Introducing Olympus & Olympus I/O - A new perspective on modern music playback

[joet]

To my ears, streaming has become so good now with virtually everything available in the music world, I rarely use my 16TB NAS as I would be hard pressed to pick one from the other in a blinded test

Now if Emile can just close the gap between vinyl and digital, Taiko would IMO have finally crossed the Rubicon

To my less than golden ears, I think he has come close. I've heard recordings on $500,000 analogue systems that sounded different, but not better, than on the Olympus. But, to be fair, there are much more astute judges than me. I only claim to know what I like. I doubt I'm a representative sample or refined enough to speak broadly.

 

[Steve Williams]

To my less than golden ears, I think he has come close. I've heard recordings on $500,000 analogue systems that sounded different, but not better, than on the Olympus. But, to be fair, there are much more astute judges than me. I only claim to know what I like. I doubt I'm a representative sample or refined enough to speak broadly.

yes, I agree he comes close but "almost" only counts in horse shoes. The Rubicon has not yet been crossed

 

[nonesup]

I've mentioned before that when I listened to music with the XDMI DAC, while it had features I really liked, I noticed a certain lack of energy in the music, as if the sound was beautiful but too polite. Well, a few days ago I replaced my Pre Gryphon Essence with a Gryphon Commander and I can say that… the “politeness” is gone. Now I hardly ever turn on the Kassandra because of the sound I'm listening to. Well, sometimes… that saxophone part by Illinois Jacket in Harlem Nocturne played through the Kassandra… the smoke from the jazz club makes your eyes sting.

 

[jbrrp1]

I personally cannot get over how good the V1 daughtercard DAC sounds, for a "shits and giggles" trial balloon. I'm with @oldmustang on this: XDMI with a short feed within the bespoke electrical/mechanical environment and the battery feed of the Olympus + I/O = magic. V2 will surely be something special.

 

[nenon]

I wonder if anyone else has this issue. My NAS is connected directly to the Taiko router. When I reboot the router, the NAS is no longer recognized and Roon loses all of the local files. To get the NAS recognized again, I need to power it down, restart the DCD, and then power up the NAS. Any thoughts?

the Taiko router didn't recognize the NAS after a restart (running Fing showed it wasn't on the network), and after 4 or 5 minutes, it reappeared.

Thanks for reporting this. We can certainly help investigate, but please open a ticket with Support.

From what you describe, a likely cause is that the NAS isn’t using a static IP address. If it's obtaining an address via DHCP from the Taiko router, here’s what may be happening:
- When the router is powered off, the physical link drops, and the NAS loses its DHCP-assigned IP (expected behavior).
- When the router powers back on, the ethernet link comes up before the router OS and DHCP server are fully running.
- The NAS sees the link come up and immediately requests an IP address—but at that moment the router isn’t ready to respond yet.
- Depending on the NAS model, it may retry only at certain intervals, which could explain why it reappears after 4–6 minutes.

This isn’t specific to Taiko hardware - it’s just typical DHCP behavior.

If this is what’s happening in your setup, assigning the NAS a static IP address (with matching subnet mask, gateway, and DNS settings) will ensure it comes online immediately after a router reboot, without needing to reboot other components.

 

[cat6man]

We’ve recently reviewed the output-option registrations across our user base, and the distribution is surprisingly decisive:

Current usage share
• 50.6% — Analog
• 29.4% — Lampizator
• 14.1% — MSB
• 4.7% — AES/SPDIF
• 1.2% — USB

What this makes very clear is that analog output isn’t just popular, it’s the dominant path by a wide margin. With over half of all systems running our Analog output, and the bulk of the remaining users tied into other high-end analog ecosystems (Lampizator, MSB), the direction of demand is unambiguous.

Because of that, it’s only logical that we move forward with a V2 Analog output option. The share is large enough that continued development here isn’t a side project, it’s where most of our customers are already invested.

Secondly, given the strong presence of Lampizator and MSB users, it also makes sense to expand with additional custom interfaces for other state-of-the-art high-end DACs. There’s clearly appetite for tightly integrated, performance-first connections tailored to specific DAC architectures.

More details will follow as development progresses, but given these numbers, the course ahead is obvious.

great news! can you please confirm that xdmi (and analog out) is still on the roadmap for the extreme?

