That gets old.Īny tips or comments from others using Mac Mini as headless music player are appreciated. (Win 10 is hopeless for headless operation.) I worked out the setup details to get through normal everyday use but when some kind of glitch came up, I had to move the headless PC to my home office and connect it to a monitor, keyboard and mouse to troubleshoot the problem. I've used headless Intel NUCs running Windows 8.1 for audio playback for several years. Using an M1 Mac Air instead of a Mac mini would make things much easier. I looked briefly and thought that getting past the login step required more knowledge. In comparison, large file copies on Intel NUCs to/from the SSD always caused the fan to get noisy.īefore taking the plunge on using a Mac mini for headless operation, be sure you understand how to set it up for headers operation. I play audio files, stream video, do large files copies to/from the SSD and run lots of software at the same time. I have never heard any fan noise from it from a distance of 18 inches. I've been using an M1 Mac mini for almost 3 months as my general purpose desktop computer. I will give another update after some extended use. I think I covered everything, there are a few things I could have done better but this was my first time using a Mac so it required a lot of back and forth to look up “where is _”, “what is the equivalent of Windows _ on Mac” etc. I tested it quickly and it works and the HDMI virtual dummy plug is arriving later today. This allowed it to connect straight away and control local playback on the Mac.īefore going headless I set the Mac to Users&groups>auto-login, Security&privacy>require password to never and added “ Apple Music” as a log-in item (auto-open after login). Had trouble trying to connect using the “Manual” option which Apple Support website recommends to do for the first time.Īfter researching and troubleshooting, I got it to work by enabling “Home sharing” (under SystemPreferences>Sharing>media sharing), and tapping on the “Home sharing” connection method of iOS iTunes remote App screen. Now for the next hurdle: iTunes remote iOS App (Connecting iOS remote to Mac). Played back some content to make sure it was working. Interestingly 32-bit is greyed out, so that’s the only bit-depth choice with “Core Audio”. Mac recognised it, then I went into Utilities>Audio MIDI setup and set desired sample rate. Next plugged in the DAC via USB, turned on the DAC and switched it to USB input. This took a few hours, mainly because I create a playlist for every other album with tracks omitted. I then deleted what was in the shared folder and deleted the extra account.Īfter migration was finished I turned on the Security&privacy>built-in Firewall.Īfter dragging the folder into Apple Music which was quick and painless, I created playlists identical to that I had with iTunes on the windows machine. Hopefully the last 2 times it just changed the directory instead of actually “copying” the files. I thought Migration would save me from having to copy twice (like you would with external drive) but turns out every time you use ”Migration” it creates a new Mac user account and you have to go through the process of “sharing” the files to the main “Apple ID” account and changing the read & write permissions of the folder to “everyone”.Īctually I had to copy 3 times: Windows>Mac(1)>share folder(2)>music folder(3). One thing I noticed though was the countdown (around 30 mins) didn’t change at all, but it finished in around 15 mins (80MB per second transfer speed according to Migration). (Migration only gives you the main user folder options, you cannot go into sub folders and select them). On Windows I moved just the audio archive folder to the empty “Videos” user folder so nothing extra was slowing the transfer. Then after configuring some “Apple Music”(previously iTunes) application preferences (disable auto-add/convert to iTunes folder etc), I proceeded with “Migration” using hard-wire Ethernet cable following Apple’s instructions. Just left “Find my” on, then updated to Big Sur (this took longer than I expected, maybe I’m spoiled with the speed of iOS updates).Īfter the update finished I turned on “automatically update” (under System preferences>Software update) and checked every box (“ auto install updates” etc). Firstly signed in with Apple ID since this was required for the iOS iTunes remote App, then spent a lot of time un-syncing iCloud and deleting all traces of what was synced.
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