Yush

Hi, thanks for this. What I am trying to achieve is a way to use computer-based storage in parallel with my conventional CD based Hifi. I currently stream lossy files for convenience via Airplay to my M-Dac when I want to shuffle or keep changing CDs. The immediate improvement I'm looking for is to clean the input into the DAC, which is jumbled over airplay by other network demands and has to go via optical from reciever to DAC (subsequently I need to heavily de-jitter which obviously takes most of the other data with it). In the medium term, I will then go back and re-rip my CDs lossless or otherwise buy higher quality data. At the moment I have 27k tracks in itunes; what kind of storage capacity should I think about to future proof myself assuming in the end I need to have them all in (a) lossless format?

Thanks Guys, I've bought the SDD Mini and will add a 1TB thunderbolt drive. I'm very much looking forward to hearing lossless straight to the DAC rather than horribly jitter-corrected airplay as in my current setup. I'm also quite interested in testing my CDs transport versus the mac on the same original albums.

Sounds very sensible. There are no noticeable performance issues having the data on an external versus internal drive for playback?

I am looking to buy a mac mini to use as my main music storage and playback device. There are a variety of storage types in the new mac minis, including standard drives, flash SSD and their fusion drive. The SSD options are extremely expensive. Does anyone have any advise/opinions on whether different storage formats can affect playback for music? Thanks in advance