 

[joet]

Thanks for reporting this. We can certainly help investigate, but please open a ticket with Support.

From what you describe, a likely cause is that the NAS isn’t using a static IP address. If it's obtaining an address via DHCP from the Taiko router, here’s what may be happening:
- When the router is powered off, the physical link drops, and the NAS loses its DHCP-assigned IP (expected behavior).
- When the router powers back on, the ethernet link comes up before the router OS and DHCP server are fully running.
- The NAS sees the link come up and immediately requests an IP address—but at that moment the router isn’t ready to respond yet.
- Depending on the NAS model, it may retry only at certain intervals, which could explain why it reappears after 4–6 minutes.

This isn’t specific to Taiko hardware - it’s just typical DHCP behavior.

If this is what’s happening in your setup, assigning the NAS a static IP address (with matching subnet mask, gateway, and DNS settings) will ensure it comes online immediately after a router reboot, without needing to reboot other components.

Thanks @nenon and @dminches for your suggestions. I agree this is likely a networking issue and not a Taiko issue. I tried both suggestions - assigning a static IP and simply waiting. Assigning the IP didnt change the behavior. Upon reboot of the router, neither the NAS nor the Olympus were listed. Roon launched, but with no local files, just Qobuz. Per @dminches suggestion, I decided to wait. Within 4 minutes or so both the NAS and Olympus were listed within the router and the local files showed up in Roon.

 

[dminches]

Thanks @nenon and @dminches for your suggestions. I agree this is likely a networking issue and not a Taiko issue. I tried both suggestions - assigning a static IP and simply waiting. Assigning the IP didnt change the behavior. Upon reboot of the router, neither the NAS nor the Olympus were listed. Roon launched, but with no local files, just Qobuz. Per @dminches suggestion, I decided to wait. Within 4 minutes or so both the NAS and Olympus were listed within the router and the local files showed up in Roon.

I sounds like the router takes a little extra time assigning IP addresses or having devices attach to its network.

 

[Dave777tx]

As a focus group of one, I'm using the DAC card (which sounds fantastic, by the way) but I'm waiting for a DAC that is tightly integrated with XDMI that handles DSDs better than AO does. As much as I love the AO card, previous DACs I've owned did a much better job with DSDs, and I have a large collection. As for using a Lampizator, I'm tempted to experiment with a used Poseidon, but really don't want to deal with tubes. (I'm probably in the minority there and might change my mind.) As for MSB, I believe the XDMI integration isn't as tight as it could be. It's more of a tight handoff to their proprietary protocol. So if I go that route, right or wrong, I'll always feel as if I'm missing something. If future versions of AO are better with DSDs, I can see myself staying with it. Otherwise, it's an enjoyable wait. Like in a four star resort.

Master Fidelity in my opinion is top for DSD I had the opportunity to test it and wow, unfortunately not with Taiko
I am very new with Taiko, I'll probably go with Cascade in the future because it is my favorite DAC for my limited budget

 

[StefanK]

After incredible 18 months my Taiko O + I/O Silver has finally arrived . I have to say directly out of the box it sounds head and shoulders better than my Taiko Extreme. All the digital harshness (that I didn't even know was there) is now gone. It sounds incredible! I have it hooked up via XDMI to Lampizator Horizion360 via a rather special XDMI cable custom built by Stage 3 Concepts.
I know I can wait to get some further improvement after up to 500 or so hours of burn-in, but I'm happy already .

FYI: I know I have it stacked "wrong". Reason is for me to be able to replace the XDMI card after some time without the need to call someone to lift the Olympus out of the rack.



I have to give big Thank you to Emile and the whole Taiko team . This is one outstanding product.


