I've used my PowerMac G5 as the core of my sound system for a while, with a Benchmark DAC1. The iMacs have the hybrid electrical/optical audio out so you can connect to any DAC with Toslink in, not just USB DACs. As for ripping, I would recommend Max (http://sbooth.org/Max) over iTunes. Even with the so-called error-correction enabled, iTunes will not give you reproducible rips like EAC or Max/cdparanoia can. Don't forget that you can add an Elgato EyeTV 250 or 500 to get a pretty good analog or ATSC PVR without the UI advertising spam or DRM TiVo foists you with. During my vacation in Canada, I have been downloading the shows I recorded at home over the Internet to watch them on my laptop. At about 400MB for a 1 hour VHS-quality MPEG4 clip, it's eminently doable.

Actually my audiophile componentes are all fed by a mac mini CoreDuo on a sepcially made cabinet and airport express. Check the image.

What is ExactCopy? A goole turns up not much, other than an expired site.

It's Exact Audio Copy - www.exactaudiocopy.de EAC is software written to specifically extract each and every bit 100%, reading the disc up to 82 times prior to invoking error correction. In using EAC, I have actually come to the conlusion that around 30-50% of all discs (including ones that don't appear to have any visible blemish) have some sort of fault and are in fact not 100% accuratley pressed... for MAC users, there's http://sbooth.org/Max/#download

Thanks for the info, Fazal. Yes, there is the Apple optical out. There's even been talk of modders like Red Wine getting friendly with the Air Port Express, but no action yet. Optical is usually considered an inferior connection. USB offers direct to I2S, which is the native connection for DACs. Scott Nixon offers I2S, though Bel Canto goes with USB to SPDIF and a triple buffer, believing it sounds better. Once again, it's all in the implementation. Nice system Nuno!

Front Row IMO is not mature enough to be a frontend for media. It has good integration with iTunes and that's about it. I want a frontend where I can point at a NAS. A big peeve of mine about iTunes is that it does not does not support FLAC. I personally perfer FLAC to AAC. I want my media to be played back from any platform. iTunes is the devil. Disclaimer: I *am* a Mac user. So no flames please. :) That said, if you can live with Front Row and like MacOS X then you can also send your iMac off and get a touchscreen built into it. Add a USB DAC. Now, thats the Bee's knees. BTW. Apple is selling a walling mounting kit.

Hi again, Eugene , thanks for the comment. Actually i am a bit confused. Optical is not considered good for cable lengths more than 3 meters , right ? Because , if you consider just signal loss or scramble, then I agree. On the other side I am just completing a third system using. - Airport Express - Benchmark DAC 1 (considered the best) - Custom EL34 integrated. - Proac Response 1 SC speakers. And the music pours out of this baby like honey. I am happy. So are Miles and Coltrane. Regards.

In the mid 80s, Apple became the undisputed king of image manipulation (for graphic arts that is). They understood what pixels were about and had a clear vision of what could be and should be done. Apple color management was (and still is) almost perfect. In my opinion, Apple has what it takes to do the same thing for sound processing and audio reproduction. It wouldn't cost much to embed a digital amp in Macs (hint) and portable Macs. With cheap RAM and HD, Apple could easily come with a new audio format with twice (or any multiple) the resolution of the Redbook standard. I recently tested an Air Tune system (Mac as music server) that sends audio signal (or any kind of data) wireless to any chosen dock in the house with hard to believe quality. Considering the crazy cost of so-called audiophile wires and interconnects, wireless suddenly seems a neat idea... Also considering that portable Macs are battery powered out of ther box, AC line filtering becomes useless. Playing tunes from RAM is another nice idea. All in all, every single piece of the hardware is there, true and tested, to give a shot in the audiophile arm. Hey Steve, you should hire me!

Sorry, Josh, I meant "Thanks" for your comment too.

Eugene, although the Benchmark DAC is very good, it's definitely not "the best". For the money it is top-notch, but you could easily spend ten times as much on a DAC. I'm using a Wavelength Cosecant USB DAC and it sounds phenomenal. I avoid the whole SPDIF/jitter issue as well. There is a lot of great information on the Wavelength site. I agree that the days of the cdp are numbered. I sold my Naim CDX2/XPS2 two years ago and haven't missed it even once. The Cosecant arguably sounds significantly better at a third of the price, but the convenience of having our library in one place and easily sharable between multiple systems is a huge convenience. I've also just downloaded Max, thanks for the tip!

DACs follow a law of diminishing returns. I have a hard time hearing the difference between my Benchmark DAC1 and my older Headroom Overture, which was 1/3 the price. I'm surprised Headroom's excellent headphone amps with DACs haven't been mentioned in the USB DAC section. The Desktop Portable is very highly rated, and the Bithead is very handy when mobility is at a premium. Another compact USB DAC that gets a lot of traction is the Apogee Mini-DAC.

I'll also go out on a limb and say that the days of DACs without USB connections are limited as well. I definitely wouldn't buy one for use outside the studio.

Hmm.. Your article gave me food for thought so I had another look at frontends. Looks like http://www.jinzora.com/ Is PHP based so should work on MacOS X. For my particular setup. I can utilize client server model. On doing further research. I've found that a touchscreen driver for MacOS X is hiedously expensive. But there is 7" alternative. There is a nice section on mp3car about people using macmini's with a touchscreen in their cars

I happen to teach video production at a high school that has labs full of those flat panel iMacs. We're very lucky to have them. However, I can not see using one as the front end of an audio server. I'd have to keep it away from the listening room. They have just about the loudest fans I have heard in any home computer. When they work hard, the fan spins faster and it sounds like the thing is going to take off.

Seth, playing back audio files on the computer (any computer really) requires little to no overhead, thus, unless you are using the Mac for something else I don't think you will notice its presence...

I have flat panel Macs at home and work, and I have never heard the fan on either

The new Intel iMacs may look very similar to the old G5 ones, but the CPUs are much cooler, and so fan noise is very rarely heard.

Fazal, I as well was wondering why HeadRoom's DAC's are not mentioned here. yesterday I purchased the HeadRoom Micro DAC to go along with me Micro Amp, NAD 710 Rec. and Rev A iMac G5. I plan on feeding me NAD 710 with the DAC and the Micro Amp through the Tape Out on me NAD 710 so I can easily go between me Grado's or Polks and both would benefit from the Micro DAC. The USB connection is one of the features I was looking forward to. The salesman told me yesterday that I would have a better digital connection using the Fiber Optic output on me iMac over USB to feed the Micro DAC but everything I read here says the opposite. He mentioned something about USB 1, 16/ 44 and jitter to where the FiberOptic/ Coaxial uses 24/ 96. I'm concerned about this cause I really wanted to hook up the iMac via USB and me Tv/DVD source using the optical. what am I looking at here? am I loosing out on any quality in this Micro DAC purchase? CD's are 16/ 44 anyway and I think iMac w/ iTunes is 16/ 44 at best. am I missing something in all of this? do other USB DAC's use USB 2? or USB 1? I was led to believe in one post site that USB 1 is used in most DAC's. I also read there that 29/ 96 is capable on USB 1 too. I dunno but does it even matter? one thing that I'd really like to be able to do with me iMac is play DVD-Audio. I was told that all I need is software but I can only find the Audigy's for PC that allow this. so is the iMac 24/ 96? or just 16/ 44? I wish iTunes supported DVD-Audio. Robert, can you make this happen when ya get hired on at Apple?