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

[MarkusBarkus]

...Taiko Audio: "Making music safe again."

 

[Taiko Audio]

These last-minute discoveries and changes must have been quite an adventure!

It's really interesting to see the extent to which data transport affects sound quality.

I can imagine that the future holds many more discoveries and possible improvements.

I suppose we'll soon be seeing a new version of the Taiko Audio website, won't we?

Cheers,

Thomas

Yeah new website is being worked on!

 

[oldmustang]

I'm not sure I can believe this:

Emile wrote:

"Intrigued by this midrange density feature me and Jeroen started tweaking it a bit in our spare time"

You have spare time? Are you down to two hours of sleep a night?

Steve Z

 

[Taiko Audio]

I'm not sure I can believe this:

Emile wrote:

"Intrigued by this midrange density feature me and Jeroen started tweaking it a bit in our spare time"

You have spare time? Are you down to two hours of sleep a night?

Steve Z

Today’s big reveal

 

[Azjya]

@Emile - can you share rate of production for Olympus?

 

[tsaett]

@Emile - can you share rate of production for Olympus?

Hi!

shortly we'll proactively inform every Olympus customer via E-mail with the respective spot on our order list.
On our website we'll introduce a new page, where you can see what order number has left the assembly line last. This page will get updated every week.

This way you can track the progress transparently and also roughly estimate your own ETA.

The team is excited to get the first batch out the door!

 

[RUIN*ish]

Hi!

shortly we'll proactively inform every Olympus customer via E-mail with the respective spot on our order list.
On our website we'll introduce a new page, where you can see what order number has left the assembly line last. This page will get updated every week.

This way you can track the progress transparently and also roughly estimate your own ETA.

The team is excited to get the first batch out the door!

This process is brilliant!

 

[Moladiego]

Hi!

shortly we'll proactively inform every Olympus customer via E-mail with the respective spot on our order list.
On our website we'll introduce a new page, where you can see what order number has left the assembly line last. This page will get updated every week.

This way you can track the progress transparently and also roughly estimate your own ETA.

The team is excited to get the first batch out the door!

Does your website page include configuration options for the specific Olympus, i.e., color, internal storage size and XDMI card selection (not counting the stock analog DAC card)? In my case, I only want the XDMI card for Lampizator Horizon in lieu of the stock SPDIF-AES/EBU (even exchange as confirmed by Emile).

 

[Steve Williams]

Here’s some info that we elves need to know

Today is a special day for Emile.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILE !!!

you have enriched our listening pleasures beyond all imagination. We hope you had a quiet and enjoyable day May Mount Olympus shine brightly on you

 

[seatrope]

Happy happy birthday Emile! I hope you are spending it NOT reading WBF

 

[SwissTom]

Gelukkige verjaardag Emile !

 

[Steve Williams]

 

[audio42]

Happy birthday Emile!

May you have a great year, both in your professional life and personal life.

Sincerely,
Arun

 

[Kris]

About the Olympus design change:

As mentioned earlier in this thread we ended up having 2 Olympus designs.

The original design is already about a year old and was based on an AMD Epyc 32-core CPU with an Asrockrack or Supermicro motherboard (server motherboards are generally based on the same reference design with mainly differences in I/O options offered, networking, storage functionality etc).

We completed and introduced this design to the world in December.

Warning, NERD talk ahead:

As part of my general interest in computer hardware I tend to order every major new CPU / motherboard release to test it's effects on sound quality. Asus announced one of, if not the, most monstrous motherboard ever created in October which I ordered together with its accompanying AMD Threadripper CPU, which is more or less the same CPU as the Epyc, but for the HEDT (High-End Desktop) market. This set new world records of performance with insane power consumptions, like between 1 and 2 Kilowatts (!) of peak power. I more or less forgot all about this but it arrived halfway of January. So we hooked it up, oh my, a true monster indeed, renamed it to FET RIPPER due to it's insane transient current draws on initial boot, we're talking fast repetitive 30-40A spikes, enough to turn most FETs into charcoal. To power this beast with a linear power supply is absolutely challenging, BUT, we have battery supplies which can supply up to 2000A current peaks! Now due to the enormous amount of power consumption it would deplete a battery supply very quickly, within minutes, so I configured a BPS to charge continuously, the BPS doesn't blink at those transients, so we could boot and have a listen.

I basically copied the Olympus design and just exchanged the Motherboard/CPU and it's accompanying power supply. Well of course it didn't sound as good as the already completed Olympus design, BUT, it had the upper bass/midrange density of the Extreme's motherboard/CPUs. I wrote about this before how the Extreme's motherboard/CPUs have this unique density quality no other motherboard/CPU combination has, and rest assured I've tested virtually everything. So this appears to have something to do with Asus's HEDT/Workstation motherboard designs. (It's not present in the Asus motherboards I tested with AMD Ryzen and Intel consumer level chips, so this appears to be something exclusive to their High-end motherboard designs).

