cinematic

Amazing, this version is a major step forward - they finally got it right. Previous versions were always a little buggy, it repeated the first and last second of each track and preloading often loaded tracks in the wrong order or missed a few songs. That's all fixed now and tracks load much faster and playback is pretty much gapless. And the sound quality....gasp!! So much more detail, simply amazing. Not 'gritty', but certainly less forgiving: bad recordings sound worse, but good recordings, including the humble 16/44.1, sound incredibly good.

I tried Amarra but getting more and more unhappy. I received Amarra Hifi with my Weiss DAC, only to find out that SPDIF is not supported (I can't use the firewire). They can't/won't fix it, but keep trying to sell me an upgrade - I really hate that!

If I may add some general advice: make sure to keep your optical connectors clean and properly aligned. Optical cables carry light. Once the light is inside the cable, there is very little signal loss inside the cable, the connections are the weak spots. If the connector gets scratched or dirty with dust, (finger) grease or other dirt, the light is dispersed and the signal is degraded, so keep it clean, don't touch the end of the connector and keep the caps on until you plug the cable in. Also, if two connectors are not properly aligned, you lose signal. That's why I prefer metal connectors as they typically have a tighter fit. An adapter or interconnect will also cause signal loss, so use one cable of the right length with the right connectors on both ends. Finally, make sure to bend optical cables as little as possible and if you have to bend it, maintain a large bend radius and avoid sharp angles. Light travels in a straight line but is reflected on the outside of the optical cable, that's how the light stays inside the cable. But if you bend the cable too much, that reflection no longer works, so the light gets attenuated. With careful installation and good connections, optical cables can cover very large distances. YMMV...

Can anyone explain the differences between the different ripping modes - CDParanoia III, XLD Secure Ripper and Burst - and the respective pros and cons?

After a lot of testing and comparing different cables, I settled for Nordost Flatline Mk2 cables, simply because they sounded best (=most neutral) in my setup. I was actually surprised how big the differences between the cables were, not subtle at all! My cables are rather long (5m) and the impedance of my electrostatic speakers can get pretty low at certain frequencies, which is probably why speaker cables have such a big impact in my set. My advice: go see your local dealers, get a couple of cables to review and try them all side by side, in your own set.

Opical fibre is used to build transcontinental links, but toslink is obviously not to the same spec. The output power of the transmitter, the quality of the connections and of the fibre can vary hugely. If you use glass, your connectors are superclean and without (micro)scratches and you don't bend the fibre too much (avoid small bending radius) you should be able to stretch the official 10m limit, but YMMV. Your best bet is coax with bnc, 40 ft should be no problem with a good 75 ohm cable. AES is not so great as it is more prone to reflections in the cable. The nice thing about fibre is that you have a galvanic isolation between computer and dac, so no ground-loop issues or far less risk of noise. I use a hybrid solution to connect several sources (DVD, computer and TV-tuner) to my DAC: 3 m toslink coming out of my mac, then switched and converted to spdif/coax going to my Weiss DAC2 via an 9 m coax cable (canare via cs1.net). Works brilliantly at 24bit/96kHz.

I agree with Eloise that noise and heat are important considerations. But there are large differences between HDDs beyond GB and rpm. Larger drives can run hotter and get noisier when they contain lots of platters, especially at higher rpm. The HDD I recommend has only 2 high-capacity platters, dissipates 3W max and has a noise level of ±2.5 dB. The high GB/platter density also improves the drive's read/write performance, more so than higher rpm. The much hyped SSD is potentially faster, but at a cost. The really fast drives have limited capacity, cost a fortune and are more interesting for high-end servers, IMO. Interesting comparative test: http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/servers_storage/western-digital/scorpio_blue_wd7500bpvt/348483 For audio, reading files off an external drive should be fine. For HD video, you can expect much better performance when you store your movies on a good internal drive. (Also: upgrade your RAM and remember to shut down other processes to free up processor capacity & memory)

@Duke: The TOSLINK on the mac mini is limited to 24/96. The only way to get higher is to use Firewire. @WGSmith: The best performance will be from an internal HDD. SSD will give you faster read performance, but writing to SSD is slower than to HDD so total improvement is limited: "YMMV". You also get a lot less GB/$ with SSD. I'd recommend to get the largest possible HDD inside your mac mini; WD has a 750G that gets good reviews. Note there is also a 1TB but it's a 4 platter drive that is 12.5 mm thick and won't fit inside the mini. If you're into hacking, you can add an e-SATA interface to your mini and use much faster external disks. http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9092

I expect Firewire would work better, but the mac and dac are in different rooms and I already had a coax installed for an older dac. Perhaps a future upgrade but I'm very pleased with current performance.

Hi Rob, I have a similar set-up and attacked it from another angle. I got a digital switch-box (audio authority 1177A) that has 4 SPDIF inputs and 1 SPDIF output. The toslink from the Mac Mini goes to input1, my TV also has a toslink that goes to input2 and my DVR/DVD player goes into input3 The output signal goes into my DAC (Weiss DAC2) via SPDIF coax. Works like a charm, the switch does not seem to add any jitter and works up to 24/96 (that's as high as Mac Mini SPDIF goes). Another solution is to get an Elgato EyeTV or similar. This is a TV tuner that plugs into the USB of your Mac Mini and gives it TV AND DVR functionality. Good luck, let us know how you get on.