Need help moving from CDP to Mac Mini music server

I'm using a setup with some of the elements that you're considering so I'll pass along some of my experience and observations.

I have an iMac G5 and my music is in Apple Lossless format on an external Firewire drive. The music is streamed wirelessly to an Airport Express near my main system and the Express is connected by a glass optical cable to a Benchmark DAC-1. The Benchmark analog output goes to a Simaudio I-5 integrated amp and on to Merlin TSM-MM speakers. (Or my backup speakers while the Merlins are off for a repair.)

None of my gear is of the quality of yours and I can't compare the Benchmark output to anything like your SCD-1 but in my system the quality of the output from the hard drive is indistinguishable from the output of various transports I've tried with the Benchmark.

In theory, the Benchmark will take care of any jitter problems, regardless of the source. I don't have any way to verify that but that's one of the advantages Benchmark claims for their DAC.

The Benchmark is beautifully made and I really like the convenience and versatility of it. I have a DVD player that I use as a transport for discs and the front panel switch on the Benchmark lets me switch easily between the input from the transport and the hard drive system.

I'm sure there are other good options but LaCie is generally regarded as a good source of external hard drives. I've had good luck with Seagate branded drives, as well.

I'm sold on the combination of convenience and sound quality from this setup. I'm sure there are ways to improve it but what I like is that I'm finding myself listening to music I hadn't listened to in a long time simply because the iTunes interface makes it so easy to pick something new. I'm finding that it's much faster to walk to the computer and click on a new selection than to switch CD's, and being able to create playlists is an added bonus.

Mimberman
I haven't experienced any interference from either my cordless phone or microwave. I don't talk on the phone a lot and when I do I usually turn down the sound if music is playing.

This morning I played some Satie through the system so that it would be easy to hear if anything was going on, called my office voice mail on the cordless phone and walked all around the system for a minute or so while I talked on the phone. It didn't create any interference that I could hear.

Same thing with the microwave. I turned it on for a couple of minutes while the music was playing and couldn't detect anything. It's only about 20 feet from my system, in the next room with an open doorway between.

Not saying there couldn't be inteference but I've never detected any in my setup.

I bought a glass optical cable, as well, from Captnstarstripe here on audiogon. It's a very nice cable for about the same price as a plastic one.

I understand the advantages of RAID technology for redundancy but I'm not sure it's necessarily the best solution in this use, at least for most people. The advantage is that you're constantly backing up your data so that there's no chance you'll lose any of the work you've done in the interim between backups, which is a good thing, but there are disadvantages to having the redundant data housed in the same box as your primary data.

I think the way most people will set up a hard drive-based system is to spend a lot of time initially ripping a big pile of CD's, then ripping new stuff occasionally as it's bought. What you're interested in protecting is that big initial investment of time and it might make more sense to have two separate external drives, one as the primary and one that is brought out once a week or once a month to take the new stuff.

If you're really interested in protecting that investment, you're better off having the second drive in a different physical location and offline so that some kind of accident, a power surge or knocking the enclosure off a desktop doesn't take out everything. If you've ripped 10 CD's since the last time you took your backup drive out of the closet and done a backup, it's not a big deal since it takes less than five minutes to rip most discs.

RAID is cool but it's a little more complicated and expensive. Like many of you, I'm entertained by complicated solutions but I think in this case simpler might be better.

I didn't choose the Benchmark because of any knowledge that it was better, or worse, than a USB DAC. I picked it because it looked like a pretty attractive combination of several things I wanted.

Because of the option for multiple inputs, I assumed it would work well in experimenting with a hard-drive based system while retaining the ability to use a conventional transport and I couldn't be happier with how that works. Even though I have all my music on the hard drive, I still find myself playing CDs pretty often.

I wanted to do that experiment without adding a lot of complexity to the system and the Benchmark's small size lets me perch it on the same shelf as the transport and just flip a switch on the front of the Benchmark to toggle between the inputs from the hard drive and the transport.

I was pretty sure the Benchmark was a good DAC because the reviews of it have been uniformly very positive but I didn't really care if it was absolutely the best solution from an electromechanical perspective. I'm sure there may be better options from any one of several perspectives and I wouldn't even claim I made the best possible choice but, for now, I'm really happy with it.