Tbg,
Perrew, having had two prior Windows servers, my expectations are the opposite of yours.
Having MacMini 2010 here, my experience is the opposite of yours. I have installed Win7 (x64) on the MacMini and run it with Jriver and ASIO4ALL. Since I can run both Mac OS X and Win7 on the same MacMini, to my ears, Jriver/ASIO setup outperforms iTunes/PM playback in every respect. I also find Jriver much more user-friendly compared to iTunes.
But even with Jriver/ASIO, the MacMini is still inferior (both sound and internal hardware) to a "cheap" $700 Core i3/HM55 Toshiba laptop. And I love my external 2TB (Barracuda XT) RAID enclosure connected to the eSATA port of the Toshiba! If Firewire was that great, why the internal drives of the Mac use the SATA controller? Very strange!
Mac is extremely nice; great OS/exterior/convenience design, and there were number of reasons why it sounded better than Win based players, but that is now history, IMO!
What is MacMini? It is an outdated Core 2 Duo Intel-based laptop. It is packed to the micron so there is no space for proper filtration (suitable for high quality audio) of the “million” switching charge-pump regulators inside. On the top, Apple decided to make things even more convenient for the user with a built-in 12V LiteON main switching power supply. Apple did a very fine job again (very sleek), but that was not intended and obviously does not serve very well when it comes to high-end audio. IMO, again!
Look at this
picture here. It shows Mini-ITX motherboard for Intel Core i3/5/7. Look at the little round things called filter capacitors and count how many they are. And look at
this here showing MacMini 2010 motherboard. As you can see, there are NO large filter capacitors. Al they use is the absolutely minimum required value of Tantalum capacitors (ask around how they sound for audio apps). Why? No space.
Best,
Alex Peychev