2. digital
  3. 149056-1501

Apple MacMini replacement or.....

I cannot find this question answered specifically in the archives. I have an aging Apple MacMini and I can no longer upgrade the OS and therefore cannot upgrade my Audirvana. This MM will not play the Masters Tidal or hi-Rez Qobuz. I have two USB storage drives, 500GB each in a Raid 1 which output to the MacMini. USB out of the MM to an Oppo Sonica DAC. I rarely play hi-Rez since I only have a few. It works flawlessly otherwise and streams to several Apple TVs throughout the house. I use iTunes with Bitperfect or Audirvana for playback. All the tunes load to RAM cache before playback to avoid Accessing the hard drive. Controlled by my iPad or iPhone.
I can replace the MM with a new one for $799. 128 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM. Everything stays the same except I can upgrade all the software and have an SSD and stream from several classical streams that I like. The dilemma is this: Is this the best way to use my existing library of ALAC ripped CDs, keep music through the house, use my iPhone or iPad for controlling the music and have Apple reliability or is there a better way today? Or to put it another way, how much more do I have to spend to retain this functionality and have even better sound?
The rest of the system: 17 x 20 foot room with treated walls and carpeted floor, Modwright SWL 9.0 SE, Wyred4sound SX-500 monos and Von Schweikert VR-4JR speakers. Thank you.
tgrisham

Showing 1 response by 2psyop

2psyop's avatar
2psyop
1,502 posts
 
How about a Bluesound Node2i for $499?

Pros-
It will do everything you want to do, play your library, use your phone as controller etc.
It is designed to be a music server.
It will play MQA and stream music via Tidal, Spotify, etc, etc thus giving you a much bigger library of new music and titles you don’t have.
It fits within your budget and has a good, up to date DAC.
The software can be updated, should last longer than a MM before it will be non-useable.
It should sound better than the MM.
You can upgrade the DAC later, thus improving the sound with time.

Cons-
It will not function as a computer, cannot do all those things.
You will not be able to load different media serving software. The BluOS is what it uses.
It takes a little time to get used to as opposed to your familiar MM.


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