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".

 

honestly, let’s drop the moccasins analogy for multiple reasons (let alone ‘Indian’). this is an uber high end audio forum. moccasins are a deeply rooted symbol of native american culture, representing connection to the land and heritage, often passed down through generations. don’t think this has any place/connection with regard to audio and the struggles on this forum (and making the ostensible comparison to their own which just for starters is culturally insensitive). always happy to hear from everyone if your experience translates or is related to those traditions

 

Yes, you can use free upnp remotes like mconnect to use it then, if you don't mind paying Jplay IOS appears to be very well received at 50 / year or 200 / lifetime.

While patiently waiting for my "new to me" Extreme, I've been using my Chord 2go /Hugo 2 as my source. I say this from experience, avoid m connect. It's terrible and that's the paid version. Connection issues, random drop outs. Don't get me started on their queue system. I hope others have better luck but just wanted to give a warning.

 

It does, applying this approach our shipping schedule now looks like this:

Shipping now:
Silver Olympus servers (without I/O): 41.1, 47, 48, 51, 58, 63
Next up:
Black Olympus servers (with 3 I/Os) : 34.1, 40, 42, 44, 49, 60
Followed by:
Silver Olympus servers (all with I/O): 31, 44.1, 45, 46, 50, 55

Well, being number 55 on the list, I am very heartened to see this! So, how far in advance does the Taiko team reach out to finalize all aspects of the delivery and get final payment set? I've yet to hear a peep.

 

WAHOO! IT has arrived!
The FedEx driver was nice enough to help me get in the front door.
I'll have some help here Monday to get it in the rack.

 

...heavy little monster, isn't it @aLLeARS ? I had to move it from the garage up the stairs and onto a dolly myself. Then I sat down for a coffee! And texted some muscle for hire! I am up and streaming via USB for now.

 

Well, being number 55 on the list, I am very heartened to see this! So, how far in advance does the Taiko team reach out to finalize all aspects of the delivery and get final payment set? I've yet to hear a peep.

We’re waiting for I/O chassis to arrive as we had to reject last week’s I/O shipment, due to the recent change where we’re going to be less strict following queue numbers we are now shipping Olympus servers with higher order numbers already as we have finished those anyway. You would normally be invoiced when the I/Os have arrived. If you want to pay earlier that’s fine ofcourse, just reach out to support.

 

The mind boggling thing for me and Taiko I’m sure was that they did everything perfectly to code and everything was signed off twice by the third party hazardous expert in my shipment only to have FedEx cancel the shipment and return it to Taiko All it took was to change the shipping content from white paper to blue. No one told Taiko until the third attempt to deliver my package. And then they had the brass cajones to charge Taiko and me for all 3 attempts . So yes we’ve all walked in those moccasins

As Gary stated the wait is worth it. Those who are thinking of cancelling will IMHO be making the audio mistake of their lives It will light you up. As I said I’ve listened to vinyl only once since receiving my Olympus and IO. With XDMI digital has assumed a whole new level.

We have a fulltime employee now ( @JulienVermeiren ) JUST for shipping, and a standard work week doesn’t cut it…

 

Did I understand correctly from a prior Taiko post that all current orders would be shipped by the end of January 2025?

We more or less will have to, it’s not allowed to discuss politics on this forum, but the reason why should be obvious. We do have a second anodiser now, a really significant amount of people switched to black, the only remaining issue is our staff shortage, more job interviews next week, fingers crossed, maximum effort!

 

The Olympus + I/O / XDMI native / Lampizator Horizon is exhibited by Dream Audio at the “finest audio show Vienna” this weekend for anyone interested.

Main floor
Room nr. 0.14

 

We more or less will have to, it’s not allowed to discuss politics on this forum, but the reason why should be obvious. We do have a second anodiser now, a really significant amount of people switched to black, the only remaining issue is our staff shortage, more job interviews next week, fingers crossed, maximum effort!

All very much appreciated! Looking forward to receiving #120 Olympus/IO.

 

We have a fulltime employee now ( @JulienVermeiren ) JUST for shipping, and a standard work week doesn’t cut it…

Julien was of great help in following up and providing updates on the shipping of my unit. Great choice!

 

We have a fulltime employee now ( @JulienVermeiren ) JUST for shipping, and a standard work week doesn’t cut it…

@JulienVermeiren is a great addition to your team! I needed to delay my shipment by a few days due to travel, and Julien managed that process perfectly. Of course the weak link in all of this is FedEx, where delivery either goes as smooth as silk, or all hell breaks loose.

My unit (#37) arrived yesterday in 2 days from NL, but my local FedEx team seems to be nonplussed how to deliver it to me. They suggested I come pick it up (with my back, no thanks!) The issue here seems to be the unit was sent to the FedEx EXPRESS distribution center, not the FedEx FREIGHT distribution center.

I'm sure they will sort it out early next week, but every FedEx issue seems to be unique, suggesting the company has issues with their "last mile" delivery infrastructure. Sadly, there does not seem to be an alternative, as UPS and DHL are equally bad.

 

if you ever want a first class courier shipping try World Courier , expensive, sure, but every time I used them it was well worth it...sure stuff goes wrong with them too, but they care about resolving issues and getting shipments delivered.

 

Does anyone use Starlink as a dedicated isp for their kit?

Not dedicated as in audio-only ISP. I use Starlink as the ISP for my entire home and segregate the audio-only behind the Taiko router/switch/DCD combination.

Steve Z

 

That copper on BLACK is simply sweet!

