The July/August 2011 issue of The Absolute Sound has a very positive review of the Olive 06HD Music Server by that doyen of high-end reviewers, Anthony H. Cordesman. He’s not easy to please and has seen it all, over many years. His assessment of the 06HD included a detailed appraisal of the digital processing, which is significantly upgraded over the next model down, the 04HD.

The sound quality scores very highly: “there is no question about the sound quality of the Olive 06HD … only surpassed by units that cost far more …”.

Cordesman is obviously a convert to the view that stored and streamed CD content sounds better than the same thing played on a CD player, and that Hi-Res HD downloads easily equal or surpass the quality offered by SACD or DVD-A.
All that remains, he says, is to decide what sort of setup suits you. Some might like to use more computer-based solutions, but there is a clear preference among many users for the stand-alone solution such as that offered by Olive.
The fact that it has “the latest TI chipsets, including the DIT4192 digital-audio transmitter that is used in conjunction with a separate temperature compensated crystal oscillator to reduce jitter” plays a part in this, but then there’s TI’s SRC4194 Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter which converts all sampling rates to 24 bit /192kHz, upsamples them further to 384kHz then hands them on to two differential PCM1792 DACs for conversion to analogue.

The Olive does not have a lot of direct competition, with the obvious alternative being the more expensive Sooloos, which while offering nothing additional in terms of audio performance is still ahead in the management of your music collection. Given the relatively lower cost of the Olive06HD compared to Sooloos, its audio performance will certainly be enough to satisfy the majority of people heading into this territory, while the database management aspects will affect some more than others. Manual editing of things like composers’ names to ensure uniformity is something all serious systems should allow, since the online databases that they all draw upon are not faultless.

In a nutshell, the 06HD is “A truly outstanding component in a highly competitive world.” For more details see our 06HD Product Page.

For the month of June only the Olive 4HD music server will come with a free Apple iTouch. Once loaded with the Olive App the iTouch becomes the easiest and most elegant way to control the Olive. There is no doubt that Olive has reshaped the industry perception of the media server. Simple to use, great performance and affordable. The addition of the iTouch makes the package even more attractive.

Olive continues to impress even the harshest of critics with their products. The most critical of all industry magazines is Absolute Sound, famous for reviewing the most exotic audiophilia on the market. They have just devoted five pages to the big brother of the 4HD – the 06HD. Their opening line was ‘A truly outstanding component in a highly competitive world’, and they finished by saying ‘I give it a strong recommendation to anyone who does not speak Geek as a native tongue’. Well worth a look!

The Olive 06HD has arrived and it demonstrates how high-end music storage and playback is being transformed. As we have observed before, digital storage and replay of music has reached the very highest quality level with 24bit/192kHz processing, low jitter and ultra-stable hard disc drives. It is now possible to replay recordings at Studio Master quality, and there are companies such as Linn Records and HD Tracks (the latter run by David Chesky) retailing albums – and in some cases individual tracks – as downloads sourced directly from the studio masters.

To get the full benefit of this new format, you need to reconstruct the music via a high quality DAC. That’s one of the things that the Olive 06HD does so well, but the other is storing, cataloguing and allowing you to quickly access your CD music collection.

If you want to be able to store a large library of CDs (anything up to 6,000 – in uncompressed form) , the 06HD has been specified to an exacting standard which ensures no loss of quality combined with control via a large touch-screen interface, or via iPhone, iTouch, or iPad using the free app.

The 06HD is hand built by the company’s factory in San Francisco, and every detail has been attended to in making it an audiophile product. Using fully balanced differential Burr-Brown DACs (24bit/192kHz) and reducing jitter to below 10 picoseconds is a good start. Then some ultra-fast, low slew-rate op amps come into play together with high order algorithms in the filter system. Distortion is vanishingly small (less than 0.0007%) and the signal to noise ratio of 124dB means the noise floor is way, way down deep, so the sound emerges from a totally quiet background.

