I volunteer my dining room table as a staging venue in San Diego for all us SoCal types
Introducing Olympus & Olympus I/O - A new perspective on modern music playback
- Thread starter Taiko Audio
- Start date
I volunteer my dining room table as a staging venue in San Diego for all us SoCal types
@Taiko Audio
Hi Emile!
That's quite an announcement!
Are there any plans to make a single box?
Something like :
Olympus + Olympus I/O = Olympus Apex
That would be nice (less cables, les boxes,...)
If not, will Olympus and Olympus I/O be stackable?
I was expecting a design close to that of the switch or router.
What material is used for the chassis?
I look forward to your next announcements.
Cheers,
Thomas
Hi Emile!
That's quite an announcement!
Are there any plans to make a single box?
Something like :
Olympus + Olympus I/O = Olympus Apex
That would be nice (less cables, les boxes,...)
If not, will Olympus and Olympus I/O be stackable?
I was expecting a design close to that of the switch or router.
What material is used for the chassis?
I look forward to your next announcements.
Cheers,
Thomas
The new Olympus line seems like a big achievement, as it consolidates a number of technical advancements on a brand new concept, with a streamlined, minimalistic signal path, which of course could not achieved by keeping the Extreme platform and continuing a module-based upgrade path.
As most Extreme owners, I'll be pondering what's the best upgrade path (or the most attainable financially, as I guess I am more budget-conscious than the average Extrem-er), hoping that the generous trade-in policy Taiko has applied in the past still holds.
While waiting for further tech info and the pricing and availability reveal, I have a few questions for @Taiko Audio :
1. Is the Olympus still based on Windows Server OS?
2. How the umbelical cable receiver is to be installed on the Extreme for connecting it to the Olympus I/O?
3. Is the option of installing a BPS + XDMI card in the Extreme chassis (instead of getting the Olympus I/O) still on the table?
4. Can the XDMI card be obtained in such a way that it has BOTH analog and digital output?
As most Extreme owners, I'll be pondering what's the best upgrade path (or the most attainable financially, as I guess I am more budget-conscious than the average Extrem-er), hoping that the generous trade-in policy Taiko has applied in the past still holds.
While waiting for further tech info and the pricing and availability reveal, I have a few questions for @Taiko Audio :
1. Is the Olympus still based on Windows Server OS?
2. How the umbelical cable receiver is to be installed on the Extreme for connecting it to the Olympus I/O?
3. Is the option of installing a BPS + XDMI card in the Extreme chassis (instead of getting the Olympus I/O) still on the table?
4. Can the XDMI card be obtained in such a way that it has BOTH analog and digital output?
Good morning!
We anticipated this release to generate a large number of questions and we understand there's a lot to digest here.
What we are releasing now is the practical implementation of both the BPS (Battery Power Supply) and the new interface XDMI (Extreme Direct Music Interface), formerly announced as TACDA/TACDD, but renamed to XDMI as it bears similarities with our XDMS (Extreme Direct Music Server) software project, being a more direct, or purist if you will, approach to processing "bits".
The ultimate goal here is to eliminate digital noise caused by processing digital signals for which we need a combination of software and hardware solutions as those two are more intertwined then one may realise. Developing the software and firmware of the XDMI project for example was an even larger effort then designing the hardware part, I would estimate this to about 65% of the total design effort and therefor the largest contributor to the cost of the project. The BPS, or rather BMS (Battery Management System) also runs firmware, and is remote controllable by IOS/Android APP. Although in this case the hardware design part was a larger effort then the software part, this still took considerable effort.
As audiophiles we are accustomed to paying for physical boxes. Software is largely invisible, all you see is an interface or settings app on the remote device you already own and it weighs 0.0 pounds. Yet, with music servers it's a paramount part of the performance, although the hardware ultimately determines your performance ceiling, I'd be inclined to claim that the software is more important, as your beautiful overengineered shiny piece of hardware can simply perform terrible when driven improperly. But on top of that the sonical impact of actual code can simply be huge, and compete with hardware upgrades. For those who doubt that statement I'd like to refer you to our customer feedback on this forum on the OS update we released on 11/22/23 and currently on the "NSM" code change to our XDMS playback software suite.