You'll have to put your Olympus on the rack back-to-front then to admire that combo (which I agree, looks great)

Steve Z

 

If I found an Olympus on the street, I think I could muster the strength to pick it up and run with it. Where there is a will…

 

I don't want to interrupt the on-going discussion about logistics for something as mundane as a few comments about sound quality, but here goes.

Regarding Olympus and PGGB files. I've been doing some comparisons of PGGB-processed tracks to original 44.1 tracks with my Olympus/XDMI analog daughter card. I've got quite a few hours on each, having them installed and playing Roon Radio 24/7 since delivery, with a few short periods to swap cards and play XDMI SPDIF to my Vivaldi. As stated before, the Vivaldi APEX DAC and Clock are for sale (the Cybershaft OP-21 reference clock is sold). So Olympus/XDMI analog is my way forward for now.

First off, I'm not hearing the dire SQ drops I was expecting as sample rate/file size goes up. But, in some formats I'm not hearing the SQ improvements touted in the past for high bit rates either.


I've been running the comparisons using 12 44.1 tracks I've ripped from CDs and with which I am very familiar. At least 7 of these tracks are music that wasn't treated very well by the original mastering from analog to digital or perhaps were recorded digitally to begin with. The other 5 are just things I really like and are recorded well enough, because I can only stand so much A/B B/A listening before I start to lose the will to go on living. So they are some blessed relief and enjoyment from the testing.


The challenging-to-listen-to tracks all get fatiguing because of harshness, brash or forward sound, edginess, flat perspective or all of the above. What I've come to refer to as typical digital nasties. These nasties are particularly irritating to me when they are associated with vocals.

So I have looked to PGGB in the past (pre-Olympus) to help tame or ameliorate these problems, at least to the point of making the tracks easier to sit through if not downright enjoyable.

PGGB Plus as the public release is called had been a big improvement in terms of its success rate at improving digital music for me on Extreme. Not everything can be completely helped (some things are truly wretched in their original form) but almost always DSD files produced by PGGB have made listening much more enjoyable.



That hasn't changed. I am not going to convert my entire music library to DSD512. Really great sounding albums in 44.1/48 or 88.2/96 kHz PCM format with Olympus don't seem to need the help of PGGB DSD and SQ improvements if any are pretty small and to me, not worth the time or the penalty in disk space to worry about.


However, those less the stellar sounding original files very definitely benefit from conversion to DSD and the magnitude of improvement in lack of grain, naturalness, and importantly in reduction or outright removal of edginess and harshness goes up as the bit rate goes up.

So these comparisons wouldn't take forever (reference: will to live) I compared originals to DSD128 and DSD512 and skipped DSD256. Whether the deltas would be even larger were Olympus not sensitive to processor load is moot point -- I have no way of knowing that. Suffice to say, for me DSD processing is worthwhile for my problem tracks and albums and I will continue to use PGGB at DSD512x1 to do so.

High bit rate PCM is interesting. I decided to cut right to the chase and instead of producing several test folders of upsampled/remastered test tracks at increasing bit rates, I went directly to 32 bit 705.6/768 as a best case/worst case test.

While I found high bit rate PCM did make improvements to certain non-problem attributes such as longer decay tails, increased ambience and air, a great sense of ease, etc the reduction in edginess and harshness if it was present in the original was less, in some cases much less than with PGGB DSD.

Plus, while I hear the DSD-processed tracks as very full-bodied with saturated tonal colors and lots of natural texture, in comparison high rate PCM sounds lighter, almost thinner and not nearly as vivid.

So, I offer this as an additional data point for those using or contemplating using PGGB with library files with their Olympus and Olympus I/O.

Steve Z

 

If I found an Olympus on the street, I think I could muster the strength to pick it up and run with it. Where there is a will…

"Where there is a will" -
there's normally money...
Don't hurt your back.. Hire someone.

 

"Where there is a will" -
there's normally money...
Don't hurt your back.. Hire someone.

I've had the O-I/O for close to two weeks now. I'm not going to get into the sound quality yet (yes its great and getting better), as I'm finding that things are still breaking in with the XDMI digital AES out, but wanted to add a quick note on the packing and set up of the O-I/O.

1. Unpacking and setting up on my rack. Agree about the "don't hurt your back" advice from RUIN*ish. I hired my trusted moving outfit (3 guys) to bring the crates to my home, unpack and set up on my rack. Everything was perfectly packed. No damage. Nothing was missing. Well done Taiko.

2. Setting system up. It took a little over an hour to unpack and connect the O-I/O, and get it up and running, including connecting ROON and to the NAS. Music started playing without any glitches. Thumbs up Taiko team!

3. Couldn't connect initially with the BPS app to the battery through Bluetooth. But after some help from Christian P, and clarification about the minor effect on sound quality during charging, I left the defaults in place (charging takes place from 12pm to 7am) and haven't worried about it at all since. The system is always well within the voltage limits without having to give it a thought. Another thumbs up for the Taiko team!

All in all, a painless and quick set up. And haven't had any glitches since. Great job Taiko!

I'm going to swap out the I/O cards out next week to try out the XDMI analog out. And will report back - but apparently it may take a while for the analog card to settle. We shall see. But I'm encouraged by Old Mustang's findings relative to his dCs system.

 

If I found an Olympus on the street, I think I could muster the strength to pick it up and run with it. Where there is a will…

Mine was delivered to the middle of my driveway (look out the window “I wonder what that is”). I literally had to summon this will