Speakers

Your Mac mini has a dual speaker/line-out jack on the rear panel. If you have a KVM switch with audio capabilities, you can plug it into the jack. This is usually a light green connector (see Figure 4.1). The benefit of this is that you can hear both the Mac mini and PC through a single pair of speakers. The downside is that you can listen to only one computer at a time.

I prefer to have separate speakers on my Mac mini and my PC, allowing me to use one for music or Internet radio while working on the other. That's what I recommend, though it does require two sets of speakers.

If you want to feed music from your Mac mini to speakers in other rooms, check out the discussion of the Apple AirPort Express wireless device in Chapter 5.

As for what speakers to choose, this is one place where I recommend getting the best you can afford, so listen around. You don't have to spend a fortune to get good-sounding audio. Your ears (and music collection) are a terrible thing to waste on rotten sound.