Trade off between convenience and sound quality - mac mini as audio input to hifi amp

[mardinor]

Be gentle with me ...newbie who has searched threads but can't find an answer, so here goes.

I'm about to buy a new home cinema/hifi system (Arcam AVR350 AV Amp, Monitor Audio GS20 floorstanders with Radius sats/sub). I'm trying to decide on an audio source.

Of course the 'hi-fi' answer is CD at least. But I've been bitten by the convenience bug of my ipod. I really enjoy accessing my entire CD collection instantly and just cannot go back to playing individual CDs. So I have two questions to help me judge the tradeoff of SQ for convenience:

1) How to minimise the SQ loss: What is the route for best sound from a hard drive? (thinking of dedicated mac mini and external HD with optical digital output into amp)
2) How to quantify the SQ loss: Given the answer to question 1, how much would I pay for a CD player with an approximately equivalent resultant sound? (in other words, how much is the convenience costing?)

Apologies if this has been done to death before - only threads I could find were about tradeoff of SQ with portability rather than accessibility/convenience.

Cheers

[stevelup]

Hi

If you rip them in a lossless format, the sound quality should be identical to that which you would get using any CD player connected with a digital connection.

Mac's don't have the nasty 48KHz resampling issue that causes problems on PC's either.

Regards,

Steve

[andrew1810]

Instead of buying a mac-mini, have a look at the wireless/wired streaming devices which you could hook up to you PC wirelessly and then play through the hifi, with built-in display, remote etc.

The likes of the Squeezebox, Sonos and Soundbridge all have excellent sound quality too.

Have a look here: http://www.audiofi.co.uk/reviews

[mardinor]

If you rip them in a lossless format, the sound quality should be identical to that which you would get using any CD player connected with a digital connection.

That's what I suspected, but then why do people spend anywhere from £50 to £5000 on a CD player? Is it just the DAC?

[stevelup]

You said you were going to connect it digitally - thus making any built-in DAC irrelevant.

To be honest, I have no idea why people spend £5K on CD players - franky I think they are completely nuts!

[extremelydodgy]

I have a Mac Mini going out to an RME Fireface (http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/4062) which then goes into a dCS Elgar Plus ( http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/dcs_elgar_plus.html). Both Fireface and Elgar Plus are clocked by the dCS Verona (http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/dcs_verona.html).


Presuming you don't want to spend upwards of 15,000 on getting audio out of the back of your Mac, then you can just hook up the Mac to a DAC via optical or a pro soundcard through Firewire (USB maybe). Job done.


Apart from the above main system, I also have a MacBook Pro running directly via digital out into a Crane Song Avocet (http://www.hhb.co.uk/hhb/uk/products/detail.asp?ID=2088) and an iMac running directly via the digital out into a Reimyo DAP-777 (http://www.audiofreaks.co.uk/dec98/page3.html). The results are decent and I have no complaints. Using the Mac Mini as a transport with properly ripped Lossless Audio is very viable, and is as good as using a very decent CD transport.


The A component of the DAC is obviously important and it's pretty pants on the Mac, as it is on most PC's. In order to use SPDIF to the max, which is a non-error corrected protocol with a few issues, you may feel the need to take the steps I've done. This is the same be it if you're using a CD player as transport or computer.
(Actually I mostly don't feel the need either, I just did it because I can ;) )


A good DAC or pro soundcard hung off the back of a Mac Mini makes it at least as good as the likes of a Squeezebox, etc + DAC. And with a TV connection / large monitor combined with Front Row, it makes for a hell of a lot better home entertainment system.


The Mac will pass through 5.1 info on DVD's through optical. If you want to step up the analog out quality and also want 5.1 analog outputs, I suggest the Focusrite Saffire LE (http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/13662). The Fireface 400 (http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/12956) is the smaller brother to my 800 if you're far more concerned about two-channel reproduction.