But not all was great... (FYI Roon issue, not Taiko at all)
HW setup was a breeze, finding new Roon server almost instant. Then I picked my Roon backup from last day and restored.
And then Roon got messed up, stuck in "Initialising" state.
Luckily Taiko team changed their mind and allowed users to VNC into Olympus, so I started to look around what was wrong. Quite quickly I've identified that my Taiko was shipped with Roon 2.55, but my last backup was from version 2.56.
Fix is quite simple:
1/ stop roon server
2/ rename 'Database' folder to let say 'Database1'
3/ start roon server
4/ connect to the roon server, but do no restore. Instead start a new fresh install
5/ as soon as roon shows up on your device it will most likely also notify you about an existing update
6/ let roon server update itself
7/ shut down roon server
8/ delete newly created 'Database' folder (this is done by Roon from the fresh install)
9/ rename your own 'Database1' back o 'Database' (this renaming is much faster than deleting the folder and doing restore again)
10/ start roon server
11/ happy listening

Well, all of this could be avoided if Roon did not allow restore from newer versions into older version of the server. But that's another story for Roon forum.

Issue number 2 (more concerning):
I've started the burn-in process by running a single album in a loop trying to run it 24/7. What I'm noticing is that the playback stops quite frequently (every 1 hour or so).
To validate it is not network related (album is on my NAS), I've setup on Olympus the same playback of the same album into my Mac as an endpoint. This never stops and continues nicely for ever.
I'll open a case with Taiko, but wanted to know if you guys have had any such issue and if you got it resolved somehow.
Update: It turns out my NAS just started to act up after I got my Olympus. Now running burn-in from Tidal and I have no stopping issues. Will have to check what is going on with my NAS

I've kept the charging schedule same as it was from factory and as I'm in the same timezone as Amsterdam, didn't have to change that either.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Congratulations, Stefan!

 

[joet]

Im so happy for you! My wait was nearly as long. But it's worth it. Youre right, the entire Taiko team, Emile, Julien, Christiaan (Vassil in the States) et al., really care and work very hard. I'm a loyal customer. This is a company to enjoy the ride with.
As for the playback stopping, it's unfortunately a known issue where Roon loses control of the audio signal. The exact same thing happens to me during burn in, and sometimes during a listening session. Emile commented on it a few pages ago. To summarize (I hope I get this right) it's a Roon issue that Taiko is able to compensate for and they're working on a fix that will also have the benefit of better SQ. He didnt mention timing.
Best of luck with the Olympus!

 

[nonesup]

While it's true that the Olympus delivery delay was frustrating, it must be acknowledged that the Taiko team provides exceptional customer service. I'm a Gryphon customer, and in recent years I've sent four inquiries; they've only responded once.

 

[ctydwn]

before this journey started 5 years ago, did not expect to have a dedicated Taiko rack…but wow, to say every addition has elevated my sonic enjoyment would be an understatement. a big thank you to team Taiko’s ingenuity, customer service and perseverance.

 

[nonesup]

When I ordered my DCD router and switch, I ordered them in silver. When I ordered the Olympus, I also ordered it in silver, but since they said the delivery time for the black ones might be shorter, I switched to black. When the Olympus arrived, I couldn't have been happier; I loved the black finish. Now that I see your DCD router and switch in black, I think they look much better (in my opinion).

 

[J007B]

I have to say the black looks stunning......

 

[2ndLiner]

I have to say the black looks stunning......

I wholeheartedly agree! My Olympus in black arrived last week and just gazing at it creates a feeling of awe, wonder and euphoric bliss

 

[jbrrp1]

When I ordered my DCD router and switch, I ordered them in silver. When I ordered the Olympus, I also ordered it in silver, but since they said the delivery time for the black ones might be shorter, I switched to black. When the Olympus arrived, I couldn't have been happier; I loved the black finish. Now that I see your DCD router and switch in black, I think they look much better (in my opinion).

I ended up doing the exact same dance with Taiko in order to get my O + I/O, so now I have a "salt and pepper" aesthetic in their products. Fits in with the rest of the not-so-coherent visuals on my system. Fortunately, I really only care much about the sound.

 

[Bobvin]

Since we’re showing our Taiko gear in situ…





(All images posted and thread replies by myself will be removed when Rhapsody “goes dark” at the end of the year due to forum advertising rules.)

 

[2ndLiner]

Since we’re showing our Taiko gear in situ…

View attachment 161839

View attachment 161840

(All images posted and thread replies by myself will be removed when Rhapsody “goes dark” at the end of the year due to forum advertising rules.)

Stunningly beautiful system, Bob, and love the setting Arnold's (@coreaudiodesigns) lovely racks provide! We get to hang every now and then when he comes up for air as he lives a tad south of us. Just a wonderful, talented person!