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

Taiko-Olympus-big-advert.png

For those who just started reading up on Olympus, Olympus I/O, and XDMI, please note that all information in this thread has been summarized in a single PDF document that can be downloaded from the Taiko Website.

https://taikoaudio.com/taiko-2020/taiko-audio-downloads

The document is frequently updated.

Scroll down to the 'XDMI, Olympus Music Server, Olympus I/O' section and click 'XDMI, Olympus, Olympus I/O Product Introduction & FAQ' to download the latest version.

Good morning WBF!​


We are introducing the culmination of close to 4 years of research and development. As a bona fide IT/tech nerd with a passion for music, I have always been intrigued by the potential of leveraging the most modern of technologies in order to create a better music playback experience. This, amongst others, led to the creation of our popular, perhaps even revolutionary, Extreme music server 5 years ago, which we have been steadily improving and updating with new technologies throughout its life cycle. Today I feel we can safely claim it's holding its ground against the onslaught of new server releases from other companies, and we are committed to keep improving it for years to come.

We are introducing a new server model called the Olympus. Hierarchically, it positions itself above the Extreme. It does provide quite a different music experience than the Extreme, or any other server I've heard, for that matter. Conventional audiophile descriptions such as sound staging, dynamics, color palette, etc, fall short to describe this difference. It does not sound digital or analog, I would be inclined to describe it as coming closer to the intended (or unintended) performance of the recording engineer.

Committed to keeping the Extreme as current as possible, we are introducing a second product called the Olympus I/O. This is an external upgrade to the Extreme containing a significant part of the Olympus technology, allowing it to come near, though not entirely at, Olympus performance levels. The Olympus I/O can even be added to the Olympus itself to elevate its performance even further, though not as dramatic an uplift as adding it to the Extreme. Consider it the proverbial "cherry on top".
 
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Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus
LampizatOr

My first day with Taiko Olympus music streamer.
Yesterday, after quite some time of anticipation - the postman brought me the Taiko Olympus server (or streamer). (yes we have strong postmen in Poland, they go to the gym) It is a heavy artillery kind of equipment, aiming at breaking the speed of sound with digital streaming. I have been involved in adjusting the Lampizator DACs to linking to Taiko by means of their suggested best link - the XDMI. Our Horizon DACs already started a retro-fit programme for our best customers. I had a new Horizon DAC with XDMI ready so I had no problem connecting Taiko straight after unpacking.
The data is provided by QOBUZ streaming service, delivered via 300GBPS fibre optic cable and after the router we have optoisolated ethernet by means of a fiber optic LAN going to the Taiko Olympus.
The associated components were: #clarisys Minuette planar speakers driven by Pass 60.8 class A mono blocks (balanced) and Horizon Taiko XDMI DAC with built in preamp function. All cables including XDMI were KBL-Sound Extrema and the AC power was filtered by Lampizator Kraftwerk 10 power station.
Olympus wakes up rather slowly, it takes a good minute to boot - and BOOM the Olympus appeared on my Apple 12 inch Pro tablet.
All management is done by means of ROON user interface.
I loaded quickly my 6 favourite test songs and started listening.
Now I can jump to the conclusion that I loved my time with the Taiko server but I am seriously lacking in vocabulary to wax poetic about it. Since this is a digital system, many "improvements" are not easy to name in analog experience terms.
I think that I hear "more silence" there, making the small sonic clues easy audible and legible. The 3D sound space seems borderless, limitless, stretching as if I was listening in the outdoors. There is no "room" feel at all. My subjective sensation is as if I was suspended mid air inside a cloud of music. This happened to me before on 5% of my best records, say on Roger Waters etc. And only because my Lampizator Listening Room is immaculate. Now this awesome experience simply stretches to 80% of my records - making it more of a rule than an exception. This feeling is very pleasant, very sought after, quite addictive and quite difficult to part with.
Another observation is bass being deeper, stronger, more nuanced, less one-notey. The bass becomes first class really (even on my planar speakers without the "bass driver".
The human voices are more spooky alive in front of me that I ever remembered, and they are so dead centred as well.
It will take me probably weeks to fully appreciate this level of quality that the Olympus provides, even if it doesnt take much to get used to a good thing in life. Olympus is for sure the biggest, the heaviest, the most expensive (except the Wadax) piece of digital source, a looooong way from Logitech streamers or a raspberry pie of yours. It must have the worst bang for the buck but the biggest joy of owning that I can think of. Is it the end of the road? Knowing Emile - it isn't.
Two additional comments before you start asking:
Upsampling the flac from QOBUZ to DSD brings yet another layer of improvement, and listening to USB versus XDMI shows that XDMI is much closer to a 100 000 dollar turntable than USB is. Via USB it is sort of on the Taiko Extreme level, on XDMI it escapes the digital system description. Quite my cup of tea. I had NO IDEA that my DAC is capable of this.
 
