Introducing Olympus & Olympus I/O - A new perspective on modern music playback
- Thread starter Taiko Audio
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Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
YES. If you go BPS the Power Distributer becomes obsolete. I would find it very difficult to imagine the Power Distributer will out perform the BPS.... you are echoing my thoughts exactly as I was under the same impression having read posts yesterday that suggest DCD is obsolete with the BPS
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Wanted to return to some listening impressions now I have a few months living with the Olympus (O, I/O, XDMI to Horizon 360, with Switch, Router and DCD powered by JS-4), with the immediate prior baseline being the Extreme.
First off, I'd have to agree with many of the earlier observations on this thread about the Olympus especially with XDMI being a completely different paradigm.
In the past, I've had equipment changes that have offered substantial increases in detail retrieval as the signature improvement, OR an improvement in ease/flow (relaxed-ness for lack of a better word), but never both in my experience. In many cases, a leap forward in sonic detail is accompanied by some increased in harshness/fatigue or at best, no change in the ease of which the music is presented, and vice versa.
Emile's latest masterpiece is the first addition to my system, ever, that has managed to slap me in the face, very obviously and incontrovertibly, with both a big leap forward in detail retrieval but ALSO a remarkable increased in the continuity of flow and "relaxed-ness" of sound. I would have never believed this possible in the digital domain before the advent of the Olympus. Without extensive A/B comparisons like ray-dude has performed, I can only surmise that XDMI is a large part of this.
I can certainly understand why many earlier in this thread have called the Olympus with XDMI as "neither digital nor analog"; certainly the absence of grain and the wonderfully organic flow are standout features to my ears on the Olympus.
One remarkable side effect of the Olympus's design ethos, as pointed out by @ray-dude and @Steve Williams, is that the importance of the musical format has faded. For the last 15 years, I have been a huge fan of DSD recordings, in major part due to the "continuity of flow" advantages to my ears that I alluded to above. I have gone to great lengths to purchase and rip obscure SACD releases to obtain the organic sense and lack of hash/grain that I prize.
All this work and expense over decades has been essentially made obsolete at a stroke by the Olympus' arrival. Amazingly, differences in format now seem to shade into irrelevance. This is not to say that the quality of the recording and mastering no longer matters, but whether it is 16/44.1 or 24/192 or DSD256 or DSD64 seems to mostly be an academic question now. I do agree with ray-dude that to my ears, the lowest/base resolution formats seem to have an edge over the higher resolution formats, which as he theorizes has something to do with the degree of CPU "work" needed to decode and its associated noise signature.
The main consequence is that I have all but abandoned my carefully curated massive libraries of local music. Instead, like many other Olympus owners, I float free on the ocean of Qobuz and let whatever it suggests take me to artists and genres that I would never, or extremely rarely, would have explored in the past. No matter the format or bitrate, I am consistently and repeatedly struck by the silky flow and ease (but at the same time tons of detail and slam/dynamics) that appears to be the signature of the Olympus/XDMI interface. This has been a paradigm shift in how I consume music.
Everyone loves to laugh about the difference between an audiophile with their gear fixation and 2 "audiophile quality demo discs" vs a musicophile with 193 different recordings of Mahler's 2nd using an old Bose Wave radio. The truth is that all of us on this thread and forum are part audiophile (gearophile) and part musicophile to varying proportions.
The Olympus is the first piece of equipment I have acquired that has made a significant shift to my priorities, where I find myself focusing more and more on the music and the performance and paradoxically caring less about the gear and equipment that makes this all possible, which is quite the amazing feat. Watch out Emile - you may be a victim of your own success!
Ancillary bits and bobs:
My experience with the shipping and packaging of the Olympus and the I/O were stellar. Kudos and thanks to Julien and Fred who shepherded these through the complex maze of international shipping; the flight cases designed for both the Olympus and I/O are a beauty to behold.
I did end up switching my order to powder-coated black from original silver. This looks gorgeous on my rack, and I have zero regrets moving to black as it matches my Horizon 360 perfectly.
Battery charging system seems to be seamless for me. I have never run into a situation where charging needs to happen during a listening session, with slight modifications to the default charge windows.
I still find that the Olympus benefits from a weekly restart (likely due to Roon memory leaks). I found that the most recent Roon update ameliorated this to a significant degree but is still worthwhile. For future, a manual restart option or even a scheduled restart perhaps through the Taiko BMS app every say Monday at 2am (schedulable) would be useful. In my experience if there has been a long duration without a restart, the dynamics of the music become muted and there is some loss of excitement; again likely a Roon issue for which Taiko has little control over.
Thank you to Fred @LampiNA and Julien and Christiaan @Christiaan Punter for your dedicated support and facilitation!
Kudos to Emile @Taiko Audio and the Taiko team for one of those truly rare paradigm shifts with the XDMI interface and technology. This is a very impressive technological tour-de-force that has fundamentally changed how I approach and consume digital music. Bravo!
