I think the key thing, though, is to just get started with what you have. I have one of each of those too, and while the Mini is the main music machine in the living room, the others get used for desktop and headphone listening respectively.

While a Mac mini is a great choice for a dedicated machine, iMacs and MacBooks can also be used. You don’t need a powerhouse machine – my music computer is the cheapest 2011 Mac mini with 2 GB of RAM – although once you get into more advanced features of some of the alternate players, you may want to invest in more memory. A Mac mini is a great solution, as it is sufficiently powerful, small enough to fit almost anywhere, and can be run “headless” if you wish. The current (2011 onwards) Mac mini doesn’t have a CD drive in it, so you will also need to purchase an external “Superdrive” to go with it. If you decide to set up a permanent music computer, you should be looking towards an Intel CPU running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or OS X 10.7 Lion. This is a good way to explore computer-based playback cheaply, if you have or can borrow an old computer for this purpose – my first music computer was a first-generation G4 Mac mini. It will need to have a reasonably recent version of the OS X operating system, and the latest version of iTunes. As of the time of writing, iTunes is still supported on OS X 10.5 Leopard and will work on a PowerPC machine. The first thing you’ll need, of course, is a Mac.

This article aims to be a helpful “getting started” guide – not the be all and end all, but to get you started on the path of using a Mac computer as a music “source” or “transport” in a hi-fidelity music playback system. The playback software we’ll be using in this introductory article is iTunes. It’s not really as simple as that, of course… but given the flexibility and convenience, we at HifiZine decided to explore computer-based playback a little more. The advantages of storing everything on a computer are compelling: better ways to organize and search your music collection, access to more advanced “hi-rez” formats, and of course, no need for shelves and shelves of physical CD cases. More and more audiophiles are using a computer to purchase, manage, and play back music.

Mac mini speaker output