Jan Nielsen

Hi, I just got hold of a cheap Belkin firewire cable and cut the power wire. Then I changed my RME Fireface 400 from “bus power” to external power, which is delivered by a 12 V battery. Compared to the bus-powered setup I now have a better-defined sound “source” (as I mostly listen to electronica where I think it’s a little wrong to talk about “instruments”) a lot more “air” and sense of room. It´s hard to tell if this improvement’s come from the cable being cut, the RME now on batteries, the Mac Mini released from powering the RME or a combination? But the sound is clearly better in my opinion; so the time used on cable-surgery was well spend. Regards, Jan

Hi Clay, Thank you for the very useful answers and links. Now I know what to do the long and cold winter nights: Researching and killing OS X processes… Regards, Jan

Gentlemen and women, Being a defector from the MS Windows world I recently got hold of a Mac Mini as music server. Now I´m wondering if there are any set-up guidelines for Mac OS X just as we have seen for the Windows OS (e.g. this: http://www.audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php). By surfing a little on this great site I have read about using Xslimmer, Ram disc and disabling Spotlight – but are there more? Could anybody help with a comprehensive list of tweaks and setup guidelines talking OS X used for music servers? Regards, Jan

I presume the Mediaserver is running MS Home Server? If it is, another way of achieving what you want could be could be something like this: As the WHS is ”just” a shell on top of a Windows Server 2003 you could use a Remote Desktop Connection from your laptop and logon as administrator. Go to ”Computer Management” and check in the ”Device Manager” to see if the Windows Server have recognized your USB DAC. If it has, just install foobar2000 on the server, and use the remote desktop connection from the laptop to manage the foobar2000. This is a theoretical approach, as I never have used a USB DAC on a Mediaserver, but I use a Mediaserver EX 475 as storage for my music files and I think this could work. Regards, Jan PS: Not being native English spoken, I have absolutely no intend to be rude or offensive to anybody – please bare over with my bad English. PSS: My first ever post on this great site.