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

MarkusBarkus · 2025-01-21T07:21:43-0600

...thank you for the explanation, Emile. From far away, this appeared (to me) to be a materials issue, rather than an anodizing issue, per se. Although balancing/distributing all that throughput among vendors is not easy. I still recall you posting that pic of Ton with the heavy gloves on...the new bead-blaster guy! That was a great pic! Good Luck! Olympus sounds great. Hope no anodizing issues on routers! ;^ )

Moladiego · 2025-01-21T11:33:14-0600

Taiko Audio said:
Actually we have some evidence pointing towards this issue being (partially or not) exacerbated, or perhaps even caused by out of band artifacts, we have run some experiments where we made unlistenable digital remasters sounding pretty darn good! It is possible we may be able to address this in the future (no timeframe, sorry).

Great! My own experience is that much of the digital fatigue is caused by jitters (in a broad sense of the term) introduced by components and cables (including out-of-phase constructs most manufacturers either don't consider important or don't correct) rather than recordings. Once I have corrected some of these issues (by using, among other things, unique cables with optimized absolute phase direction) some of the jitters have disappeared. Of course, recording quality is still the most determinative factor, but once a server or other source has managed to remove much of the jitters and veils, the true quality of the recordings shines through. Please add a PHASE SWITCH in your next O version.

Taiko Audio · 2025-01-21T11:38:34-0600

Moladiego said:
Great! My own experience is that much of the digital fatigue is caused by jitters (in a broad sense of the term) introduced by components and cables (including out-of-phase constructs most manufacturers either don't consider important or don't correct) rather than recordings. Once I have corrected some of these issues (by using, among other things, unique cables with optimized absolute phase direction) some of the jitters have disappeared. Of course, recording quality is still the most determinative factor, but once a server or other source has managed to remove much of the jitters and veils, the true quality of the recordings shines through.

You could indeed partially address this with low pass filters formed by cable / equipment LCR properties, in theory.

oldmustang · 2025-01-21T11:47:00-0600

Taiko Audio said:
You could indeed partially address this with low pass filters formed by cable / equipment LCR properties, in theory.

Indeed, this might account for the proliferation of what I refer to as "digital de-crappifiers" -- boxes and devices put in-line somewhere in the digital path that are functioning as low-pass filters.

Unfortunately, as my digital front end has improved, the negative consequences of such devices started becoming audible as well. Nice to learn that you might have a cure for some of this.

Steve Z

Moladiego · 2025-01-21T12:17:50-0600

I believe in utter, unfiltered transparency and linearity, warts and all. No filtering boxes or devices anywhere in the signal path. You can try making an awfully recorded recoding more beautiful or listenable via some form of filtering or tuning, but it always comes with a heavy penalty. Recording is what it is. A truly awful recording should come through Olympus as it is, truly awful, beyond redemption. Great recordings will come through with all veils and smearing removed, shining like never before. But much of the digital awfulness is in fact introduced by components with high jitters. I am particularly attracted to huge orchestral and choral works (which are most difficult to reproduce) and know from experience that filtering or tuning never works for me for such works. What enhances midrange (to get the "lush" from, e.g., the use of big-bottle tubes) is always accompanied by loss of sparkle in the treble and lumpiness in the bass.

jbrrp1 · 2025-01-21T14:08:10-0600

Taiko Audio said:
Let me elaborate on that as we appear to have solved the anodising issues we have been experiencing initially.

The technical explanation:

Additionally there's an increase in recycling increasing the amount of contamination:

The solution to this problem is to purchase the complete ingots, cut blocks from the outside parts, and use those for anodising.

This is easier said then done as these ingots are large, 1.2*1.2*2 meters weighing around 8 tonnes.

However we have that process up and running now and the first 30 chassis produced with those blocks are at anodiser 3.

Anodiser 3 is also a significantly larger Anodiser willing to work on our products (most don't). They can even reserve one bath exclusively for us if we can supply enough to keep it "busy" enough. The main output rate limiting factor however is the mechanical surface finishing, nobody has a bead blasting robot large enough to treat our chassis, so this is a manual process taking up around 2 hours each chassis part (4 hours for an Olympus server, 2 hours for an I/O).

Anodiser 1 we've been using for a while now has let us down there as, as I posted before in this thread they had allocated overtime, 2 employees willing to spending 5 evenings and Saturdays to bead blast around 30 chassis parts a week. However they never reached that quantity, and their motivation seemingly dropped over time, understandably as a lot of their work was in vain due to the zebra striping issue. Our own crew here has not been unsensitive to working long hours in shifts to only see 60% of all that hard work go to waste.

We now have an external company machining chassis parts in parallel to us, they have been machining 10 a week for the past 3 weeks (the same 30 which shipped to Anodiser 3). They have indicated they have spare capacity for a larger volume, however again the remaining limiting factor is the necessity of manual bead blasting, the people doing the bead blasting need to be skilled as well, it's very easy to do this wrong resulting in a chassis reject.

Obviously we're exploring alternatives paths to anodising, which may become increasingly troublesome in the future as more then likely usage of recycled materials will only increase.

To answer your question:

For silver we're still at around a 60% rejection for what is/was at Anodiser 1. They shipped half btw with the other half "promised" for today.
Anodiser 2 is doing black, it will most likely be like a 10% rejection rate.
Anodiser 3, new blocks (cut from the outter parts of the ingots), new process, optimistic for a 5% rejection rate!

So, any chance some silver O's and I/O's will be shipping soon? It's sure been a long wait.

Taiko Audio · 2025-01-21T14:16:55-0600

jbrrp1 said:
So, any chance some silver O's and I/O's will be shipping soon? It's sure been a long wait.

Yes, several are already being assembled.

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

Good morning WBF!

MarkusBarkus

Moladiego

Taiko Audio

oldmustang

Moladiego

jbrrp1

Taiko Audio

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

Good morning WBF!​

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