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

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".

 

As far as I’m aware, we still don’t have a user report comparing Xdmi analog, and Xdmi Lampizator.

I agree. There are only 2 people with an Olympus and a Lampizator Horizon with XDMI, @steve williams and @LampiNA . I am not 100% sure about Fred actually. Neither of them have either tried or reported back with impressions.

@seatrope may be getting his Olympus soon.

If someone can convince @Taiko Audio to move me up in the queue I will be the guinea pig!

 

I agree. There are only 2 people with an Olympus and a Lampizator Horizon with XDMI, @steve williams and @LampiNA . I am not 100% sure about Fred actually. Neither of them have either tried or reported back with impressions.

@seatrope may be getting his Olympus soon.

If someone can convince @Taiko Audio to move me up in the queue I will be the guinea pig!

Actually Fred started with the analog card loaded in his O and AFAIK he has now switched to the digital card

 

There is also one other member who I am aware of who is listening to his system with O --> digital XDMI--> into Lampi H360

What I dont know is if I am the only one so far who is using O/IO with XDMI digital into the H360

 

I agree. There are only 2 people with an Olympus and a Lampizator Horizon with XDMI, @steve williams and @LampiNA . I am not 100% sure about Fred actually. Neither of them have either tried or reported back with impressions.

We shipped more of those but “only” about 25% of our orders are from people posting on this forum.

If someone can convince @Taiko Audio to move me up in the queue I will be the guinea pig!

No can do, you’re relatively safe but my home address is allover the internet

 

We shipped more of those but “only” about 25% of our orders are from people posting on this forum.

We sometimes forget that a lot of equipment owners are not online.

 

No further posts as those members are likely waiting for that firmware update which allows those drives being formatted with other filesystems then ext4, for which you’d need a linux system. Aka this firmware update would allow you to use USB drives which are compatible with your mac or windows system.

We have updated firmware to facilitate that but we need to test it properly before we can offer it. Unfortunately this is one of the things we’ve had to sacrifice in exchange for building at least a few Olympus servers over the holiday season.

The internal storage in the Olympus degrades USB performance to a similar degree as the internal storage of the Extreme. It’s the low noise nature of the XDMI solution which makes internal storage noise more apparent. If this really bothers you we have the I/O, or you can choo

We have updated firmware to facilitate that but we need to test it properly before we can offer it. Unfortunately this is one of the things we’ve had to sacrifice in exchange for building at least a few Olympus servers over the holiday season.

The internal storage in the Olympus degrades USB performance to a similar degree as the internal storage of the Extreme. It’s the low noise nature of the XDMI solution which makes internal storage noise more apparent. If this really bothers you we have the I/O, or you can choose to use external storage solutions.

Has the router firmware testing made any progress? I would like to test that route of external storage before investing in a free standing NAS and SSD's for my local files.

 

Has the router firmware testing made any progress? I would like to test that route of external storage before investing in a free standing NAS and SSD's for my local files.

Well it works but just for a while, so we’re in debugging stage. I cannot give you an ETA unfortunately.

 

More on track to ship. Can’t wait to see list of next batch to be made! Horizon 360 arrived here yesterday. Breaking in and excitedly awaiting Olympus…

 

Hi Wil,

A concise question deserves an equally concise and to the point answer.

I do not prefer XDMI digital > Vivaldi DAC over XDMI analog. Just the opposite in fact.

So much so that I will be listing my Vivaldi APEX DAC and Clock, and Cybershaft OP-21 master clock and the associated clock cables for sale later today.

The (slightly) longer answer is -- I tried to give the dCS stuff a fair trial however at the end of the day while XDMI digital > Vivaldi is the best I've ever heard digital playback with Vivaldi sound, it is still second place to XDMI analog.

I tried several digital cables, two different preamps, made sure I have very close to the same break-in hours on each daughter card, checked the volume with both XDMI digital and analog daughter cards on a track by track basis with a quality measurement mic and mic calibration curve into SoundTools' SPL module to ensure I wasn't favoring (or dis-favoring) the loudest track, ensured proper absolute polarity with each daughter card swap, etc.

And that is not to mention running the gamut of Vivaldi's extensive filter and mapping settings to find the most pleasing (at the end of the day, I wound up right back at my long-term settings for the DAC) or in some cases, least objectionable DAC settings.

The clear preference for me is XDMI analog.

Even if the comparison had been a tie it would not have affected my decision to move on from Vivaldi. Vassil (@nenon) said it best in another conversation (not his exact words but hopefully close) -- very expensive DACs as we know them now represent a top level for that particular paradigm, while Taiko's XDMI analog is just the bottom level entry in a new path.

This is particularly so for me since no matter how good it might prove to be, dCS' new flagship Varese line is beyond what I am willing to spend on a DAC-based digital playback system. While I am open to other solutions such as Lampizator, Aires Cerat or MBL's adoption of XDMI into their DACs at the present time I prefer to wait and see (and hear!) what Taiko may come up with in the future.

So, probably more than what you wanted to know, but that's how I hear it in my home.

Steve Z

Hi Steve Z,

Your findings are significant in many ways.