They also added in a separate dedicated headphone circuit, fanless cooling, a 25cm glass touch screen and a casing construction standard second to none. At first blush the price of $6499 might seem high, but considering all that goes into this unit, it is quite reasonable – in fact cheaper than any comparable product.
Multi-room: like the 04HD, the 06HD can be the source for multi-room music using wifi to the client receiver Melody 2 units, which are available as optional add-ons.

Sound Bites: by Len Wallis.

Recently in the UK’s What Hi-Fi magazine it was reported that during last year turntable sales in the UK increased 11% to 77,400 units, while CD player sales slipped to 41,400 units. Does this mean, as suggested by some in the audiophile fraternity, that it heralds a return to vinyl at the expense of CD? There may be a grain of truth in this suggestion, worldwide both turntable and vinyl sales are increasing. I suspect this is partly due to large numbers of baby boomers who are rediscovering their LP collections that have been in storage plus the fact that vinyl still sounds better than CD. Reality however may be a little different. The largest growth area for turntable sales was budget USB players indicating that people are digitizing their vinyl and storing it on their computers. Sales of expensive CD players actually increased over this period, with the big falls being at the budget end, indicating that unless you are an ‘audiophile’ you are now sourcing your music on-line.

Many forget that MP3 music files and players were around for years before Apple released the iPod. Apple were able to take an existing yet struggling format and turn it into a sales phenomenon. The advantage of MP3 is convenience, on so many fronts, and accessibility. The disadvantage is performance; this is why Digital Music has never been a legitimate audio source if you are an audiophile – or even if you are simply interested in quality. If you record your music in low resolution formats, the quality of reproduction is going to suffer.

This is now changing, and I predict that the way we source our music is about to change forever. When digital delivery of music (in the form of MP3) was initially released there were two restricting conditions. Digital storage was limited and expensive, and download speeds were very slow – hence the popular MP3 bit-rates of 128kpbs or 258kbps, compared to the CD standard of 1411.2kbps. Today with much faster download speeds, and with storage prices at a fraction of what they were, we are now witnessing the emergence of on-line High Definition download sites offering speeds in excess of 4,500kbps.

The attraction of these sites is obvious. You have the advantages of MP3, both convenience and price, but there is no downside in terms of performance. In fact performance is what it is all about. There has been continuing discussion over the limitations of the CD format since its inception, with many believing that the 16bit/44.1kHz specification is too restrictive to deliver true audio fidelity. The most popular of the on-line HD offerings is 24bit/88.2kHz, with some going as high as 24bit/192kHz. Suddenly we now have a music source which will outperform CD. While the selection of true HD material is still a little limited, it is improving. The best site at the moment is www.HDTracks.com, but there are many more, including www.itrax.com and www.linnrecords.com.
 
There are a number of ways of integrating High Definition digital music into your audio system. The most obvious and popular is via a computer. Files are downloaded and stored on the computer using software such as MediaMonkey or Amara. The computer is then connected to your audio system via any number of outlets, with USB, ES/EBU or S/PDIF being the most popular. These feeds are connected to a DAC (Digital-Analogue-Converter) which is incorporated in your amp or receiver, or can be freestanding. The last 12 months has seen an explosion in the number of freestanding DAC’s coming onto the market, all with the ability to handle the new High Resolution files.

The other popular storage/delivery system is via a dedicated Media Server. These are computer based devices that become part of your audio system. They have in-built hard drives and high resolution DAC’s, and a proprietary interface to allow you to easily catalogue and access your music. One of the advantages of this concept is that they are designed to also store your existing CD collection. The other plus is that many of them offer ‘multi-zone’, allowing you to simultaneously play various tracks in different rooms in your home.

As you would expect the rise of on-line HD tracks has led to a number of new directions, products and manufacturers in this industry. Some have been a little surprising, including the decision by high-end equipment manufacturer Linn who recently ceased production of CD players in favour of their new Digital Streaming electronics, a range of amplifiers with high quality in-built DAC’s plus their own interface for music management. Despite the fact that they built some of the best, and most expensive, CD players that this industry has seen Linn are adamant that these players are still no match for stored HD tracks (even those downloaded in the CD 16bit/44.1 resolution).

