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

[simorag]

First, everything sounds good on the Olympus. Recordings and masterings that have languished for years, even decades, in my library are now yielding delights I had never realized they had. Second, I cannot begin to describe how profoundly liberating it is to have the power of Roon again. With the Extreme, I was so hung up with extracting the last ounce of SQ with XDMS (and PGGB upsampling), that I satisfied myself with my existing music, without too much exploration. I didn't realize how much I had constrained myself until now. Being freed of those constraints, I find myself making new discoveries every night. And there is such delight in knowing that anything I play from Qobuz, even at the spur of the moment, is going to sound absolutely glorious and with no compromises.

These two remarks are truly spot-on.

One audiophile myth is that as long as your system keeps being more sophisticated ('resolving' is the usual adjective), it also becomes less tolerant of subpar recordings. I was a believer of this logic as well until I received the Olympus, and boy how glad I was to hear this myth debunked!

I don't know how Taiko managed to achieve this result, but it has made me able to approach my listening sessions with a relaxed confidence that whatever I will play will allow me to fully focus on absorbing the pleasure of the music, while calming down the rig performance anxiety sometimes bugs the audiophile in me. Of course, when playing excellent recordings, the ridiculousness factor takes enjoyment to hyperuranion level.

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As for Roon, I was also missing it dearly (the SQ downgrade vs XDMS was too stark to be ignored with the Extreme), especially its power to expand my musical horizons through intelligent suggestions.
Roon has the capability of making music listening an ongoing cultural enrichment experience, which adds up to the sheer emotional / fun factor a great deal.

 

[Steve Williams]

I totally agree and never thought I would say that. Yet having done such I am hoping to see XDMS on the Olympus if for no other reason than to compare the two head to head

 

[MOTU]

I totally agree and never thought I would say that. Yet having done such I am hoping to see XDMS on the Olympus if for no other reason than to compare the two head to head

If what everyone said is true about pcm clearly beating flac on Roon on the Olympus I think XDMS is going to smother Roon.

 

[Steve Williams]

If what everyone said is true about pcm clearly beating flac on Roon on the Olympus I think XDMS is going to smother Roon.

Of course that is my hope. XDMS for me on the Extreme bettered Roon but right now Roon is simply killer on the O. Yet with all of the R and D being done by Taiko I just can imagine Emile would bring a product that doesnt rival or better Roon......so

 

[John T]

I must be from another planet or a very inexperienced listener. System was turned on at 5:15AM and turned off at 7pm. Keep in mind I wasn't just sitting there twiddling or whittling. I was doing several things but the music was constantly playing. Everything from Marcus Foster, Maria Callas, Eric Bibb and everything in between. All the listening was with the lowly considered Roon and the Extreme! I couldn't of had a better day...Now also keep in mind I would have liked to duplicate yesterday with the Olympus!! But for now its out my hands, I'll make do with what I have...

 

[dminches]

If what everyone said is true about pcm clearly beating flac on Roon on the Olympus I think XDMS is going to smother Roon.

FLAC is a compressed package for PCM. Do you meant “wav?”

 

[Tuckia]

While we are waiting for the queue to clear, does Taiko have any thoughts to share on the developing input and output options around the Olympus?

- Will a dedicated input chassis be offered with internalized router, NIC, or other goodies to take advantage of the BPS modules.
- Will a dedicated output chassis be offered with internal dac and/or preamp modules.
- Will a preamp be in a dedicated chassis only.
- Will the speculated V3 dac be in a dedicated chassis only.
- Will the current I/O chassis be suitable for some or all of these applications.

It seems a natural step to consider these possibilities since an external BPS seems to be off the table due to regulations. Of course most of these possibilities have been brought up previously, but the packaging has not been revealed. The I/O chassis could be an all purpose, configurable platform, but to what extent?

 

[Kingsrule]

Yep..

Bummer...looks like they mixed up your order which I'm sure will be made right with a FedEx package heading your way
BTW I really like the I/O on a separate shelf, not stacked with Olympus

 

[simorag]

I must be from another planet or a very inexperienced listener. System was turned on at 5:15AM and turned off at 7pm. Keep in mind I wasn't just sitting there twiddling or whittling. I was doing several things but the music was constantly playing. Everything from Marcus Foster, Maria Callas, Eric Bibb and everything in between. All the listening was with the lowly considered Roon and the Extreme! I couldn't of had a better day...Now also keep in mind I would have liked to duplicate yesterday with the Olympus!! But for now its out my hands, I'll make do with what I have...

