tedweitz

Hi I had the Mac Mini - PC dilemma and finely went with the Zino for the HDMI I love it! It works great connected to a 63" Samsung plasma TV and sound great through the TV sound as I am still waiting for my Processor [Emotiva]. It plays the streaming video great and it is very quite For the music room I am still uncertain if I should use a PC with a sound card or Mac Mini for bit perfect play back through a DAC Ted

With a risk of sounding dumb... I really want the Mac to work as it is a $500 - $800 right out of the box with good graphics - albom art and great remote option [iPad] But Here is my concerns, I have tried several media players on my test PC equipped with the the Asus Xonar Essence card. It was my impression that on the PC most players sound better then Itune. My favorites so far are; KMPlayer [limited interface] and my new favorite XBMC [Thank you Dynobot] posting So my question still: Will I get a better sound with a PC loaded with the right Media Player or is the Mac [mini]? Thanks a bunch Ted

Thanks Chris, Continuing on the same topic, for SPDIF output of bit-perfect output is there any Comparison data among these three cards. Is USB out bypass the need for a sound card? Is SPDIF the best output for bitperfect to external DAC and is coax SPDIF better then optical Thanks a bunch and sorry for all these questions Ted

I had some similar uncertainties The cards mentioned ASUS, Juli@ or Lynex have a DAC functionality, well I am planning on using an external DAC. What will these cards give me for the $200 - 700 Is just noise and jitter - clock improvement? I will be paying for the internal DAC chip but I do not use it. So is there a card that will just improve on the digital stream that it picks up from the network and feed it to the DAC? Do these card offer any advantage over the MacMini as the net receiver feeding the DAC? Thanks, Ted

Hi, I am thinking of using the IPad as an ultimate remote mainly if I will use MacMini as the player that will get the music from the server and connect to a DAC I still have not figured out yet which setting to use i.e < MacMini - Itune - DAC - Preamp > Vs < small PC - ?ASUS ASUS Xonar Essence? - some MediaPlayer - DAC- Preamp > But seems like either way the IPad would work out of the box with the remote app. Beefing Up the remote App would be nice Any suggestion on the player dilemma I have? Thanks, Ted

Hi, I have been playing with this issue lately as I am building my music server. For now I have the most of the music in FLAC files residing on my home office computer an AMD quad core with 8GB RAM running Vista 64. I installed the Asus Xonar Essence STX lately and the playbeck through my computer speakers improved nicely. I use the Harman Kardon SoundSticks Computer Speakers and they sound pretty good The plan is to build a small unit in each room and connect it through a DAC to the sound system in that room [have not figure out that part yet and am considering MacMini Vs. small PC] I have been playing with different MP and was surprised by how different they sound. I tried to run the files through Itune WMP and MediaMonkey I had to do some format conversions. Itune sounded an inspiring Mediamonkey sounded kind of harsh with pushing the highs. Windows Media Player sounded better then the two to my reluctant surprise. WMP sounded better also in my other home computers through my network. Best though was the KMPlayer It sounded the best so far and it plays FLAC files directly. The user interface is not as good as the MediaMonkey but the sound is better then all the others I have tried Wish there was a way to use the MediaMonkey interface while playing through the KMPlayer I also have not figured out how to load a folder with sub folders into its library Ted

Hi, I see the Drobo mentioned a lot here and recommended at the CASH list. As I am still wrestling with understanding the whole server concept I looked at Newegg and Synology came across as a good solid option. Particularly, I am looking at Synology DS409+ and using RAID 5 I am thinking of keeping it connected with mostly weird [cat5] network to the rest of the house i.e HT room, music room, bedroom and kitchen each with their separate music systems that will feed from it via small PCs or Apple TV using iTune . Is there any advantage to the Drobo, anything else I am missing here giving my proposed architecture. Thank you so much for your feedback, I am still amazed at the brain trust here, Ted

Rio Rancho NM

Thank you so much guys, I got great information here. CharlyD respond took me to a great site and following it I got to see the Fujitsu Esprimo Q 1500 which looks great and have BlueRay and HDMI Another one is Mvix "Minx" (MX-3250HD) Media Center PC I still like the Mac Mini, the lack of BlueRay reader, HDMI and good 5.1 audio out is a problem though. I hope Apple will fix in that in the next Mac Mini. The AppleTV has the HDMI and 5.1 outs but I can not surf the net with it or upload a DVD through it. I am planning on having a dedicated DVD player but I want the server to access / store audio video and access the web to get some stuff from it. Thanks again for all your input, Ted

Hello, Just Googled into this site as I am trying to build a Music/Video Server. I have built several IBM platforms before and thought to build one for my home music / video server. The more I look into it the more it looks like the ready made Mac Mini would be a better way to go. The Mini is really quite, cute and is already built. I can control it with an Iphone and seems that ITune speaks its language naturally. My concerns though are that it mostly has USB ports and it doesn't have HDMI out. Are DACs better fed through Optic SPDIF the USB? Does video feeds work better with natural HDMI [the mini have a mini DVI - HDMI adapter] Could it serve also as a Video server? I am thinking of getting an Airport Express and hard wire most of my computers to it [One in the Music Room, one in the Surround Sound Room and other in the kitchen and the office] I will add some external hard drives to the Airport so they will store the data. The main concern I have is, will I be missing something that could work better with a custom built IBM platform I can build? [i am not trying to cut pennies but would like to stay reasonable] Thanks so much for your input and thoughts and thanks Chris for an awesome site Ted