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

[John T]

As you can see Taiko entered the correct code. But after customs receives the goods they obviously don't know or understand how to classify certain items. As you can see AUTO PROCESS UNITS were attached to me. As I previously shared, their is a TAIKO AUTO so I think this was how mine was generated.

For those of you filing disputes with FEXEX. Depending on when you received your Olympus and any subsequent changes. 8528.52.00 is the HR CODE for the Presidential MEMORANDUM EXEMPTION issued on April, 11, 2025. This may be helpful for your dispute...

 

[wil]

Speaking of FEDEX!! About 2 minutes ago. Very rural setting, 1 mile gravel road back to my house through a forest. I do have a more than adequate turn around if you are able to drive. Here comes Fedex, I'm not expecting a delivery but okay. Driver a male, I happen to be loading up the wood boiler. I finally ground guide him to back up to the turnaround and he asks is this 5504 I say NO. Its 5602. He says but GPS told me here. LOL! GPS doesn't work well out here. I'm like dude, here's a tip if you get confused which clearly you are, LOOK AT THE MAILBOX and most all have NUMBERS on them, that indicates the home with the correct number! Doomed...

Mailbox with numbers. So Old School.

We have a garden shed, about 8x10’. On some gps it shows the the shed location as being the location of our address. We have had both UPS and FX make deliveries to the shed, ignoring the house, because their AI screen told them to do so.

The future: AI will make humans dumber while concurrently AI is getting much smarter. Game over.

 

[wil]

As you can see Taiko entered the correct code. But after customs receives the goods they obviously don't know or understand how to classify certain items. As you can see AUTO PROCESS UNITS were attached to me. As I previously shared, their is a TAIKO AUTO so I think this was how mine was generated.

For those of you filing disputes with FEXEX. Depending on when you received your Olympus and any subsequent changes. 8528.52.00 is the HR CODE for the Presidential MEMORANDUM EXEMPTION issued on April, 11, 2025. This may be helpful for your dispute...

Best of luck disputing anything with FEDEX. It will likely not go well, and you will have wasted a lot of time gnashing teeth. They are not interested in serving their customers.

 

[wil]

As you can see Taiko entered the correct code. But after customs receives the goods they obviously don't know or understand how to classify certain items. As you can see AUTO PROCESS UNITS were attached to me. As I previously shared, their is a TAIKO AUTO so I think this was how mine was generated.

For those of you filing disputes with FEXEX. Depending on when you received your Olympus and any subsequent changes. 8528.52.00 is the HR CODE for the Presidential MEMORANDUM EXEMPTION issued on April, 11, 2025. This may be helpful for your dispute...

I wonder if there’s something Taiko could preemptively do to try to prevent this from happening at customs. This kind of thing I very hard to correct after the fact.

 

[John T]

Mailbox with numbers. So Old School.

We have a garden shed, about 8x10’. On some gps it shows the the shed location as being the location of our address. We have had both UPS and FX make deliveries to the shed, ignoring the house, because their AI screen told them to do so.

The future: AI will make humans dumber while concurrently AI is getting much smarter. Game over.

I can tell you stories! 5k Cartridge, in a plastic bag tied to the mailbox before the wind grabbed it and I eventually found it in the ditch a good distance from the mailbox, or the time I look out the window and FedEx is in my woodshed, placing I forget what on the stack of wood!

 

[John T]

I wonder if there’s something Taiko could preemptively do to try to prevent this from happening at customs. This kind of thing I very hard to correct after the fact.

Taiko did everything right. Once it leaves DG no telling who does what. I seriously doubt any mechanism can be put in place to deal with this. We have a worldwide epidemic of incompetence. I do know Taiko has profusely reached out to FedEx explaining what has been going on...

 

[Jpowell]

What would the duty come out to for HS code 8543.70.9100, based on your research?
Everything I’ve found shows that this code normally carries a 0% duty, but when I’ve imported items under it, U.S. Customs has added a second HS code — 9903.02.20 in my case — which applies an additional 15% duty to most EU-origin goods.