John, moving from Extreme to Olympus is like going from ludicrous to flabbergasting. There's nothing bad in ludicrous!*

* but I'd like to be with you when you will hear the Olympus in your system, to see the smile of stupor forming spontaneously on your face ...

And, Roon became underwhelming (to my ears, in my system) vs. XDMS only in direct comparison, and when I entered critical listening mode. Albums like to one below - while we are at flabbergasting stuff - were softened by Roon a bit, enough to lose that ultimate feeling of transparent, vivid presence that makes the listening experience so exhilarating.

​

 

[John T]

John, moving from Extreme to Olympus is like going from ludicrous to flabbergasting. There's nothing bad in ludicrous!*

* but I'd like to be with you when you will hear the Olympus in your system, to see the smile of stupor forming spontaneously on your face ...

And, Roon became underwhelming (to my ears, in my system) vs. XDMS only in direct comparison, and when I entered critical listening mode. Albums like to one below - while we are at flabbergasting stuff - were softened by Roon a bit, enough to lose that ultimate feeling of transparent, vivid presence that makes the listening experience so exhilarating.

View attachment 146318​

I understand Simone. Very Interesting. My hands are a bit tied for now until I get the Olympus. I can only work with the tools I have. With my style of listening I can't deal with XDMS. I hope they come up with a more polished application/version. SQ is not the issue. The flow as to using it is the issue for me...BTW Listening to this album now, you've turned me on to several that I enjoy...Grazie!!

 

[John T]

John, moving from Extreme to Olympus is like going from ludicrous to flabbergasting. There's nothing bad in ludicrous!*

* but I'd like to be with you when you will hear the Olympus in your system, to see the smile of stupor forming spontaneously on your face ...

And, Roon became underwhelming (to my ears, in my system) vs. XDMS only in direct comparison, and when I entered critical listening mode. Albums like to one below - while we are at flabbergasting stuff - were softened by Roon a bit, enough to lose that ultimate feeling of transparent, vivid presence that makes the listening experience so exhilarating.

View attachment 146318​

BTW Simone with this particular piece of music. I can definitely understand If you get even greater dynamics, I can certainly understand how it would/could be very evident...Principalis. Fermescens / Indica exacta / Adverso flumine....WOW!!!!

 

[John T]

Bummer...looks like they mixed up your order which I'm sure will be made right with a FedEx package heading your way
BTW I really like the I/O on a separate shelf, not stacked with Olympus

Agreed regarding stacking...If I take that path side by side, I purposely made my main shelf long enough with that on the back burner...

 

[godofwealth]

If what everyone said is true about pcm clearly beating flac on Roon on the Olympus I think XDMS is going to smother Roon.

I've always wondered why I personally prefer the sound of compact discs played on a world-class transport to streaming via Roon. Last night, I heard several hours of jazz on CD on a Dave Blu Mk2 transport M-scaled into the Chord Dave. The sound was just in another galaxy compared to Roon streaming, which to my ears still sounds very "compressed" regardless of resolution. It could very well be that flac compression (even though technically it is "lossless") and the sheer difficulty of transporting all the bits to your house from the many thousands of miles away from whatever cloud server the bits are coming from requires so much extraneous processing that a direct uncompressed PCM connection from the transport to the DAC blows away Roon. The Chord Blu2 has Rob Watts multi-million tap filter that upscales Redbook to 705 kz, and whatever secret sauce it has really does work wonders. So, against all prevailing fashion, I am stubbornly hanging on to my precious physical media collected over a lifetime (40+ years), since it simply sounds better than streaming via Roon. No question Roon is a marvel of convenience and allows me to sample an extremely wide range of music, particularly recent recordings. But, since I have many thousands of classic CDs that cover almost all the music I care to listen to, I am not deprived of music if I choose not to Roon. One day, hopefully soon, we'll have a better streaming solution than Roon.