A new brand is Peachtree who have released a product that, while it is not unique, shows the way for many manufacturers in the future. This is a high quality audio amplifier (featuring a valve pre-amplifier and MOSFET amp stage) which houses a very high quality DAC, and has a number of inputs for both digital as well as analogue sources. If you are looking for a high quality amplifier that you can connect both your computer sources and AM/FM tuner/CD Player etc to, this is the product to do it.

Another start-up company is Olive who has developed a stand alone device featuring a 2TB hard-drive with a high performance DAC. It will record and store tracks up to 24bit/192kHz, plus you can store your existing CD’s. It will stream music from your computer or from the internet where you can access thousands of Digital Radio or music streaming services. Plus it serves as a CD player/recorder.

The cream of these new offerings is from Sooloos. This unit does it all. Storage for up to 6,000 CD’s. Store and playback HD tracks, access on-line audio streaming services, and distribute music to any area of your home. However the real secret behind Sooloos is the interface. It features a 17” touch screen which shows full album cover information. You also have access to an incredible amount of information on the music on the hard-drive. If you like the bass player on a particular track you can access all other tracks in your collection that this player appears on. The swim feature allows you to play particular styles of music, for instance all of your rock tracks form 1985-1990.

As an aside we are also seeing the emergence of High Resolution discs starting to appear on the market. These are making use of the increased storage capacity of Blu-ray discs and are being recorded in up to 24bit/192kHz resolution. Some are music only, while others have accompanying video (Blu-ray). They cannot be played on a CD player, so you will require a Blu-ray or Universal player (such as the Marantz UD8004) and an appropriate DAC. We are not sure if this format will take off or if it will fall victim to on-line services, but the performance is exceptional.

Just released – a new, simpler version of the Olive 04HD Music Server, which has less connections, no wireless, a smaller hard drive and a smaller price: just $1699! This will suit a lot of people, since what this buys you is pretty sensational. The hard drive is 500GB, enough for 800 x 60-minute CDs if stored as uncompressed WAV files, or much more if compression is used. The manufacturer quotes 1500 CDs using FLAC lossless compression, which is a good way to go. It will have a Cirrus Logic 24-bit/192kHz DAC, and a wired Gigabit Ethernet connection, but no wireless connection. The output will be L+R analogue audio only, so it can be directly connected to your amplifier. The finishes will be silver or black – painted – not the high quality etched finish of the 04HD. No great problem. What it loses in connections it gains in simplicity, and at this price it will be a winner – if not a revolution!

There is no doubt that the movement away from physical discs and into hard drive storage is now a major factor when planning home audio systems, and not just for the under-30 age group. The ability to locate the piece of music you’re after is something we CD (and LP!) users battle with at any age. Having all your music more readily available and in uncompressed high fidelity form is now easy to do. Olive’s affordable, high quality server and DAC combination costs only a little more than the Yamaha CDR-HD1500, which was our most popular CD storage/copier in recent years. Since the Olive has a disc slot for you to import your CDs – or burn a new one – it is in effect the updated version of a CD copier deck but with enhanced audio quality and vastly improved library management interface.

I am sure that there has never been a release of a piece of electronics that has sparked as much interest and controversy as the recent iPad release from Apple. On the whole the consumer reaction has been positive, but it continues to receive critical comments from many within the industry. I have yet to have the opportunity to play with an iPad, but have watched the emergence of the concept closely.
To be honest I have been fascinated by many of the comments and the criticism aimed at this product. Yes, it appears that the iPad has some obvious failings, but given what I believe this product is all about, these failings are certainly not critical. It also appears that most people passing comment on the iPad expected it to be either an iPhone on steroids or a stripped down version MacBook. My expectation has always been that this would be a stand alone product. Because of its design (and heritage) it would always share features of the two other product categories, but I don’t believe that Apple ever intended it to ‘be’ either category.

We cannot ignore Apple’s ability to create both market categories and demand. While the success of the iPod has been phenomenal many people have forgotten that MP3 players had been around for years before Apple took an interest, and it was a struggling category. In only a few years the iPhone not only reached market dominance, but changed the entire philosophy of mobile phoning. They immediately raised the bar to an exceedingly high level (which consequently spawned challengers such as HTC), and they have created an industry where the ‘phone’ is now only one of the attractions of the mobile phone industry. When was the last time you read a critique on a ‘smart phone’ which made reference to its ability as a phone in the traditional sense? Have no doubt, what Apple has done with the iPod and the iPhone they will do with the iPad.

