mac mini for music fusion drive or straight ssd

[bobbmd]

hi, new to macrumors and posted this under different subcatagory
am going to buy macmini(2.7GHz i7 with8gb RAM) for almost exclusively listening to music after a lifetime of pc's( my children are AGHAST_ i'm finally listening to them and am no longer considered cognitively impaired)
music via MOG(320kbps) and from 600+redbook cd's ripped to FLAC&dvd-a's the dvd-audios ripped to FLAC using dvdaudioextractor also sacds and photos
i will use PUREMUSIC as the "player"
the music will go via usb port to a SCHIIT(yes thats the companys name,look it up)dac and headphone amp when not using the headphones rca out from the dac to my avr in 2.1/5.1/7.1 speaker configuration
some audiophile forums say ssd is BETTER its silent and music sounds better
would the 1tb hdd/128gb ssd or just straight ssd 256gb be the better way to go? the apple web site extolls the SPEED of fusiondrive/ssd for documents and photos but says NOTHING about music
if i use 256gb ssd i would add the 2tb timecapsule for storage would this setup work as seamlessly as apple claims the fusion drive will?

the macmini would also be used for web searches,email,doing my electronic medical records at home on a cloud based system compatible with mac os
no storage would be involved for the emr but NOTHING ELSE ie gaming spreadsheets etc
anyone else using the macmini in the sort of the way i am going to and what has been your experience and if not any opinions/suggestions anyway
thanks bobbmd

 

[paulrbeers]

I don't know how music can "sound better" off of an SSD vs HDD. Music is stored as bits (1's and 0's). Even with an SSD, there will be other components (fans) that still make noise so it seems silly to just go to SSD when other parts will still move. The only way to go to virtually silent would be to go with a giant tower and a very slow moving system fan and one of those huge CPU heatsinks. Frankly, the hard drive won't make that much noise and when it comes to music storage, space is everything. Would 256GB of storage even be enough for you? I'd go Fusion so you end up with a 1+TB of storage. Further, the real benefit to SSD is the transfer speeds, but since music requires so little bandwidth that again a hard drive is a much better choice.

Just my .02 worth.

 

[philipma1957]

okay you spent serious cash for your Schitt dac if you got the gungnir.


what the ssd will give you is a quieter mini . the hdd won't be spinning in a quiet spot of the music.

so if the mini is in the listening room an ssd is a good idea.


I do not like apple's time machine I like Synology NAS products . is your house hard wired with cat 5 or are you all wireless?

 

[bobbmd]

reply philipma1957

hardwired but have wireless for when the rich relatives come to visit ie my kids
every thing is in one area hd monitor, avr, dvd universal changer,hdcablebox pc& speakers but the macmini schitt dac and amp will take up much less space
never understood this concern about "noise" i cannot even hear my ancient pc's hard drive when i am sitting right next to it, its that quiet/silent! thanks for the reply
but is all i need is the fusiondrive 1tb hdd and 125gb ssd
dont quite understand when i choose a bunch of albums or playlists from the tb hdd it cant possibly use up the the gb on the ssd? correct? when i finish listening they migrate back to hdd,correct and puremusic/itunes is on the mac/hdd
on my pc which has 500gb hd those 600+cds take up less than 250gb even with them all in FLAC
thanks for the reply and happy holidays bobbmd