 

[MOTU]

FLAC is a compressed package for PCM. Do you meant “wav?”

yes of course

 

[cat6man]

I've always wondered why I personally prefer the sound of compact discs played on a world-class transport to streaming via Roon. Last night, I heard several hours of jazz on CD on a Dave Blu Mk2 transport M-scaled into the Chord Dave. The sound was just in another galaxy compared to Roon streaming, which to my ears still sounds very "compressed" regardless of resolution. It could very well be that flac compression (even though technically it is "lossless") and the sheer difficulty of transporting all the bits to your house from the many thousands of miles away from whatever cloud server the bits are coming from requires so much extraneous processing that a direct uncompressed PCM connection from the transport to the DAC blows away Roon. The Chord Blu2 has Rob Watts multi-million tap filter that upscales Redbook to 705 kz, and whatever secret sauce it has really does work wonders. So, against all prevailing fashion, I am stubbornly hanging on to my precious physical media collected over a lifetime (40+ years), since it simply sounds better than streaming via Roon. No question Roon is a marvel of convenience and allows me to sample an extremely wide range of music, particularly recent recordings. But, since I have many thousands of classic CDs that cover almost all the music I care to listen to, I am not deprived of music if I choose not to Roon. One day, hopefully soon, we'll have a better streaming solution than Roon.

i personally don't believe the problem is either streaming or roon. i think the problem, in some way we have not figured out yet, is that flac sounds worse than wav. this is true with local files of WAV and FLAC, on both the extreme (xdms) and on the olympus (roon).

my experience, based solely on the extreme, is that local FLAC and streaming FLAC are very close. this suggests that streaming is not the problem. as much as i dislike roon (mainly for not supporting file structures, which they now do support, but also for putting The Beatles and The Rolling Stones under "T" which I encounter at every show and dealer), i see no reason to point the finger at them for the flac/wav conundrum.

i had expected the problem to disappear with the olympus, given its low noise and superb battery power, but surprisingly, this is not the case. somehow the signal processing step going from flac/wav to i2s pcm is changing things in ways we do not yet comprehend. we can't blame usb (or usb drivers) anymore since the change is still audible even with xmds transporting the i2s signal and even with direct xdms analog output.

the bits are all accurate and conversion back and forth from flac to wav to flac, etc shows no loss of data integrity. however, the fixed rate WAV file and the variable rate FLAC file sound different.

of course, YMMV.

 

[Steve Williams]

I've always wondered why I personally prefer the sound of compact discs played on a world-class transport to streaming via Roon. Last night, I heard several hours of jazz on CD on a Dave Blu Mk2 transport M-scaled into the Chord Dave. The sound was just in another galaxy compared to Roon streaming, which to my ears still sounds very "compressed" regardless of resolution. It could very well be that flac compression (even though technically it is "lossless") and the sheer difficulty of transporting all the bits to your house from the many thousands of miles away from whatever cloud server the bits are coming from requires so much extraneous processing that a direct uncompressed PCM connection from the transport to the DAC blows away Roon. The Chord Blu2 has Rob Watts multi-million tap filter that upscales Redbook to 705 kz, and whatever secret sauce it has really does work wonders. So, against all prevailing fashion, I am stubbornly hanging on to my precious physical media collected over a lifetime (40+ years), since it simply sounds better than streaming via Roon. No question Roon is a marvel of convenience and allows me to sample an extremely wide range of music, particularly recent recordings. But, since I have many thousands of classic CDs that cover almost all the music I care to listen to, I am not deprived of music if I choose not to Roon. One day, hopefully soon, we'll have a better streaming solution than Roon.

My goodness, this is deja vu as earlier today I was reading in a Horizon thread why you preferred your Pacific and now we are in a thread talking Olympus and streaming and I am reading about how much you prefer compact discs. All good but why dont you start your own thread on what you prefer. This is really getting old

 

[godofwealth]

My goodness, this is deja vu as earlier today I was reading in a Horizon thread why you preferred your Pacific and now we are in a thread talking Olympus and streaming and I am reading about how much you prefer compact discs. All good but why dont you start your own thread on what you prefer. This is really getting old

Ah yes, the subjectivism that’s high end audio writ large. In the realm of streaming, I most definitely like my Paciific. But every time I play my CDs through the Blu2 transport upscaled to the Dave, I’m reminded of how far streaming needs to go. If you stick to a diet of streaming, you’ll never realize what you’re missing. Perhaps just as well.

