Q: Hi there, in the YouTube channel BACCH4Mac overview and FAQ, by Tom Martin, I noticed in his equipment layout that the Mac mini 2 was feeding his DAC directly. The question I have is concerning the use of the Mac as the music server, since it really isn’t, it’s just a general purpose computer and probably relatively noisy compared to other music servers. Maybe it was Tom Martin’s high-end DAC that mitigated against any noise coming through the USB. Please comment on this, because I think the use of a Mac mini plus BACCH4Mac would be a very cost-effective high-end solution.
-John
A: To start, we’re going to presume you are talking about electrical noise, not fan noise or other direct acoustic radiation from a Mac Mini.
With that out of the way, it is hard to know the relative electrical noise levels of different servers. We might start by saying that whatever noise level consumer computers like the Mac have, it isn’t enough to corrupt the data at the level of 1’s and 0’s coming from th…
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