MacBook Pro or Mac Mini as music server

You should not use the internal drive on the Mach2music to store music. I found out that degrades the excellent sound of the mach2music server. One of many tweaks that is done to the Mac Mini is lowering the CPU processing. The 40 gig hard drive inside the Mach 2 server does several things. It reduces vibration, lowers power consumption, allows the operating system to access operational files quicker which lessens usage of the processor chip, and lastly it lowers the noise floor by great amount. If you put music on the internal drive during playback you end up using more of the computers internal resources to retrieve music files at the same time running the music player and operating system. You should go to www.mach2music.com for all the info. It has been the best digital I have ever had.

Nolitan, people who say that solid state drives sound better do not store their music files on the solid state system drive. They use an external drive for the music files.

Onhwy , The Sound House - thank you for the clarification on the ssd. I see!! Is the stock 40gig of Mach 2 enough? Between adding another 40gig of the ssd and adding 4 g of ram to 8 gig which is a better upgrade?
Is 320gig of external drive enough for about 200 CDs worth ripped in best possible format?

Thanks guys

Of your choices, go with the increased RAM. A 320Gb will hold around 400 CDs in their native format. If you later out grow the drive you simply copy clone the drive to a larger drive.

At the level of DAC you're considering I think the "upgraded" Mac Mini with the SSD and maxed out RAM is overkill. If I were you I'd get a stock Mini and put the savings somewhere else in my system/music collection.

Onhwy61,
the 320gb is good enough for my cd collection. I got about 200 as I also have a vinyl system.
For the Upgraded Mac Mini w/ SSD and max out RAM, what Dac would you recommend to match that performance ?
Are we looking at the Berkeley Dac ? or the Weiss ?

Thanks again.