I like sharing information, I'm regularly being told I'm oversharing, and I'm now going to share a number which perhaps I shouldn't, but I think it helps you to understand how much of an effort is actually being put into software. We have crossed the 30.000 hour mark for TAS/XDMS/XDMI/BMS, time spend on firmware and software coding, excluding time spend on support for the alpha/beta releases. I realise this to be an insane number, something to keep in mind here is that a lot of coding is actually dismissed for sounding bad(!). Coding efficiency improves over time as we gain more understanding in what sounds good and what sounds bad, so part of this can be considered educational, and has in fact not been completely wasted as it has also led to actual hardware improvements, but nonetheless, it is a considerable effort from my perspective.
Circling back to our new product releases. We initially developed a "large" BPS to power the entire Extreme. This was designed to provide battery power for 20 hours of use with a 4 hour recharge window, which you could configure yourself by remote app, for example recharge between 4 and 8AM. A "problem" with that was it occupied about the same volume as an Extreme, so it needed to be an external chassis. To retain a low impedance, critical to it's performance, this needed low impedance connectors and a humongous 1 AWG(!) umbilical, but additionally intelligence to only conduct power in safe conditions, as a simple fuse would raise impedance too much resulting in the "muddy/slow" bass and muted dynamics we're accustomed to hearing with battery powered solutions. Additionally we needed to design new regulators (a new DC-DC power supply) to take full advantage of the potential benefits of this battery supply solution.
When we finished this design we were in the global parts shortage period in the aftermath of the pandemic and we couldn't release it as the lead-times of a large number of parts had increased to a year or even more. This is also what caused the delay of our network card and switch launch, some of you may recall the Intel ethernet chips taking over a year to arrive. Luckily the situation has improved considerably since then but it's still not back to before.
This delay gave us ample time to experiment with the BPS and we figured out that more was better then one. And in fact that separately powering individual peripherals provided some very considerable benefits. As these peripherals consume vastly less power then the server as a whole we started designing a "mini" BPS. Now mini may have been the wrong word as it's only "mini" in physical size next to the "large" BPS we developed before by having a lower amount of battery cells, 6 in stead of 30, but it's actually still quite a substantial supply, significantly larger then a linear power supply. The Extreme chassis can be modified to fit 2 of these new battery supplies, or one "old" large BPS, but this modification requires parts of it's chassis to be replaced, the bottom plate, rear plate, left side heatsink and several internal chassis parts. On top of that there are pretty strict safety requirements surrounding battery power supplies of this kind and therefor it will need to be shipped back, completely disassembled, re-assembled and certified. Doing the math on this it will exceed what you'd pay for trading in your Extreme towards the new Olympus, which is one of the main reasons for us to offer it, there are some more reasons but we'll elaborate on that in a later post. In effect it's the new "single box BPS Extreme". The Olympus is also 1" deeper allowing us to mount 3 in stead of 2 internal battery supplies, and even then it is still a more cost effective solution then rebuilding your Extreme.
As part of the XDMI project we have developed interface cards to be able to be able to mount the entirety of the XDMI interface inside a DAC eliminating the disadvantages of currently existing interface options. We were able to modify these to be able to mount any PCIe card in a remote enclosure without the drawbacks of already existing "PCIe expanders" which normally impact performance too much to be useable for this purpose. This enabled us with the option to simply move peripheral cards to an outside chassis. Hence the birth of the Olympus I/O, containing 2 battery supplies separately powering your network card and USB card or XDMI cards with the additional benefit of operating in a reduced EMI/RFI environment. This solution is slightly more cost effective then trading up your Extreme to the Olympus, but takes up more shelf space.
We anticipated this release to generate a large number of questions and we understand there's a lot to digest here.
What we are releasing now is the practical implementation of both the BPS (Battery Power Supply) and the new interface XDMI (Extreme Direct Music Interface), formerly announced as TACDA/TACDD, but renamed to XDMI as it bears similarities with our XDMS (Extreme Direct Music Server) software project, being a more direct, or purist if you will, approach to processing "bits".
The ultimate goal here is to eliminate digital noise caused by processing digital signals for which we need a combination of software and hardware solutions as those two are more intertwined then one may realise. Developing the software and firmware of the XDMI project for example was an even larger effort then designing the hardware part, I would estimate this to about 65% of the total design effort and therefor the largest contributor to the cost of the project. The BPS, or rather BMS (Battery Management System) also runs firmware, and is remote controllable by IOS/Android APP. Although in this case the hardware design part was a larger effort then the software part, this still took considerable effort.