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Lukasz Lampizator Fikus said:
LampizatOr

My first day with Taiko Olympus music streamer.
Yesterday, after quite some time of anticipation - the postman brought me the Taiko Olympus server (or streamer). (yes we have strong postmen in Poland, they go to the gym) It is a heavy artillery kind of equipment, aiming at breaking the speed of sound with digital streaming. I have been involved in adjusting the Lampizator DACs to linking to Taiko by means of their suggested best link - the XDMI. Our Horizon DACs already started a retro-fit programme for our best customers. I had a new Horizon DAC with XDMI ready so I had no problem connecting Taiko straight after unpacking.
The data is provided by QOBUZ streaming service, delivered via 300GBPS fibre optic cable and after the router we have optoisolated ethernet by means of a fiber optic LAN going to the Taiko Olympus.
The associated components were: #clarisys Minuette planar speakers driven by Pass 60.8 class A mono blocks (balanced) and Horizon Taiko XDMI DAC with built in preamp function. All cables including XDMI were KBL-Sound Extrema and the AC power was filtered by Lampizator Kraftwerk 10 power station.
Olympus wakes up rather slowly, it takes a good minute to boot - and BOOM the Olympus appeared on my Apple 12 inch Pro tablet.
All management is done by means of ROON user interface.
I loaded quickly my 6 favourite test songs and started listening.
Now I can jump to the conclusion that I loved my time with the Taiko server but I am seriously lacking in vocabulary to wax poetic about it. Since this is a digital system, many "improvements" are not easy to name in analog experience terms.
I think that I hear "more silence" there, making the small sonic clues easy audible and legible. The 3D sound space seems borderless, limitless, stretching as if I was listening in the outdoors. There is no "room" feel at all. My subjective sensation is as if I was suspended mid air inside a cloud of music. This happened to me before on 5% of my best records, say on Roger Waters etc. And only because my Lampizator Listening Room is immaculate. Now this awesome experience simply stretches to 80% of my records - making it more of a rule than an exception. This feeling is very pleasant, very sought after, quite addictive and quite difficult to part with.
Another observation is bass being deeper, stronger, more nuanced, less one-notey. The bass becomes first class really (even on my planar speakers without the "bass driver".
The human voices are more spooky alive in front of me that I ever remembered, and they are so dead centred as well.
It will take me probably weeks to fully appreciate this level of quality that the Olympus provides, even if it doesnt take much to get used to a good thing in life. Olympus is for sure the biggest, the heaviest, the most expensive (except the Wadax) piece of digital source, a looooong way from Logitech streamers or a raspberry pie of yours. It must have the worst bang for the buck but the biggest joy of owning that I can think of. Is it the end of the road? Knowing Emile - it isn't.
Two additional comments before you start asking:
Upsampling the flac from QOBUZ to DSD brings yet another layer of improvement, and listening to USB versus XDMI shows that XDMI is much closer to a 100 000 dollar turntable than USB is. Via USB it is sort of on the Taiko Extreme level, on XDMI it escapes the digital system description. Quite my cup of tea. I had NO IDEA that my DAC is capable of this.
Click to expand...
Thank you Lukasz.
 