The potential for the iPad, and the product category that Apple will create, is enormous. Obviously Len Wallis Audio views it in relation to the services that we offer, but its usefulness will go way beyond what LWA can do with it. For us it will have an immediate application for multi-room audio/visual distribution and for Home Automation. The success and consumer acceptance of both of these concepts depends on convenience, interface and price. The iPad potentially come up trumps on all counts.
(The Crestron app has already been released, click here for more information.)

The one criticism that I do have issue with is price – many critics have commented that the iPad is overpriced. Give me a break please! One of the first companies to jump on board with an app for the iPad was the Home Automation company Crestron. They are arguably the best Home Automation company in the world, and are priced accordingly. Their app will turn the 9.7” iPad into a Crestron touch screen controller for way less than $1,000. The 8.4” Crestron equivalent will cost you a cool $6,600. In fact the iPad will sell for around the same price as a Sonos remote, gives you much, much more real estate, and still do all the other cool things that the iPad does. The ability of the iPad to control anything from a simple Olive multi-room audio distribution system to remotely controlling your entire Home Automation system, including security, will make it one of the most valuable, yet least expensive, products that we offer.

Possibly the best and most balanced critique of the iPad I have seen has come from Michael Greeson of the Diffusion Group, a consumer technology research company based in the US. I was alerted to this review by David Richards of SmartHouse magazine, and following is the article as it appeared in SmartHouse.

‘Michael Greeson, a founding partner of Diffusion Group research claims that “What the iPhone is to the Mobile Web, the iPad will be to the Home Web” and that the new Apple device will have a major impact in the home.

He says “Yes, the iPad is relatively expensive. Yes, it is closed. Yes, it further extends Apple’s tightly-controlled ecosystem onto an ever-broadening array of usage domains. Yes, Wi Fi receptivity is an issue, as is the “walled garden” of sanctioned applications, the lack of support for Flash video, etc. And, yes, all of these shortcomings piss me off”. He said.

“All the same, I do not regret deciding to purchase a $699 64-GB Wi-Fi-only iPad, not in the slightest. It is sleek, fast, and highly functional, and consistent with my expectations of the first-generation of Apple tablets. And just as the iPhone was a huge step forward for mobile computing, the introduction of the iPad is a huge step forward for tablet computing. What the iPhone is to the Mobile Web, the iPad will be to the Home Web” he added.
He said that, just as the iPhone spurred the advance of mobile computing and made mobile web use a daily activity for many consumers, the iPad will spur the advance of tablet computing and alter the way in which the Internet is engaged in the home.
“No, tablets will not replace the PC, be it a desktop or notebook. It will, however, change the way in which consumers use the web, and in a good way. In terms of the applications and usage scenarios most likely to be advanced, I offer the following (admittedly incomplete) list. The reader is encouraged to think beyond the gen-one iPad. Again, this is less about the iPad specifically than it is about the platform in general. I am certain this list will encourage discussion (if not outright fistfights).
The tablet is a shared platform for whole-home computing. As I described to a group of Intel executives some five years ago, the digital home of the future will likely have a single server and a variety of multi-purpose thin tablets that will be used by household members to access local and web-based applications and content.
Imagine a rack that charges and holds two or three of these tablets (much like gaming terminals used in your favourite pub), and an easy-to-use widget-based interface that enables a wide variety of applications. The iPad represents a meaningful step in this direction.

The tablet as an entertainment remote control
There is no doubt that, properly equipped, an iPad-like web tablet would be the perfect multi-source, multi-function remote control. Demand is already there, the challenge is to make it happen, and there is no doubt several vendors will soon address this need. Companies like OpenPeak are already supplying telecom operators with the “OpenTablet,” a platform that looks very much like the first-gen iPad and features a variety of entertainment and home controls. These tablets will be able to interface with, access, and shift all sorts of content and applications to other connected devices.