As audiophiles we are accustomed to paying for physical boxes. Software is largely invisible, all you see is an interface or settings app on the remote device you already own and it weighs 0.0 pounds. Yet, with music servers it's a paramount part of the performance, although the hardware ultimately determines your performance ceiling, I'd be inclined to claim that the software is more important, as your beautiful overengineered shiny piece of hardware can simply perform terrible when driven improperly. But on top of that the sonical impact of actual code can simply be huge, and compete with hardware upgrades. For those who doubt that statement I'd like to refer you to our customer feedback on this forum on the OS update we released on 11/22/23 and currently on the "NSM" code change to our XDMS playback software suite.
I like sharing information, I'm regularly being told I'm oversharing, and I'm now going to share a number which perhaps I shouldn't, but I think it helps you to understand how much of an effort is actually being put into software. We have crossed the 30.000 hour mark for TAS/XDMS/XDMI/BMS, time spend on firmware and software coding, excluding time spend on support for the alpha/beta releases. I realise this to be an insane number, something to keep in mind here is that a lot of coding is actually dismissed for sounding bad(!). Coding efficiency improves over time as we gain more understanding in what sounds good and what sounds bad, so part of this can be considered educational, and has in fact not been completely wasted as it has also led to actual hardware improvements, but nonetheless, it is a considerable effort from my perspective.
Circling back to our new product releases. We initially developed a "large" BPS to power the entire Extreme. This was designed to provide battery power for 20 hours of use with a 4 hour recharge window, which you could configure yourself by remote app, for example recharge between 4 and 8AM. A "problem" with that was it occupied about the same volume as an Extreme, so it needed to be an external chassis. To retain a low impedance, critical to it's performance, this needed low impedance connectors and a humongous 1 AWG(!) umbilical, but additionally intelligence to only conduct power in safe conditions, as a simple fuse would raise impedance too much resulting in the "muddy/slow" bass and muted dynamics we're accustomed to hearing with battery powered solutions. Additionally we needed to design new regulators (a new DC-DC power supply) to take full advantage of the potential benefits of this battery supply solution.
When we finished this design we were in the global parts shortage period in the aftermath of the pandemic and we couldn't release it as the lead-times of a large number of parts had increased to a year or even more. This is also what caused the delay of our network card and switch launch, some of you may recall the Intel ethernet chips taking over a year to arrive. Luckily the situation has improved considerably since then but it's still not back to before.
This delay gave us ample time to experiment with the BPS and we figured out that more was better then one. And in fact that separately powering individual peripherals provided some very considerable benefits. As these peripherals consume vastly less power then the server as a whole we started designing a "mini" BPS. Now mini may have been the wrong word as it's only "mini" in physical size next to the "large" BPS we developed before by having a lower amount of battery cells, 6 in stead of 30, but it's actually still quite a substantial supply, significantly larger then a linear power supply. The Extreme chassis can be modified to fit 2 of these new battery supplies, or one "old" large BPS, but this modification requires parts of it's chassis to be replaced, the bottom plate, rear plate, left side heatsink and several internal chassis parts. On top of that there are pretty strict safety requirements surrounding battery power supplies of this kind and therefor it will need to be shipped back, completely disassembled, re-assembled and certified. Doing the math on this it will exceed what you'd pay for trading in your Extreme towards the new Olympus, which is one of the main reasons for us to offer it, there are some more reasons but we'll elaborate on that in a later post. In effect it's the new "single box BPS Extreme". The Olympus is also 1" deeper allowing us to mount 3 in stead of 2 internal battery supplies, and even then it is still a more cost effective solution then rebuilding your Extreme.
As part of the XDMI project we have developed interface cards to be able to be able to mount the entirety of the XDMI interface inside a DAC eliminating the disadvantages of currently existing interface options. We were able to modify these to be able to mount any PCIe card in a remote enclosure without the drawbacks of already existing "PCIe expanders" which normally impact performance too much to be useable for this purpose. This enabled us with the option to simply move peripheral cards to an outside chassis. Hence the birth of the Olympus I/O, containing 2 battery supplies separately powering your network card and USB card or XDMI cards with the additional benefit of operating in a reduced EMI/RFI environment. This solution is slightly more cost effective then trading up your Extreme to the Olympus, but takes up more shelf space.