Intrigued by this midrange density feature me and Jeroen started tweaking it a bit in our spare time, just for fun, to see if we could achieve the overall performance of the original Olympus design which was on another level in transparency, sound staging, holography, micro detail retrieval and realism. It was actually very far behind so we did not expect to actually get there, but it was a fun spare time project to "tame the beast"! Besides that it would never fit in any reasonably sized chassis, the motherboard was physically larger, required a 4th BPS and a more elaborate cooling solution..

While studying the motherboard architecture we noticed a distinct difference with other motherboards, it's designed to be powered by multiple power supplies to be able to provide the unwieldy power it can consume. It has 2 separate power planes to feed the FET ripper CPU, and another for the PCIe slots(!). With our original Olympus design we deliberately had 4 "grounds" to isolate devices from each other (motherboard/CPU, Network card, Drives and XDMI. 1 ground in the linear power supply, and 3 battery grounds). We then changed the whole system setup to use a hybrid parallel / star ground arrangement using 2 (battery) grounds, minimizing ground current loops resulting in overall better performance (!) while halving the number of battery supplies used. Now it really started to sing AND it would actually fit it into the Olympus chassis! By now we were halfway into February and facing a dilemma, we have 2 Olympus servers, and one of them actually sounds better with by now not only an increase in midrange density and colour palette, but also a significant increase in both micro as macro dynamics. So we pulled the trigger and ordered everything we need to switch over to this design, we did waste some resources on this move, but.. it's just even more "awesome", what can you do? We need to launch the best we can do, even if just for my peace of mind.

In a nutshell this leads to the following changes in the Olympus design:

1) AMD Epyc 32-core -> AMD Threadripper 24-core (86.4 GHz to 100.8 GHz total base clock)
2) 128Gb memory -> 64Gb memory
3) 3*BPS -> 2*BPS
4) 1*LPS + 1* charger PS -> 1* monster charger PS
5) 4* Regulator -> 8* Regulator
6) Larger / more sophisticated heatsink design
7) Even better sound

This is the Olympus as displayed at the Munich show. Functionally there's no difference, it only changes the specs list!

Dear Emile
You mentioned
"Now due to the enormous amount of power consumption it would deplete a battery supply very quickly, within minutes, so I configured a BPS to charge continuously, the BPS doesn't blink at those transients, so we could boot and have a listen"

Will the Battery only operate during playback? Or both ?
I understand this could be done with software to connect and disconnect LPS from the battery.

Are other 2 isolated BPSes still powering your pci express cards in case of Olympus with Olympus IO?

 

[Kris]

There’s only one Olympus, and yes it’s fully battery powered. Will share in depth details when I get a chance.

Does this mean it can be disconnected from wall after booting and in operation mode ?
Or it still needs the powecord for ground or AC power ?

 

[LL21]

Also, does this new Olympus Server have its own clock which then feeds into the DAC? The Zanden DAC takes it clock feed from the Zanden transport as part of the i2s connection.

 

[dminches]

Hi!

shortly we'll proactively inform every Olympus customer via E-mail with the respective spot on our order list.
On our website we'll introduce a new page, where you can see what order number has left the assembly line last. This page will get updated every week.

This way you can track the progress transparently and also roughly estimate your own ETA.

The team is excited to get the first batch out the door!

Any estimate for when this will be live?

 

[Kris]

Also, does this new Olympus Server have its own clock which then feeds into the DAC? The Zanden DAC takes it clock feed from the Zanden transport as part of the i2s connection.

This I believe was answered.
XDMI interface card has a clock build in and shares the clock with build in daughter DAC card. So here it works as expected.
But There is no clock output for other DACs except of Spidf / AES format that contains clock.
To have the perfect clock in your DAC synchronized with server
the DAC manufacturers have to use the XDMI Taiko format/ card I believe.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Dear Emile
You mentioned
"Now due to the enormous amount of power consumption it would deplete a battery supply very quickly, within minutes, so I configured a BPS to charge continuously, the BPS doesn't blink at those transients, so we could boot and have a listen"

Will the Battery only operate during playback? Or both ?
I understand this could be done with software to connect and disconnect LPS from the battery.

Are other 2 isolated BPSes still powering your pci express cards in case of Olympus with Olympus IO?

Both battery supplies are always operational.

Yes one battery supply powers the interface cards for the I/O.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Does this mean it can be disconnected from wall after booting and in operation mode ?
Or it still needs the powecord for ground or AC power ?

It can operate without external power for 15 or so minutes but it will sound worse then.