I already know the answer which is "the hard drive has to spin up."

The question, however, is: what do you do about it?  Do you have the music on a drive that never spins down? On SSD? Just live with the spin up delay?  Never noticed it?

Me, personally, it drives me nuts.  I'm considering putting the music on a seperate drive that never spins down and seeing if that does the trick.

dilznik:

"the hard drive has to spin up."

I am not so sure, my impression is that it is the chain of command which in my case is the BV8 activation then to send command to MasterLink to BeoPort to MacMini to LinkPlayer to iTunes and then back again with the audio signal !

Nah, I don't think so because if you hit forward or back or stop and then go, the reaction is immediate.  Also, if my hard drives are already spinning because of EyeTV or something, there's no delay.

I should add my chain is BS4, beoport, MacMini running Beolink.  Even in a link room the reaction is immediate.  It's just the initial startup that takes so long.

dilznik:

It's just the initial startup that takes so long.

Yes, that is what I am also saying - but also that there is a fractional delay when I am in a link room.

But my link rooms are either a BS4 that has to be activated, or a Beolink Wireless that has to be activated: so nothing is ever instantaneous.

Let me do a small test right now; my system is quiesced i.e. in standby mode and I shall press N.MUSIC and count "one thousand and one, one thousand and two" etc:

• BV8 active = one thousand and one
• BL3s active = one thousand and nine
• LinkPlayer active = one thousand and twelve (pop-up of sound source selection starts)
• LinkPlayer menu selected = one thousand and fourteen
• music playing = one thousand and fifteen

As an aside, even going into standby takes time for the green dot of the BL3s to go to a red dot (i.e. several seconds)

Even pressing [CD] takes the same nine seconds to get the power on click of the BL3s followed by about the twelth second for the CD sound to start coming through

So in my environment, the disk is not an issue: either because it is always spinning (inside the MacMini, outside via USB attached hard drives there is a spin up delay, but that's for my movie collection) or because it is minor compared to the handshaking that seems to take place between the BV8 and the BL3s (via a BL11) and between the BV8 via the MasterLink to an audio source (whether it is the BS4 or the MacMini).

The delay inside the MacMini is primarily the operating system - LinkPlayer - Sound preferences - iTunes handshaking

Ahhhh we're both hearing the same thing.  The delay I'm talking about is possibly 10 or 12 seconds.

dilznik:

Ahhhh we're both hearing the same thing.  The delay I'm talking about is possibly 10 or 12 seconds.

that is "good"

even pressing [DTV] or [TV] has a delay of five or six seconds before the speakers activate ...

Oh wow.  I don't have that problem.  That doesn't sound good at all.  If my drives are spinning then all of my connections are immediate or near immediate.  My issue is waiting for the drives to spin up first thing in the morning when I want to listen to N.Music.

dilznik:

 My issue is waiting for the drives to spin up first thing in the morning when I want to listen to N.Music.

change the BeoTime to start your system one minute earlier

Since you already know the answer (disk drive needs time spinning up), and this time lag drives you nuts, I suggest that you disable any computer and disk sleep options on your MacMini. The power consumption is pretty low anyway. This will also prolong the life of your disk drive, as many power on/off cycles wears down a disk.

Personally, I simply can't stand computers going to sleep and spinning up and down disks. I turn these "features" off even on my laptop.

Necrothread!  Back from the dead to eat your brains!  *cough*

So I have an update.  I upgraded the RAM in my mini (it's pretty old and had 1gb ram) to 3gb and upgraded the HD from 80gb to 320gb (so I could put my iTunes music on there instead of on the seperate HD I had it on) and now it's instant.  Reactions to any button press is instantaneous.  Turning N.Music on is almost instantaneous (the disk spins up a lot faster, so I have music within 2 seconds of turning it on) and N.Radio is a lot faster, too.  I suspect that's helped because instead of using the wifi on the mini, which was hobbled by the old 802.11g, I have it wired to a Time Capsule which does 802.11n.  Changing from one station to another takes about 2 seconds where it use to take almost 10.

This is all with the disks still spinning down, which I've just shut off.

BTW, everything runs great.  The whole thing use to be slow when accessing movies, music, web (I use it for NFL Gamepass which use to be really slow and now it's just like any other website). I've upgraded a lot of computers before but I've never seen as much of a difference as this.  Well except when I put an SSD in my MBP. That was pretty awesome.  But that was $700.  This cost me $45 for RAM and $4 for a few spackle blades to open it with.  It's like having a brand new computer for $49.