Unfortunately XDMI cannot simply be mounted inside the Extreme and perform well. We ended up optimizing it around being powered by our battery power supply solution. It is a very sophisticated design, it's performance is significantly impacted by how it's implemented.
Yes it's the connection between both Olympus and Extreme and Olympus I/O, it's a DAC cable, it runs at 112Gb/s, it can be modified to operate at up to 800Gb/s speeds.
That is one of the first output options for XDMI we'll be working on next.
Hi - can you expand on (a) how the Olympus interfaces with customers’ existing DACs (incl the Horizon), (b) whether or not there is benefit in using the Olympus with the newly-released router and switch and (c) if there is, are these still best powered by an off-board PS via the distributor or from the Olympus? Some of the info already posted partly alluding to this was not completely clear.
If you decide to upgrade to XDMI your USB card will indeed be redundant.
We cannot offer a BPS solution for the Router/Switch yet. There are very strict safety requirements we have to meet before being able to offer something directly providing a DC output. Meeting these requirements also impacts it's sonic performance so this will need more work. Therefor the DC distributor is not obsolete and the best solution we can currently offer to power the Switch and Router.
If Steve has the shelf space for that, I don't see why not
The Switch and Router still have a significant impact, it's really difficult for me to put percentages on it, but using your estimation of 40% on the Extreme, I'd say 25% on the Olympus or Extreme + Olympus I/O, keeping in mind the added expanse, probably the same relative return on expenditure.
Emile, I remember you saying you found a BPS solution (the 2x 6 BPS cells) that is vastly „cheaper“ than the original 30 cell version costing as much as a whole Extreme as the former doesn’t need a separate chassis (and of course much less cells).
Now the Olympus due to the new design philosophy needs a chassis (although due to other reasons). I‘m wondering how this all turns out pricewise, but am in good faith since Taiko‘s pricing policy has always been on the reasonable / customer friendly side.
Now the Olympus due to the new design philosophy needs a chassis (although due to other reasons). I‘m wondering how this all turns out pricewise, but am in good faith since Taiko‘s pricing policy has always been on the reasonable / customer friendly side.
In terms of pricing, without giving out any numbers just yet, Olympus IO < 3/4 Olympus < 2 * Extreme ?
Ahh - bummer...
So to leverage XDMI (in my case with the MSB Daughter Card for Pro ISL to remove USB from my stack) I need the Olympus IO and I will then move the Taiko Network NIC from Extreme to Olympus IO and have the new XDMI + MSB daughter card deployed in Olympus IO?
I will trade in (hopefully) the Taiko USB Card.
This will of course provide an even better platform and performance than 'just' adding XDMI + MSB daughter card in the more noisy (relatively speaking) Extreme. And yes, as already pointed out by several, Olympus IO is similar to some degree with MSB's Digital Director from an architectural viewpoint.
Whenever you have bandwidth @Taiko Audio pls elaborate on costs and availability...
Meanwhile, I will enjoy my XDMS.NSM which I got installed yesterday!
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It provides an even higher level of "isolation" between the core processing unit (server) and peripheral devices (network / output device).
@Taiko Audio
Hi Emile!
That's quite an announcement!
Are there any plans to make a single box?
Something like :
Olympus + Olympus I/O = Olympus Apex
That would be nice (less cables, les boxes,...)
If not, will Olympus and Olympus I/O be stackable?
I was expecting a design close to that of the switch or router.
What material is used for the chassis?
I look forward to your next announcements.
Cheers,
Thomas
There would be zero benefit to combining the Olympus with the Olympus I/O in one chassis.
1. For the Olympus we'd be forced to move to Windows 11. The Extreme uses Windows 10. Due to the very unfortunate but unavoidable discontinue of the Extreme's CPUs we have to move to a new platform to guarantee future availability. 5 years is more or less the life cycle of server grade hardware. We are stocking up on Extreme motherboards and CPUs but at some point in time they will simply not be available anymore, which is a big shame as this is one, if not the best CPU we have come across for music server applications.
2. By means of a PCIe interface card. I will post a few photos soon which should make everything more clear.
3. No, unless you really want to, but we have better solutions, please see post #84
4. No, but the daughterboard supplying the outputs is really easy to swap out, of course you can purchase 2 but that won't exactly be cheap.
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