HendersonD

I am the one who posted the original topic. I ended up purchasing a new MacMini with 8GB of RAM and an internal 1TB hard drive to hold my music. I installed Roon Core and it is working great. I formatted the drive on my old 2012 MacMini and installed Roon Bridge. I have my Meridian Explorer DAC plugged into this older Mac Mini and it feeds an Outlaw Audio RR2160 receiver. Both Mac Minis are connected to my network via an ethernet cable, no wireless is used. Separating the Roon Server from the Roon playback device (old Mac Mini) is best practice according to Roon. Would I benefit from a better power supply on the new Mac Mini which holds the music or the old Mac Mini which plays it?

I did purchase the new Mac Mini and may take a look at replacing the power supply once one becomes available for the new design. I agree that it would be nice to have some objective measurements of a Mac Mini before and after this modification to see how it affects sound quality. I have been following various sound and home theater forums for years along with many different print and digital publications. There are certainly objective measurements offered at times but often it is subjective descriptions that carry the day. The new Mac Mini does not have firewire, Apple abandoned it years ago. The new Mac Mini has USB-C and USB-A connections.

I currently use a 2012 Mac Mini as a music server. The internal SSD holds the operating system and I have an external firewire drive that holds my music library. I have a Meridian Explorer DAC and use Audirvana for playback. I am thinking about purchasing a new 3.6GHz quad core Mac Mini to act as a music server and jumping to Roon. I have a few questions The Mac Mini comes with 8GB of RAM but can hold up to 64GB. Is 8GB enough or should I jump to 16GB? This will primarily be a music server but may be used at times for other light tasks. The internal SSD starts at 128GB but can go 2TB. Should I put my music library on the internal hard drive or on an external drive? If external is fine then I should be able to get by with just the 128GB internal SSD If I do go with an external drive to hold the music library, spinning disk? SSD? Or does it not make a difference? If I do go with an external drive to hold the music library, bus powered or should I purchase a drive that has its own power supply? I have read that bus powered might compromise sound quality. Lastly, I have read that replacing the switching power supply with a linear power supply can provide sonic improvements. Does anyone have experience with this?

With iTunes and A+ running, the processor is barely working given how capable modern processors are. I do not have my setup complete yet so I cannot test things both ways but is there truly an audible difference? The reason I ask is there was recently are article on this site that linked off to some fairly extensive research on whether there was an audible difference between CDs and high res audio files. The conclusion, in blind listening tests, no one could tell the difference. Is that a possibility here?

Correct me if I am wrong. I though A+ with iTunes integration just allowed someone to easily pick music to play but the underlying mechanism by which the music is played is A+. In other words using A+ with or without iTunes integration uses the same method to play music therefore the same sonic results. If not, what is different? In other words, under the covers what changes between playing music using A+ with or without iTunes integration?

I ended up copying the entire iTunes folder to the external hard drive and then launching iTunes with the Option key held down. When it asked me to located my iTunes folder I just pointed it towards the one on my external hard drive. I then pointed XLD towards the same location and it works fine

I am ripping CDs using XLD and of course it saves a log file for each rip I am also using this website to grab hi-res album artwork: Album Art Exchange - High Quality Album Art / CD Cover Art: Home I am saving the hi-res images to a folder and then dragging them into XLD before the rip Once the rip is complete (and successful) Is there any reason to keep the log file? Is there any reason to keep the hi-res jpeg that I grabbed from Album Art Exchange?

You convinced me, I will be doing 1000 x 1000 when available. More than likely I will be purchasing an iPad with retina display (2048 x 1536) so album artwork of 1000 x 1000 should look nice. What will happen when I pull this into an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5? Will it just downrez automatically?

I am using XLD on a brand new Mac Mini to rip my CD collection XLD automatically pulls album cover artwork but I wanted something with higher resolution I went to this site to search for album artwork: Album Art Exchange - High Quality Album Art / CD Cover Art: Home It seems that most album artwork is available in three sizes: 600 x 600 800 x 800 1000 x 1000 I will be using either an iPad or iPad Mini to control the Mac Mini for playback. I also have an iPhone 4S that I will be transferring music to. What size album artwork should I use?

I have created symbolic links at the command line before so that is not a problem. What am creating a link of and where am I putting the link? Do I still copy or move anything before creating the link? I am attaching my external 7200 rpm hard drive to a brand new Mac Mini via firewire 800 so is disk arbitration going to be an issue?

I am confused about these two methods METHOD 1 In iTunes under Advanced preferences there is a setting for "iTunes Media folder location". This is currently set to: /Users/henderson/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media If I hit the change button and select my 1TB external hard drive iTunes now shows the media folder location as: /Volumes/Music On the external HD it makes a folder called "Automatically Add to iTunes" METHOD 2 Copy the entire iTunes folder located on my internal HD at /Users/henderson/Music/iTunes to the external HD Launch iTunes with the option key held down and tell iTunes that the new location is the external HD Which method should I use? I am thinking that method 2 is what I want to do but am not sure. What happens if I use Method 2 and the external HD is not turned on or mounted, will iTunes be forever confused?

I will be playing back the ripped CDs using Audirvana Plus through a DAC to my stereo system. This should get me some nice sound quality at home. I would also like to be able to hook my iPhone directly to the Mac Mini and transfer music to the phone so when I am on the road I have music in the car. I am thinking I need iTunes to organize the music in order to accomplish this but much of this is new to me. I will be ripping about 500 CDs and of course I only want to do this once so getting everything setup properly the first time is important. Any thoughts?

I have a new Mac Mini with an internal SSD used just for the OS, XLD, iTunes, and A+. It is hooked to a 1TB external HD via Firewire 800. This external drive will hold the CD collection ripped via XLD. Do I just relocate the iTunes library to the external HD and then use XLD to rip to this location? If so, is it easy to relocate the iTunes library to an external HD? It is easy to tell XLD to rip to this location?

The OWC video says the install of a new HD takes 30 minutes, mine took over an hour. It is a bit harrowing but I managed to install an SSD drive. The hardest part was getting the antenna connector cable back on. I will be tweaking things a bit (turn off bluetooth, etc) and then start ripping CDs with XLD.

Anyone try iRule? iRule