Thank you for sharing and clearly stating the sound logic for your decision:

“Even if the comparison had been a tie it would not have affected my decision to move on from Vivaldi. Vassil (@nenon) said it best in another conversation (not his exact words but hopefully close) -- very expensive DACs as we know them now represent a top level for that particular paradigm, while Taiko's XDMI analog is just the bottom level entry in a new path.”

I just received my O-I/O (after some custom delays). Plan is to start with the digital XDMI into a totalDac sublime. And after letting things settle a bit, switch to the Analog XDMI directly to a CH L10 preamp

The plan is then to have my favorite “speaker whisperer” drop by in late January to work his system setup magic to do a more rigorous testing of the XDMI digital/XDMI analog options.

It should be interesting!

Quick question: In your experience, what is your estimate of the appropriate time needed to let the XDMI digital and XDMI analog cards settle?

Thanks again.

Best regards,

 

And after letting things settle a bit, switch to the Analog XDMI directly to a CH L10 preamp

If I remember correctly, Emile (@Taiko Audio ) suggests letting the Taiko-XDMI-DAC run continuously for 2-3 weeks to reach its full potential.

It might be worth listening to it briefly now, then allowing it to run for that period before listening again.

I'm very curious to hear your feedback once the Taiko-XDMI-DAC has reached 100% of its potential.

Cheers,

Thomas

 

IMHO Lampizator, MSB & Aries Cerat are smart. They realize that without developing their own specific XDMI digital connection cards, most of their dac models may not be able to survive when facing the XDMI analog output card.

The other dac brands please seriously to consider to follow suite, otherwise...

 

Hi Steve Z,

Your findings are significant in many ways.

Thank you for sharing and clearly stating the sound logic for your decision:

“Even if the comparison had been a tie it would not have affected my decision to move on from Vivaldi. Vassil (@nenon) said it best in another conversation (not his exact words but hopefully close) -- very expensive DACs as we know them now represent a top level for that particular paradigm, while Taiko's XDMI analog is just the bottom level entry in a new path.”

I just received my O-I/O (after some custom delays). Plan is to start with the digital XDMI into a totalDac sublime. And after letting things settle a bit, switch to the Analog XDMI directly to a CH L10 preamp

The plan is then to have my favorite “speaker whisperer” drop by in late January to work his system setup magic to do a more rigorous testing of the XDMI digital/XDMI analog options.

It should be interesting!

Quick question: In your experience, what is your estimate of the appropriate time needed to let the XDMI digital and XDMI analog cards settle?

Thanks again.

Best regards,

I was able to exert enough willpower to let each daughter card get about 100 hours of continuous play before cracking and turning on my amplifier. This actually favored the XDMI digital daughter card because the Olympus itself was accruing hours all along.

I have double that now on the analog daughter card and can say that break-in continues. Not in any dramatic, slap your face way but rather in that I notice even more of what I call a relaxed grace and effortless swing to the music each time I sit down to listen at roughly 24 hour intervals.

My sense is there isn't much settling time after the rare occasions I've had the Olympus in standby or off/shipping mode for card swaps or to move the Olympus power cord while re-arranging things in and around my equipment rack.

You are going to love the ride. I haven't heard a lot of ups and downs to the break-in process. More of an intial, "Oh my @#$%! This is really #$%&ing good!", progressing to better and better from there.

So there is merit to Tom's suggestion to do some listening early on in the process, to get a benchmark of sorts. I guarantee if you hear what I've been hearing, even with low hours neither daughter card is going to be bad. Quite the opposite.

Steve Z

 

Quick question: In your experience, what is your estimate of the appropriate time needed to let the XDMI digital and XDMI analog cards settle?

I would say, XDMI digital card - 2-3 days. XDMI analog card - 2-3 weeks.

Settling or burn-in time is quite interesting in general. With the linear power supplies I have been building, I've had people who stopped hearing changes after 2-3 weeks. And I had people who were very sensitive and could hear changes after 3 months. Usually they all stopped hearing changes after 4 months.

When I got my Extreme, I kept hearing improvements for an entire year!

From my experience the burn-in time people hear is subjective and depends on several factors (usually a combination of all)
1. How experienced you are as a listener.
2. How resolving your system is.
3. How often you make changes to your system.
(your ears and brain also take time to adjust)

#3 is an interesting one. People who have not made any significant changes for a while (and are experienced listeners with resolving systems) usually can hear changes for much longer. That's understandable as they've had much more time with their initial reference point.
And those who tweak and tinker their systems on daily/weekly basis are mored used to hearing changes from various changes much more frequently and may not have a choice but try to establish a new reference point fairly quickly (so they can move on to other changes and tweaks).
There are also people who are not very sensitive on the burn-in changes or simply don't hear much.

The Olympus makes your system more resolving and you start hearing small changes that were not so obvious before. And usually one doesn't jump on buying an Olympus if the other components are not resolving. So I do expect most people here to hear changes with the XDMI analog card for at least 2-3 weeks (say 500 hours). And I do expect some more sensitive ears to hear improvements over a much longer period.