First off, I'd have to agree with many of the earlier observations on this thread about the Olympus especially with XDMI being a completely different paradigm.
In the past, I've had equipment changes that have offered substantial increases in detail retrieval as the signature improvement, OR an improvement in ease/flow (relaxed-ness for lack of a better word), but never both in my experience. In many cases, a leap forward in sonic detail is accompanied by some increased in harshness/fatigue or at best, no change in the ease of which the music is presented, and vice versa.
Emile's latest masterpiece is the first addition to my system, ever, that has managed to slap me in the face, very obviously and incontrovertibly, with both a big leap forward in detail retrieval but ALSO a remarkable increased in the continuity of flow and "relaxed-ness" of sound. I would have never believed this possible in the digital domain before the advent of the Olympus. Without extensive A/B comparisons like ray-dude has performed, I can only surmise that XDMI is a large part of this.
I can certainly understand why many earlier in this thread have called the Olympus with XDMI as "neither digital nor analog"; certainly the absence of grain and the wonderfully organic flow are standout features to my ears on the Olympus.
One remarkable side effect of the Olympus's design ethos, as pointed out by @ray-dude and @Steve Williams, is that the importance of the musical format has faded. For the last 15 years, I have been a huge fan of DSD recordings, in major part due to the "continuity of flow" advantages to my ears that I alluded to above. I have gone to great lengths to purchase and rip obscure SACD releases to obtain the organic sense and lack of hash/grain that I prize.
All this work and expense over decades has been essentially made obsolete at a stroke by the Olympus' arrival. Amazingly, differences in format now seem to shade into irrelevance. This is not to say that the quality of the recording and mastering no longer matters, but whether it is 16/44.1 or 24/192 or DSD256 or DSD64 seems to mostly be an academic question now. I do agree with ray-dude that to my ears, the lowest/base resolution formats seem to have an edge over the higher resolution formats, which as he theorizes has something to do with the degree of CPU "work" needed to decode and its associated noise signature.
The main consequence is that I have all but abandoned my carefully curated massive libraries of local music. Instead, like many other Olympus owners, I float free on the ocean of Qobuz and let whatever it suggests take me to artists and genres that I would never, or extremely rarely, would have explored in the past. No matter the format or bitrate, I am consistently and repeatedly struck by the silky flow and ease (but at the same time tons of detail and slam/dynamics) that appears to be the signature of the Olympus/XDMI interface. This has been a paradigm shift in how I consume music.
Everyone loves to laugh about the difference between an audiophile with their gear fixation and 2 "audiophile quality demo discs" vs a musicophile with 193 different recordings of Mahler's 2nd using an old Bose Wave radio. The truth is that all of us on this thread and forum are part audiophile (gearophile) and part musicophile to varying proportions.
The Olympus is the first piece of equipment I have acquired that has made a significant shift to my priorities, where I find myself focusing more and more on the music and the performance and paradoxically caring less about the gear and equipment that makes this all possible, which is quite the amazing feat. Watch out Emile - you may be a victim of your own success!
Ancillary bits and bobs:
My experience with the shipping and packaging of the Olympus and the I/O were stellar. Kudos and thanks to Julien and Fred who shepherded these through the complex maze of international shipping; the flight cases designed for both the Olympus and I/O are a beauty to behold.
I did end up switching my order to powder-coated black from original silver. This looks gorgeous on my rack, and I have zero regrets moving to black as it matches my Horizon 360 perfectly.
Battery charging system seems to be seamless for me. I have never run into a situation where charging needs to happen during a listening session, with slight modifications to the default charge windows.
I still find that the Olympus benefits from a weekly restart (likely due to Roon memory leaks). I found that the most recent Roon update ameliorated this to a significant degree but is still worthwhile. For future, a manual restart option or even a scheduled restart perhaps through the Taiko BMS app every say Monday at 2am (schedulable) would be useful. In my experience if there has been a long duration without a restart, the dynamics of the music become muted and there is some loss of excitement; again likely a Roon issue for which Taiko has little control over.
Thank you to Fred @LampiNA and Julien and Christiaan @Christiaan Punter for your dedicated support and facilitation!
Kudos to Emile @Taiko Audio and the Taiko team for one of those truly rare paradigm shifts with the XDMI interface and technology. This is a very impressive technological tour-de-force that has fundamentally changed how I approach and consume digital music. Bravo!
