simple. None of the four Win XP boxes in my house have DVI out and, while you can get a new video card, its an upgrade. DVI on the Apple is standard. Yeah, you can lose the monitor while ordering a Dell, but the "refund" you get really isn't commensurate.

Bluetooth on the Mac was a bonus--I can sit on my couch, surf the web on a large screen with a keyboard and mouse that don't cause a walking hazard. Very cool. Now, if someone will only make a really good Bluetooth trackball, I'll be all set.

What didn't count was the lack of coax digital out. I'm heavily biased in favor of USB audio output devices, and that works great with either the Mac or the Win. In the case of the Win boxes, I feel like I'm paying for something I'm not using, since they always seem to want to sell you some fancy schmantzy audio card that is blown out of the water by my Waveterminal U24.

Downstairs, on the other hand, my workhorse is a Win box. Compatibility with work computers is a bigger issue for my home office. So, I've upgraded some bits to keep it quieter, and it works just fine serving up audio to the stereo down there even while I'm photoshopping something or surfing the web.

I will note that the Win box seems to require a lot more fiddling whenever I install something. Apple is much more plug-n-play. I spend 10x more time troubleshooting network and device driver issues with the Win box than I do the Apple.

No I did not miss your first paragraph. I did ignore it however, but since you bring it to task:

Regarding the inexpensive Dell you mention:

It relies upon allocating a good part of it's RAM for graphics (states 64mb). The iMac has an excellent graphics card and does not need to rely upon RAM for graphics. The Mac can easily support an external monitors with its dedicated 32mb of RAM on the graphics card.

It has a slower Celeron processor (as you point out), while the Macs G4 processor is very fast indeed.

Wireless card is an option on the PC and standard on the Mac.

The Dell has no firewire ports at all, while the iBook has both USB 2.0 and Firewire.

As far as the smaller screen I actually prefer a 12 inch screen and compact size and weight. The iBook weighs 4.9 lbs while the bigger Dell is 6.3lbs.

I won't go through looking up the same details on the desktop example you sited as I'm sure it would come out the same: you get what you pay for.

Marco

Why the back and forth on Apple vs. MS. I use Linux with a USB sound card and USB hard drives, the sound card is only to connect to my very satisfactory Audio Mirror DAC. This Linux system runs on a fanless VIA chip (mini itx). No virus possibilities and is internet connected a CDDB data base that automatically sets up folders with titles etc. just before ripping to the hard drive. So get a cheap PC and free Linux. PC audio can be had very inexpensively.
~tom

noise issues, see www.silentpcreview.com

I just tried doing this today for the first time in my system.
I must say overall that I did not like it. I really hoped I would. I wanted to like, I tried to like it. But for me it just didn't cut it.

I used a iBook with a Digidesign Mbox and my Wadia DAC.
All files were uncompress and in Raw AIFF form.

Technically speaking everything sounded better. The soundstage and imagining and depth were great. They were in fact better than I have ever heard them. But the PRAT was gone!

I just could not get involved in the music. When we tried a disc strait from the CD drive it sound better (PRAT wise). My guess is music coming off the hard drive looses it timing?

It's hard to describe, and you kinda have to hear it. It should of been great. Every aspect was better (bass, clarity, soundstaging, etc), but the music was lost. It sounded more like hifi and less like music. Over all it was a let down.

A friend was with me when we did this test. He has about a 10K 2 channel system. In the end we both felt the same way.

Has anyone else experience this?

Of course YMMV, but for me I am going to stick with my CD player. I won't be adopting HD playback any time soon.

Happy listening,
Nick