Ipad or Mac Mini. Which would sound better?

A very interesting read nateman831. Thanks!

Makes me wonder how well an iPod Touch would work.

 

crazychile, very interesting comparisons. What would be interesting is to compare hi-rez tracks played back from your iPad vs a Mac Mini. On your IOS device, you can use Onkyo HF Player to play hi-rez tracks.

I've been using a Mac Mini with Uptone Audio's MMK DC-conversion kit + a Paul Hynes LPS and I've been very happy with it. I use Audirvana plus and listen to a lot of hi-rez music, but it would be very interesting to hear hi-rez tracks through an IOS device.

I'll have to get the USB Camera adapter for my iPad and give it a try.

 

Yeah Id like to know your experiences with that kind of comparison. I don't have any high-rez files, I just do .wav for now.

 

I'm curious as to the basis for your assertion. Can you cite to published teardown analyses that show that all Apple products use the same DACs and amps, for example?

 

Some time ago I started using Pi2 with volume as a source, powered by a customer made power supply unit. Sounded worse than a stock CD player, but it's WAY more convenient and it does sound noticeably better than any PC or Mac that i've tried. A friend of mine, also a keen audiophile, installed on his Pi2 some vanilla Linux and killed all processes except for the MPD and the essential ones. We've made an A/B comparison with two identical power supplies and his sounds better. The sound is not only fuller, but more transparent with better detail and tonal decay. It's a lot better than Pi2 with Volumio, but still a far cry from a high quality CD transport. I wish there was some simple computer that could sound as good as a CD player. I'm guessing the CD player is better due to its simplistic design. It was designed to do one thing only, but it does it better than anything else.