One thing also worth mentioning is that the Olympus itself will keep improving over a long period of time. We don't have completely burned-in Olympus and what we are hearing initially is not just from swapping the XDMI daughter cards. So it's all kind of a moving target for the first several months. But regardless of that the XDMI analog daughter card needs much more time than the XDMI digital daughter card.

In @oldmustang case, I don't think his dCS Vivaldi will benefit from more hours on his digital daughter card. But the XDMI analog card will keeping getting better, and so I expect that if he repeats the same tests in 4-5 months, the delta will be even bigger.
Of course both (dCS and XDMI analog) will benefit from the Olympus itself running in / settling over time.

 

If I remember correctly, Emile (@Taiko Audio ) suggests letting the Taiko-XDMI-DAC run continuously for 2-3 weeks to reach its full potential.

It might be worth listening to it briefly now, then allowing it to run for that period before listening again.

I'm very curious to hear your feedback once the Taiko-XDMI-DAC has reached 100% of its potential.

Cheers,

Thomas

My experience: it takes over 150 hr for Xdmi/Taiko dac to start to plateau and reach its best. And I think it keeps improving well after that.
However you’ll hear the difference compared to usb right from the start.

And, on top of all that, I continue to be amazed at how good the Olympus to Ithaka Dac via USB is.

While I like the HDMI/analog out the best, it’s really more of a preference rather than an overwhelming “this is a lot better than that experience.” This is what I’ve heard from the very beginning and it hasn’t changed at all through numerous back and forths. This speaks to the quality of the Olympus as well as the Ithaca dac, imo.

I’m cautiously expecting the Aries Xdmi implementation to raise the level significantly.

 

Possibly, as already suggested, Stavros' implementation of the USB input is very good at double reclocking and that may partially mitigate the intrinsic (noise) deficiency of USB.

 

I would say, XDMI digital card - 2-3 days. XDMI analog card - 2-3 weeks.

Settling or burn-in time is quite interesting in general. With the linear power supplies I have been building, I've had people who stopped hearing changes after 2-3 weeks. And I had people who were very sensitive and could hear changes after 3 months. Usually they all stopped hearing changes after 4 months.

When I got my Extreme, I kept hearing improvements for an entire year!

From my experience the burn-in time people hear is subjective and depends on several factors (usually a combination of all)
1. How experienced you are as a listener.
2. How resolving your system is.
3. How often you make changes to your system.
(your ears and brain also take time to adjust)

#3 is an interesting one. People who have not made any significant changes for a while (and are experienced listeners with resolving systems) usually can hear changes for much longer. That's understandable as they've had much more time with their initial reference point.
And those who tweak and tinker their systems on daily/weekly basis are mored used to hearing changes from various changes much more frequently and may not have a choice but try to establish a new reference point fairly quickly (so they can move on to other changes and tweaks).
There are also people who are not very sensitive on the burn-in changes or simply don't hear much.

The Olympus makes your system more resolving and you start hearing small changes that were not so obvious before. And usually one doesn't jump on buying an Olympus if the other components are not resolving. So I do expect most people here to hear changes with the XDMI analog card for at least 2-3 weeks (say 500 hours). And I do expect some more sensitive ears to hear improvements over a much longer period.

One thing also worth mentioning is that the Olympus itself will keep improving over a long period of time. We don't have completely burned-in Olympus and what we are hearing initially is not just from swapping the XDMI daughter cards. So it's all kind of a moving target for the first several months. But regardless of that the XDMI analog daughter card needs much more time than the XDMI digital daughter card.

In @oldmustang case, I don't think his dCS Vivaldi will benefit from more hours on his digital daughter card. But the XDMI analog card will keeping getting better, and so I expect that if he repeats the same tests in 4-5 months, the delta will be even bigger.
Of course both (dCS and XDMI analog) will benefit from the Olympus itself running in / settling over time.

WhenI turn off mty system, my O/IO is ALWAYS on and I continue to play a loop of music forever until I power up the system again. FWIW power consumption this way is very minimal

 

WhenI turn off mty system, my O/IO is ALWAYS on and I continue to play a loop of music forever until I power up the system again. FWIW power consumption this way is very minimal’…

How do you achieve this? When I turn off my Horizon at the end each day, Roon won’t continue to play since there is ‘no audio device found’…

 

I don’t know. except to say I’m using my internal library Maybe it’s not playing all the time but when I do turn on the system and search history it’s pretty long. BTW I do use a playlist from my library that is very long if that’s helpful I never turn off my O/IO. They are always on. You pose an interesting question

 

I don’t know. except to say I’m using my internal library Maybe it’s not playing all the time but when I do turn on the system and search history it’s pretty long. BTW I do use a playlist from my library that is very long if that’s helpful I never turn off my O/IO. They are always on. You pose an interesting question

Hmm. Perhaps you can take a look at Roon once you’ve turned off the DAC and see whether or not it’s still playing, and let us know…?

 

How do you achieve this? When I turn off my Horizon at the end each day, Roon won’t continue to play since there is ‘no audio device found’…

He doesn’t use USB, he uses XDMI which doesn’t care if the DAC is on or off.