J
Lukasz Lampizator Fikus said:
LampizatOr

My first day with Taiko Olympus music streamer.
Yesterday, after quite some time of anticipation - the postman brought me the Taiko Olympus server (or streamer). (yes we have strong postmen in Poland, they go to the gym) It is a heavy artillery kind of equipment, aiming at breaking the speed of sound with digital streaming. I have been involved in adjusting the Lampizator DACs to linking to Taiko by means of their suggested best link - the XDMI. Our Horizon DACs already started a retro-fit programme for our best customers. I had a new Horizon DAC with XDMI ready so I had no problem connecting Taiko straight after unpacking.
The data is provided by QOBUZ streaming service, delivered via 300GBPS fibre optic cable and after the router we have optoisolated ethernet by means of a fiber optic LAN going to the Taiko Olympus.
The associated components were: #clarisys Minuette planar speakers driven by Pass 60.8 class A mono blocks (balanced) and Horizon Taiko XDMI DAC with built in preamp function. All cables including XDMI were KBL-Sound Extrema and the AC power was filtered by Lampizator Kraftwerk 10 power station.
Olympus wakes up rather slowly, it takes a good minute to boot - and BOOM the Olympus appeared on my Apple 12 inch Pro tablet.
All management is done by means of ROON user interface.
I loaded quickly my 6 favourite test songs and started listening.
Now I can jump to the conclusion that I loved my time with the Taiko server but I am seriously lacking in vocabulary to wax poetic about it. Since this is a digital system, many "improvements" are not easy to name in analog experience terms.
I think that I hear "more silence" there, making the small sonic clues easy audible and legible. The 3D sound space seems borderless, limitless, stretching as if I was listening in the outdoors. There is no "room" feel at all. My subjective sensation is as if I was suspended mid air inside a cloud of music. This happened to me before on 5% of my best records, say on Roger Waters etc. And only because my Lampizator Listening Room is immaculate. Now this awesome experience simply stretches to 80% of my records - making it more of a rule than an exception. This feeling is very pleasant, very sought after, quite addictive and quite difficult to part with.
Another observation is bass being deeper, stronger, more nuanced, less one-notey. The bass becomes first class really (even on my planar speakers without the "bass driver".
The human voices are more spooky alive in front of me that I ever remembered, and they are so dead centred as well.
It will take me probably weeks to fully appreciate this level of quality that the Olympus provides, even if it doesnt take much to get used to a good thing in life. Olympus is for sure the biggest, the heaviest, the most expensive (except the Wadax) piece of digital source, a looooong way from Logitech streamers or a raspberry pie of yours. It must have the worst bang for the buck but the biggest joy of owning that I can think of. Is it the end of the road? Knowing Emile - it isn't.
Two additional comments before you start asking:
Upsampling the flac from QOBUZ to DSD brings yet another layer of improvement, and listening to USB versus XDMI shows that XDMI is much closer to a 100 000 dollar turntable than USB is. Via USB it is sort of on the Taiko Extreme level, on XDMI it escapes the digital system description. Quite my cup of tea. I had NO IDEA that my DAC is capable of this.
Click to expand...
I've read this maybe 10 times (like a crazy person) and I enjoy reading it more and more every time!!!!
 
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Kris said:
Fantastic review. Lukasz must be very happy now.
And this is not burned in device I believe.
Forgot How long it takes for a burn in period ?
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That's a REALY encouraging review from Lukasz right out of the box.
I remember my Extreme taking the better part of a month to fully burn in and sound its best.
The Olympus is a bit different utilizing a BPS. But as with any piece of audio equipment, I would think it will still take some time to fully burn in and sound its best. I am so looking forward to getting mine and finding out!
 
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steve williams
A huge shout out to you Lukasz who IMO deserved the first Olympus as it was you and your genius mind working together with Emile and his genius mind that so quickly found a way to bring native XDMI to we Horizon users. You make us all drool but having talked to you a few days ago after you received yours, I knew that we are all going to experience something special. Thank you once again for your premier review and an even bigger thank you for facilitating the use of XDMI on your Horizon DAC. It means so much to we devoted LampizatOr users
 
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Lukasz Lampizator Fikus said:
listening to USB versus XDMI shows that XDMI is much closer to a 100 000 dollar turntable than USB is.
Click to expand...
Does it imply that the best turntable is still the king, the yardstick or golden standard that Olympus is now closer to match? Emile told us earlier that Olympus' sound is neither digital nor analog (meant to be turntable-like) but sui generis. I hope Olympus has set a new standard of sound rather than trying to emulate turntable sound (which is intrinsically limited for lacking the ultimate transparency and sound spectrum width/depth).
 
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