 

[godofwealth]

Case in point: I’m currently streaming a great jazz album, featuring John Coltrane and Duke Ellington. It’s a high resolution 192khz remastering. It certainly sound great. But only if you haven’t heard either the original vinyl or the CD played back on a great transport. Then you might change your mind. Or perhaps not. That’s the beauty of high end audio. Everyone has a different opinion. I form mine based on listening to both streaming and physical media.

But physical media require a different set of challenges. The future is undoubtedly streaming. I get that. But there’s life in physical media still. I wish Taiko all success in their endeavors to make streaming the king of high end audio. Perhaps the day will come when we’ll all get rid of our physical media. It will certainly simplify my life!

 

[cat6man]

But physical media require a different set of challenges. The future is undoubtedly streaming. I get that. But there’s life in physical media still. I wish Taiko all success in their endeavors to make streaming the king of high end audio. Perhaps the day will come when we’ll all get rid of our physical media. It will certainly simplify my life!

there is no technological reason for streaming not being as good as physical media or local WAV files.
this is not science, this is engineering. we'll get there, the problem is easily reproduced and it is just a matter of time, focus and effort, all of which have numerous others jockeying for priority.

 

[l3uzz]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to give you all a quick update before the weekend rolls in! I think it's only fair to keep you in the loop.

We’ve just received a fresh batch from our new anodiser. I haven’t had the chance to inspect everything fully yet, but so far, it looks like a solid batch. We’ll be shipping out some servers to our dangerous goods specialist on Monday (Silver and Black), and then they'll head out for delivery. The Monday after, we’ll also be shipping at least 5 more, or more depending on how the rest of the batch checks out.

The reason I’m posting now is that I previously mentioned we were testing powder-coated versions of the Olympus model. Well, the first test run has come in, and it’s looking really promising! You can see the photos below. So far, we’ve only been able to test black, as we’re waiting for a specific type of coating to arrive for the silver version. That should be in after the weekend, and we’ll test it right away.

Personally (and I know Emile agrees), we’re really happy with how the test turned out. We actually prefer the coated version!

The best part about switching to powder coating is that it significantly boosts our yield, from about 50% to around 95%. I’d really appreciate your thoughts, especially from those of you waiting for a black Olympus. Let me know what you think based on the pictures (and feel free to share your personal preferences).

I totally understand if some of you prefer the anodised look, but if not, we’re open to moving forward with the coated version to speed up the process. This would shorten the wait for anodised versions since we’d have more options available.

I’m testing out different approaches to streamline things, but I’m not an audiophile (yet—Emile keeps teasing me), so I don’t have all the fine-tuned knowledge of what audiophiles might prefer. As a musician, my setup is a bit of a mix-and-match of what sounds best, with a splash of all the colours that exist. So, your input is super valuable, and with it, I can continue working to get everyone’s Olympus out as quickly as possible.

Right now, we’re able to build about 10–15 units a week (if the yield allows it), and we still have about 94 orders to go. So, my goal is to have everything shipped out within the next 10–15 weeks (I tend to be on the cautious side with these predictions).

I don’t usually check the forum (nothing personal, Steve! I’m just focused on the project at the moment), but I’ll make an effort to read your replies this weekend.

Thanks so much, everyone!

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Julien--

Thank you very much for the update! Is the unit on the left in the first photo (with more holes on the top face) powder coated, and the one on the right anodized? The anodized unit has that characteristic look to it the way Space Gray/Space Black MacBooks/iPads do.

While I love the way my black anodized Extreme looks--when clean--even when using a lint free cloth and a supposedly good cleaning solution, it is never streak-free. It seems that matte anodized finishes are more difficult to clean if they are not also clear coated.

I am most definitely rooting for the powder coating but I have another motive as well--the powder coat will match my all-black Horizon 360 perfectly. The powder coated Horizon is remarkably easy to clean and the finish is very durable as long as you don't abuse it.

Just my 2c and don't mean to offend anyone who loves the anodized look--I can see how others would prefer it due it its being less shiny and perhaps if their other gear is also anodized.

Regards,
Alexey