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One recommendation... Use an external DVD/CD Drive

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hifi heretic

In Reply to: RE: Mac as memory player posted by Kristian on December 08, 2008 at 09:47:28

I'm been using a Mac Mini based music server as well. ..I love it and have had very few issues. I've had it for two years. On rare occasions I have had to restart the mini, but nothing worse. Last spring I upgraded to Leopard. ..Again, no issues.
One recommendation: To help minimize wear/tear on the Mini, i purchased a cheap ($60) external LaCie CD/DVD drive. I didn't want to subject the moving parts within the Mini to the torture of ripping 1000 CD's. It does the trick and I have no issues with it either. I rip all of my music to Apple Lossless.
I can't say enough about how well this has worked out for me. IMHO iTunes is great. It is incredibly easy to create mixed Playlists by simply clicking/dragging or by using the recently added "Genius" feature to have playlists created for you (no idea how the heck it works, but it does!). I am getting more out of my music collection than ever. .
I'm now using a Cambridge Audio DacMagic. I just purchased it to replace my Musiland MD10 in order to have more digital inputs.

Edits: 12/09/08

Follow Ups:

DacMagic ? - AbeCollins 06:51:46 12/10/08 (2)
Just curious but how are you driving the DacMagic from your Mac Mini? Are you going over optical TOSLINK, Firewire to SPDIF Coax converter, USB to SPDIF Coax converter?

I'm still running basic TOSLINK optical and it sounds fine but most people say SPDIF should be better. Thanks!
- RE: DacMagic ? - hifi heretic 13:53:04 12/10/08 (1)
  Hi Abe,
  
  Presently, I'm running USB. ..When using the Musiland MD10 I tried it both ways but could not discern any difference. ..Is there a reason to use toslink over USB?.
  - RE: DacMagic ? - AbeCollins 14:11:26 12/10/08 (0)
    Thanks.
    
    The only reason I use TOSLINK from my Mac Mini is because my DAC accepts it (and will not accept USB). It seems to sound fine but some people have commented that USB should sound better.

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