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

[Blue58]

The thought of an XDMI DAC V2 card for the Extreme plus XDMS blows my mind

 

[wil]

If you are accepting wish-list items to evaluate for inclusion into a v2 Taiko Analog card I have two or three:

#1 priority for me would be an optical or SPDIF coax input for a CD transport or disc player with digital outputs. I'd like to leverage the outstanding performance of the "Taiko DAC" in the Olympus platform to enhance my ability to play legacy CDs. I2S in or out is not something I foresee myself ever using.

2. XLR analog output in my use case is a nice but not critical wish. But if XLR is included please keep RCA analog outputs as well or at least the option to convert XLR analog outputs to RCA with a nice adapter plug (Cardas makes two good ones). I have two preamps, one all-RCA ins and outs, one with one analog XLR input.

I was going to add a third wish, but as far as hardware that's about all I can think of. I guess a third wish would be to as much as possible, please don't break the bank on pricing. Obviously you have to cover expenses, payroll and overhead and turn a profit because we want Taiko to stay in business for many years to come. But for some of us another Olympus-priced or even I/O-priced component is not in the cards. Unfortunately, my organs are so old now they don't have a lot of market value anymore. . .

Steve Z

My impression is the dac V2 will not be some super expensive component. It’s a technical upgrade to the V1.

 

[Steve Williams]

Hi Oldmustang,

I share your view.

A separate DAC means having to solve a lot of issues (power supply, clocking, and so on).

It’s a complex piece of work.

The Olympus and the I/O XDMI have solved most of these problems in a very elegant way.

The XDMI-DAC daughterboard (the analogue output) is really just one "small" extra step.

The V1 DAC was a "test", both a proof-of-concept and an assessment of demand.

I suspect the V2 DAC is going to be a surprise, a game changer! ;-)

… I sold my DAC, the Soulution 760.

Cheers,

Thomas

hm. I must say the Horizon 360 w curated tube sets (not cheap) via XDMI remains noticeably more musically engaging than the analog card. Sonic magic that I have yet to hear with the analog card only. I surmise analog v2 will close that gap. But my current bet is on the Aphrodite (shipping next week) to remain a notch above Olympus plus I/O analog v2 out. Very exciting times and can’t wait to compare. The hi end standalone DAC price for performance is surely being tested, an understatement to say the least.

Also safe to surmise Emile’s numbers were based on ‘option order registrations’ and likely underestimate percentage of users ultimately opting to use analog card in their systems. what a testament to v1 Taiko DAC

It's all good guys....whatever floats your boat and fits your budget needs. To me there is no one correct answer for all

I do agree that the V2 analogue board will almost certainly close the gap as we can all bet on the genius of Emile

The one thing he said yesterday that caught my attention was the ability to use XDMI via other interfaces which would then make XDMi available to other DAC makers. What stands out in my mindful this is to use a new board with I2S out as so many high end DAC manufacturers have I2S input.

As a Lampi user I use the digital board with Lampi XDMI out . When Lukasz and Fred were here a few weeks ago for the Aphrodite event , Lukasz seemed very high on I2S. I know nothing about that interface except from my readings it should use the shortest interconnect. When I spoke to Lukasz about this he didnt seem bothered and in fact was excited about I2S as a means of delivering XDMO from O/IO to his DAC.s Presently I Have 2 excellent XDMI cables , the TOTL KBL and a beta version from another manufacturer who was considering marketing this wonderful cable . But if I2S proves to be a better way to deliver XDMI, "I am all ears"

 

[Steve Williams]

Aside from the IP address change issues I mentioned, the same thing happened to me yesterday. 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.
I bought the Olympus without internal storage following Taiko's advice. I don't doubt they're right, and that's why I did it, although I do miss those days with the Extreme when you had your local library on the server and there wasn't a single problem. Besides, using a NAS introduces new issues: the network cable to the router, the DC power supply, and the cable connecting this power supply to the NAS.

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

 

[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......