The tablet as a home management and control platform.
 While the iPad is hardly an open platform (all apps must be vetted by Apple), application developers from across the home control spectrum will enable a variety of apps that exploit this platform, thus reducing the need for dedicated, brand-specific home control interfaces such as those offered by Crestron.
Why pay an extra $500 or more for this type of “touchpanel” when this same functionality can be downloaded to an iPad? You wouldn’t, and that’s why Crestron, unlike OpenPeak whose business depends on hardware sales, has already launched an iPad app for just this purpose.

A secondary TV that can be used in any part of the residence. Homeowners will no longer need to buy a second stand-alone TV for each room, instead having a couple web tablets that can access TV and online video customized to the specific user. This is an especially useful application given the fact that younger consumers watch so much online video on their PCs and, as TDG predicts, much of the video viewed on home TVs will soon come from online sources.
As the price of the iPad comes down (and it will, by several hundred dollars for Christmas 2010), these platforms will become an inexpensive way to extend video viewing (and Internet access, in general) to every room of the home.
A “coffee table” platform for immediate access to relevant news and weather. The simple widget-based interface of the iPad foretells of a day when consumers will not have to hassle with booting-up a PC or typing URLs in order to access content. For example, The Weather Channel widget pulls up real-time weather for your specific locale, all on-demand. No need to enter a URL or wait for a TV broadcast to get around to such details.
An easy-on-the-eye platform for reading all sorts of online newspapers and magazines. 
iPad like tablets offer a much simpler way to enjoy online text, offering a wide variety of widgets by which to access your favourite periodicals. Again, the consumer no longer needs to haul out and boot-up a laptop in order to read online text.
 A platform your grandmother could use (yes, the expression is overused but this time it really applies). Using the iPad is sinfully simple for basic applications like email communications and viewing online photos and video, the stuff that most appeals to those older consumers that have yet to buy into the PC culture. I intend to sneak an iPad into my mom’s home as a digital picture frame, and then teach her how to use it for the stuff that matters most to her. Yes, this is the same woman for whom I purchased an Apple iMac and who, though properly configured for easy use, could not bring herself to engage it. I swear this time will be different!

Ultimately, Apple’s iPad will advance the tablet PC market in the same way the iPhone advanced the mobile phone market: both in terms of functionality and mainstream appeal. Thanks to Apple’s entry into this market space, the value proposition for web tablets will rapidly become less about the hardware and more about the applications it enables – precisely as it should be.
As I have said on several occasions, vendors and service providers must cease talking to consumers about “the technology” and show them what it will do…as individual human beings. After that, consumers will be much more likely to buy into the vision espoused by tech leviathans.
Yes, it will take several years before mainstream consumers buy into this vision, but let there be no doubt that the introduction of Apple’s iPad—an easy-to-use, app-driven platform with loads of useful home applications—will be the first step toward a revolution in in-home computing.’

Linn have positioned themselves well for this move, they have been promoting their range of DS (Digital Streaming) products for some years now, and maintain that sales of their DS products are far exceeding those of their CD players.

And while I believe that their move may be a little early, they have picked a growing swell of consumers who are expressing interest in the higher performance (and the convenience) available from hard-drive based music solutions.

Earlier today I saw the press release from US based company Olive Media who has announced the introduction of their first HD Hi-Fi Music Server. This is a 2 terabyte server designed to handle 24bit/192kHz music files. It can access any digitised music library, and has a built in CD mechanism for recording discs directly to its own drive. It even comes with 12 HD tracks from high-end record label Chesky Records. We do not know when this unit will be available in Australia, but we do know that it will sell in the US for US$2,000.

There is no doubt that these are only instances of what is going to be a huge swing back to performance listening of music. There will be more companies taking the lead from people like Linn and Olive next year. We are still playing around with a Hush computer we recently bought in from Germany, we are expecting a Lynx audio card (to handle the 24/196 information) from the US next week, plus we have been listening to the amazing Berkeley Alpha DAC for some time now.

It may still be early days for this format, but it promises to be fun.