My first Mac.

[MajorFubar]

I've just bought a Mac Mini to integrate with my HiFi. :bounce:

This is both my first serious attempt at integrating a computer with my HiFi and also my first experience of a Mac & Snow Leopard.

To begin with, I plan to use it for internet radio, iTunes, iPlayer etc and see how things progress.

I know from others' posts that I'll probably need an external DAC to get the best sound, but I'll break myself in gently with it first before confusing myself with more hardware right from the start.

Wish me luck! 8)

 

[Anonymous]

You won't regret it MajorFubar GREAT little piece of hard wear, I have been using mine for a while with two 2tb Iomega HD's running through my Antelope audio Gold DAC...brilliant, my next move is purchasing PureMusic, good luck :cheers: .

 

[BenLaw]

Wish me luck! 8)

Congrats, and good luck! Let us know how you get on.

 

[MajorFubar]

Thanks guys I certainly will.

I've just downloaded the manual from Apple and started to familiarise myself with things.

I've learned that I can use it with most keyboards and mice, not just Apple ones, which is something I didn't know.

So now I'm looking around for a nice compact wreless k/b which also has a touchpad, save me faffing with a mouse.

I can see that I need to get myself a HDMI->HDMI cable which I don't yet have, in order to connect it to the TV, but I think in the meantime I can plug it into my monitor's DVI socket, because I already have a HDMI->DVI lead.

So things is looking good. I just need lady luck to be on my side when it arrives: when it comes to me buying electrical items over the internet (even new items like this), about 60% of them are faulty and have to be returned.

 

[garyw77]

Excellent decision, you won't regret.

Mine is all set up with a 8TB external feeding the music files through Pure Music and on to the DAC as you mentioned.

As you said for the best sound you will be wanting to get yourself a good quality DAC and also i highly recommend the Pure Music programme another poster mentioned to improve the sound further.

The upgrade of the RAM to 8GB is a cheap upgrade that is easily done yourself and enables it to run even more easily, especially when running the Pure Music programme in memory mode..

Don't forget to run all the updates and upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard when it arrives as well

Enjoy the super Mini

 

[MajorFubar]

Thanks Gary.

My first day with my new toy has gone reasonably well.

I am having a couple of teething problems in getting it to give me access to the two SMB folders on my NAS drive (as reported in another thread), but other than that my experience so far has been very positive.

I was particularly impressed by how well made the device is, how simply it is constructed, and in fact by how it and the accompanying manuals and discs were packaged. Those Apple bods are clever people: never under estimate the psychological positive effect of first opening and picking up a well-made and well-presented piece of kit. Gives you confidence even before you plug the thing in. And not one bit of the nasty polystyrene/Styrofoam in sight!

 

[MajorFubar]

Hmmm...well here's one area where the Apple chaps could improve things.

We had a power-cut today. Two computers in our house were in use: the Mac was streaming Jazz FM via iTunes and the kids were playing Funky Pool on the main family PC in the dining room.

When power was restored (literally 10-15 seconds later) the PC picked itself up fairly easily after issuing the (expected) complaint that Windows had shut down unexpectedly and so did I want to restart in safe mode. But not so the Mac. The power-cut had virtually nuked Snow Leopard and I spent the next hour re-installing the OS from DVD, all the while hoping the power didn't go again. Then I spent another half hour downloading the latest updates (for the second time in a week).

I was at least impressed that re-installing Snow Leopard didn't wipe-out any of my docs or additional apps.

 

[Paul.]

That's peculiar. Did you have any luck with your Nas drive? Get your self a wireless time machine backup going in the background, thatway should something like this happen again you can restore the machine.

The only time I ever had to use it was connecting my girlfriends MacBook to a G3 iMac in target FireWire mode, and the old iMac somehow corrupted the laptop. Luckily time machine had the MacBook exactly as it was in about an hour.

 

[MajorFubar]

Did you have any luck with your Nas drive?

No I gave up in the end and connected it via USB, which the NAS instructions warn you not to do if you've got it networked, but it all seems to work ok (touching wood as I type). So now the two PCs in the house still access it over my LAN but the Mac sees it as a USB drive.

 

[garyw77]

Very strange that should happen, i have found all my Macs so much better at being able to handle reboots. In particular my imac in my apartment in Moscow regularly has to suffer power cuts and bad power surges (on average 3-4 a week!) and it has always rebooted straight after with no problem, even in the middle of conversions and heavy tasks. My Mac Mini in UK has recovered effortlessly as well after any problems, unlike all my PC's of the past! Hopefully it's just a one off

 

[MajorFubar]

Hopefully we won't get another power-cut to test whether or not the corruption was an unfortunate one-off.

All I can think of is the drive must've been reading or writing at the exact time of the power-cut and so that's why it wiped-out large chunks of the OS. Rebuilding it was painless but long-winded. If my employer used Macs and the power-cut had happened during working hours, needing to rebuild 450 machines just because of a 15 second power outage would cause absolute chaos.

It's not what you expect from an OS which was, upto 12 days ago, "the world's most advanced desktop operating system", according to its maker. I guess I was just unlucky, as I'm sure the guys at Apple must've given this sort of thing some serious thought.