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Co-Owner, Administrator
So true. I was a fanatic before always striving to find a song in the best format and/ or highest resolution but how true that notion has disappeared. XDMI as well has shifted every paradigm I knew about digital. I can’t ever go back to USB as I still have yet to use the Taiko analogue card. I’m sure it’s great and have no doubts but the magic I hear with my KBL XDMI cable from the Taiko digital board into my Lampi DAC checks all boxes. I have no desire to compare. Now having said that I do have an interest in hearing the analogue V2 card coming soon and I remain optimistic that Emile and Vassil will spend a long weekend at my house and everyone will be invited But what truly for me is the is the unanswered enigma is that I rarely feel the need to use my NAS as streaming has for my ears reached a level that’s so good and so easy that listening has become a set it and forget it. I truly cannot hear in my system any difference between streaming or using my NAS.im sure many will disagree but in my system that is where I’m at
I just lurk on this forum as I enjoy living vicariously through these experiences of those who get to experience the Taiko magic. I could be wrong but it has seemed as if such posts have been appearing less frequently. Your post was wonderful and I hope it inspires others to share more of their own impressions.
I highly doubt the analog card will sound as good as the XDMI connection to your DAC. This card sounds very good, actually surprisingly good for how small it is, however, while the USB connection is noisier and produces a harsher sound, there are still things my USB-connected DAC can do that the small card can't, which, given the price difference, is quite logical. I hope the XDMI interface for my DAC will be finished someday.
I suspect they are all floating blissfully on the Qobuz ocean like myself in a drug (Taiko) addled daze...
Likely the Olympus took away the ability to multitask.I suspect they are all floating blissfully on the Qobuz ocean like myself in a drug (Taiko) addled daze...
Dear Nenon- could you please send me an update on unit 139? And by update I mean a FIRM SHIP DATE. Honestly after waiting over a year now....and promise dates going back to last year, I'm running out of patience or confidence that the unit will ever get to me. I'm sorry, but I've been a loyal customer to you Taiko; and now you need to ship the unit.
As discussed privately, it turned out your email was misspelled and you never received the updates from Taiko.
#139 is scheduled to go into assembly on 9/29, and your email is now corrected.
We’ve made sure every order has an associated email (either client or dealer or both), but if anyone else with an open order is expecting updates and not receiving them, please reach out to your dealer (for dealer orders) or Taiko Support (for direct orders).
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Has anyone used the XDMI interface to MSB? We've gotten lots of great feedback on the Lampi integration, but I don't recall reading anything about MSB. Also, Emile, when the Olympus backlog is cleared and you can collectively breathe a little, do you plan to publish a roadmap for other DAC integrations?
After 16 months, it's all the more exciting. 
Thanks, Julien and Christiaan for your communication and help.
Thanks, Julien and Christiaan for your communication and help.
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@dminches I managed to get an opportunity yesterday to try this and I got it up and running in no time - I really appreciate you sharing the information, thank you!Starting here:
Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
YES. If you go BPS the Power Distributer becomes obsolete. I would find it very difficult to imagine the Power Distributer will out perform the BPS.... you are echoing my thoughts exactly as I was under the same impression having read posts yesterday that suggest DCD is obsolete with the BPS
I haven't had chance to do any listening tests yet, but everything is functionally talking to each other, music transferred from Extreme to NAS, etc.
...yes, much earlier in the thread listening comments were posted, photos, etc. It was one of the earlier implementations, after Lampi.
For anyone interested in Silver Olympus version, be warned!
After 16 months from placing my order I'm currently first in line waiting for a chassis of O + I/O that successfully passes the QA. This sounds great, right?
Except that I"m in this position from the 5th of August, when the last 4 silver units had started on the assembly line.
Since then, not a single silver unit was produced.
I honestly wish Taiko would have picked a coated silver version long ago instead of struggling with the anodisation at this pace.
After 16 months from placing my order I'm currently first in line waiting for a chassis of O + I/O that successfully passes the QA. This sounds great, right?
Except that I"m in this position from the 5th of August, when the last 4 silver units had started on the assembly line.
Since then, not a single silver unit was produced.
I honestly wish Taiko would have picked a coated silver version long ago instead of struggling with the anodisation at this pace.
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From what I understand from the last message from Julien, the silver powder coating is not a smooth process either.
However, the black powder coating is very successful in production.
Why not just order in black? It goes with everything! From my observation, many audio products are offered only in black, and I guess for good reason.
Quick note: I’ll get back to the recent questions soon. I’d have answered earlier, but with Eelco on his first holiday this year, all Olympus testing and tuning is on me. It’s a seriously time intensive part of the build that only the two of us handle, but also one of the most interesting stages. Hopefully tomorrow I can catch up, though the day’s already packed with time sinks meetings.
It’s very good to hear from you again, Emile, in spite of your heavy workload. When you have a bit more time, would you be willing to elaborate on the Olympus “testing and tuning” you mentioned? You have previously described the relentlessly iterative testing you undertook in the design and development of the Olympus, but the work referenced above sounds like part of the final preparation for shipping each individual unit. Can you share what tuning you are giving each server? Are we talking about electronic adjustments or mechanical tweaks like checking the torque of screws, etc.? A bit surprised to learn each unit gets this kind of tune up.
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