kafou

Ok, I want to upgrade the airport express because when I use the coax out of the dacmagic to send audio to my musician audio interface the jitter of the AE is not a good match with this one. At this moment I have a USB disk connected to my macbook that i'm pissed off to always take attention, so I need a setup for storage also. My thinking was that with a mac mini I resolve all that. Good signal for my musician audio interface, no need to move my USB disk, I can also play hi-res files and supposedly get better audio quality. So even if I can better the optical out of the airport express, I will have to buy a NAS or a mac mini to stop watching my USB disk when I move my macbook. So a dedicated streamer is a solution but I will have to buy a NAS or a mac mini anyway. My macbook is getting old so I will use this new mac for some demanding software at some times.

If i can have a good signal to the dac from an AE that can be really cool. But that setup is not 100% what i'm looking for because I will have to use my macbook for hi-res listening. But for CD quality that seem like something interresting.

It's not that simple, I really loves the Apple things. IPad, Iphone, Itunes, airplay...you know simplicity. But modding a mac mini like that is not simplicity. Maybe I'm already listening unlistenable music but I don't know because I had never listen to listenable music.

WOW, I just read your step by step, do you still had time to listen to music? No way I will do all this to listen to music. I will buy a plug and play box.

That's the reason why it is so hard to take a decision, on the same post, some guys says that it sound good and other guys says it is unlistenable. I'm sure that there a solution that everyone will find good

No, I asked the question after reading about that. Your answer made me thinking of going with a stock mac mini

Of course not, I prefer to hear that I don't need to mod. I was about to buy the mac mini when I begin to read all that mods article. With the $$$ needed for these mods and the trouble to do these mods I began to look at other options.

It's not so easy to think that I don't need to mod the mac mini. When you read all the web infos about modding the mac mini and how that improve the sound quality you begin to think that this is the way to go. Of course i'm pretty sure that this will sound good with no mods but I will always ask myself how it can sound with mods...

So no suggestion to my post? I'm sure that i'm not the only one who hesitate between a modded mac mini solution or a dedicated streamer.

Hi, I read this forum since a few years but never register until now. Until now I use my airport express linked to my dacmagic to ambiance listening and connect my macbook to the same dac in USB for more serious listening, thing that I did not do often since a few years. The simplicity of using the AE made that I always use this setup. So now I want to improve my system but with the simplicity of the AE use. My first idea is to buy a mac mini with 8g ram and 256g SSD connect to it a USB 3.0 drive for my library storage and connect my dacmagic with USB. For now I use Itunes but software like bitperfect and Audirvana seem interesting. Of course I want to control all this with a IPad or Iphone. But from reading here and some web articles, it seem that I have to do some modding to the Mac mini, the most popular seem to be the power supply. If I calculate the price of the mac mini and the PS mod and the fact that with this mod I surely put an end to my warranty it begin to be a lot of cash so maybe there better solution than this and more plug and play. Do you have something to recommand to me that will meet my needs? Thanks Kafou