So even though the primary HTS rate is zero, that additional code still results in a 15% duty being charged. Here is a screenshot of what the invoice looks like in the end:
View attachment 161502

So don’t be misled by the primary HS code alone — in practice, you should expect an additional code like 9903.02.20 to be applied. As far as I understand it, most (if not all) items coming from the EU end up with that 15% tariff regardless of what the base HS code shows.

Disclaimer: I’m not a customs broker, and this isn’t legal or professional advice — just sharing what I’ve personally observed.

Apart from the FedEx disaster (of which I've experienced similar issues with regularity), I'd like to just put a big shout-out to Vassil. While in the midst of several really crazy-long days getting ready-for, setting up, and staffing his Taiko-based room at CAF (which sounded terrific, btw), he also made time after closing hours to pull apart and diagnose a standing problem with my I/O unit (working out of the hotel bathroom, no less)--and then posted this forum message at 3:30am no less. The guy must not sleep!
Thanks, Vassil!

 

[nonesup]

This afternoon I did a test I probably should have done a while ago. My DAC connects to the preamp with some Gobel balanced cables, which aren't cheap. The Taiko DAC card connects with AudioQuest RCA cables that cost barely €400. Well, this afternoon I connected the DAC to the preamp with the AudioQuest cables, and I have to admit that part of what I don't quite like about the DAC card—a lack of "visceral" sound—is due to the cables, at least in part.

 

[jbrrp1]

What would the duty come out to for HS code 8543.70.9100, based on your research?
Everything I’ve found shows that this code normally carries a 0% duty, but when I’ve imported items under it, U.S. Customs has added a second HS code — 9903.02.20 in my case — which applies an additional 15% duty to most EU-origin goods.

So even though the primary HTS rate is zero, that additional code still results in a 15% duty being charged. Here is a screenshot of what the invoice looks like in the end:
View attachment 161502

So don’t be misled by the primary HS code alone — in practice, you should expect an additional code like 9903.02.20 to be applied. As far as I understand it, most (if not all) items coming from the EU end up with that 15% tariff regardless of what the base HS code shows.

Disclaimer: I’m not a customs broker, and this isn’t legal or professional advice — just sharing what I’ve personally observed.

Well, poop. Your experience certainly implies that I'd see 15% tariff on the Lampi DAC, not 4.9%. Another reason not to go for the upgrade...

 

[Bobvin]

This afternoon I did a test I probably should have done a while ago. My DAC connects to the preamp with some Gobel balanced cables, which aren't cheap. The Taiko DAC card connects with AudioQuest RCA cables that cost barely €400. Well, this afternoon I connected the DAC to the preamp with the AudioQuest cables, and I have to admit that part of what I don't quite like about the DAC card—a lack of "visceral" sound—is due to the cables, at least in part.

Damn cables. I hate that there is no correlation of sound quality of a cable to anything meaningful. It is always try and decide. I have some extremely budget amazon interconnects that sound pretty damn good (in the particular system config i used them). You could spend your entire life in this hobby and never hear all the permutations possible, so the perfect cable for your system, between a particular pair of components, may always be just over the horizon. Ugh!

 

[Rob181]

We have a worldwide epidemic of incompetence.

I'm at a loss to understand how we have "a worldwide epidemic of incompetence." when this is purely a US tariff issue....

 

[dminches]

I'm at a loss to understand how we have "a worldwide epidemic of incompetence." when this is purely a US tariff issue....

Delivering my Olympus to the wrong address and not requiring a signature has nothing to do with tariffs.

 

[Rob181]

Delivering my Olympus to the wrong address and not requiring a signature has nothing to do with tariffs.

The posts I responded to were about tariffs.

Why you have chosen to introduce another issue entirely exemplifies just how quickly threads can get completely off track...

 

[dminches]

The posts I responded to were about tariffs.

Why you have chosen to introduce another issue entirely exemplifies just how quickly threads can get completely off track...

Both shipping issues and tariff issues have been discussed in the past 20 posts.