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".

 

Obviously, it may be the result of different systems or sound preferences. So far my ears prefer red book or files lower than 24/96, PCM over DSD, in my system. But I will determine again when I have the Olympus. Have to rely on my ears in the end and let generality or theory go to hell. I converted 2 24/192 albums to 24/44.1 2 days ago because I was not happy with the sound with the 24/192 albums (finding it lumpy) but managed to finish listening to the converted 24/44.1 albums, liking the improved transparency (subtle improvement to which the ears are sensitive). So far, I have not liked a single album in excess of 24/96 in terms of SQ in my big library, which I have many from new or remastered recordings.

Hi Moladiego,

I gravitate to the theoretical and bookish, but more often find myself scratching my head with digital audio. A friend in Switzerland asserts the higher resolutions afford more room for digital filtering. Others suggest there is some feeling of those inaubible frequencies . Regardless, we both prefer the higher resolutions of the Honeck Reference Recordings and the Stereo Sound remasters (ridiculously priced, now as bundles https://www.stereosound-store.jp/c/music/bd14-bundle). Other examples, which contradict what I said about the native format, are the Szell and Bernstein Sony DSD masters, released in 24/192 a few years back. Fantastic! So the friend and I, with very different systems and preferences, agree the assessment is made on the individual release, of course a function of what's available. A rep from Deutsche Grammophon told me 24/192 is their standard format. Cynics will say "so they can make money." But then, I ask myself why Emil Berliner Studios chose 24/192 as their "working master", from which they derive the other commercial formats, including DSD. The EBS Tonmeister insists he is independent of the label.

 

Hi Moladiego,

I gravitate to the theoretical and bookish, but more often find myself scratching my head with digital audio. A friend in Switzerland asserts the higher resolutions afford more room for digital filtering. Others suggest there is some feeling of those inaubible frequencies . Regardless, we both prefer the higher resolutions of the Honeck Reference Recordings and the Stereo Sound remasters (ridiculously priced, now as bundles https://www.stereosound-store.jp/c/music/bd14-bundle). Other examples, which contradict what I said about the native format, are the Szell and Bernstein Sony DSD masters, released in 24/192 a few years back. Fantastic! So the friend and I, with very different systems and preferences, agree the assessment is made on the individual release, of course a function of what's available. A rep from Deutsche Grammophon told me 24/192 is their standard format. Cynics will say "so they can make money." But then, I ask myself why Emil Berliner Studios chose 24/192 as their "working master", from which they derive the other commercial formats, including DSD. The EBS Tonmeister insists he is independent of the label.

I have most of the hi-res alums you referenced above, but love none of them in terms of SQ. I know that many studios now record natively at 24/192 (smaller or orchestra labels sometimes record in DSD256, like LSO Live series, BIS or Channel labels, some of which I have). They record that way to give themselves all the options for future, but it does not mean necessarily that the native format sounds best in one's own system. Again, my ears and system consistently prefer WAV lower than 24/96, WAV over FLAC, etc. For example, I have Honeck/PSO's Bruckner 9 (which is not a great performance) on Reference label in all formats (DSD256, the native format, DSD64, 24/192, 24/96, 16/44.1 released by Reference) - I like the 24/96 the best, but it is not a recording which sounds nearly as good as some old analog recording reissued in redbook (like Bohm/BRSO's glorious Bruckner 7 1977 live performance on Audite) (in fact, I love none of the recent Reference recordings I have, none). Another example: I compared Honeck/PSO's live Tchaikovsky 5 (in 24/96) with Monteux/BSO's 1958 RCA studio recording (red book), while the newer album has more dynamic range etc., the old one sounds more live and natural - the lush and gut-wrenching strings of Boston Symphony overwhelmed me; the brass has more presence and impact; Monteux is also heads and shoulders over Honeck in terms of performance). All personal.

 

yes, i've been on my hobby horse about wav versus flac for years now, going back to my hqplayer days.
i've gone in to see BobV at Rhapsody a few times this year to listen to the extreme and olympus.

over the past few years, my tests with the extreme had convincingly showed me (plus Ed and assorted friends) that WAV was superior to FLAC or qobuz, using my totaldac rigs. this is not the case for every track but on many, it is very obvious to hear.
setup: extreme--usb to sotm reclock/convert to aes/ebu--totaldac reclocker--totaldac triunity
(no live clock upgrade yet)

my first visit this year we compared: (with his wonderful allsyvox speakers, xdmi analog with about 7-10 days burn in)
1. extreme--usb-esoteric dac (WAV)
2. olympus+io--xdmi analog (qobuz)

in comparing 1 and 2, it was unexpectedly close with 2 having a wider soundstage but not blowing extreme+wav out of the water. i'd give 2 a SQ gain of 20-30%, not at all what i had expected. because now we know the xdmi-analog needs more time to break in, plus qobuz requires flac decoding, i can't really assess how much the olympus+io was limited by burn in time versus flac decoding.

my second visit (same speakers) was olympus+io only, comparing WAV local files and the same music on qobuz, but now there had been over a month of burn in time for the xdmi analog. here the WAV was, as BobV said, "night and day" better. my objective for the visit to rhapsody was to determine if the WAV/FLAC SQ delta still existed in the Olympus and it clearly did. since the olympus is so very low noise, i'm quite surprised the added computation processing to decode flac could be audible. my guess is something else is going on. or is it somehow system dependent?

after this, we all went downstairs to listen to bobV's wonderful SET driven horns, using the xdmi-analog output and only listening to local WAV files. this was alsolutely EXQUISITE, just stunning. we didn't even try streaming and went into pure listening (not analyzing) mode. as steve williams has said, 'you can't unring the bell'. the sound was so good that i found myself wanting an olympus even though it is way out of my price comfort zone. i can't wait for some of that trickle down goodness to come to the extreme.

i've since done a little bit screwing around with various music converter programs but really have not been able to draw useful conclusions and i do not have the requisite skills (or patience?) or tools to dig into the formatting of music files, bit level comparisons, decoding and buffering strategies in software etc. Ed et taiko are aware of this and are looking into it. i trust they will get to the bottom of this. i've been in the background on this for a while and hope that since the cat is now out of the bag, we'll have some patience while taiko digs themselves out from under a pile of silver anodization. i expect 2025 to bring even better SQ, particularly for streaming.

miscellaneous:
--a great track to use is the Weaver's "guantanamera" from their live concert at carnegie hall (Red Book version, i don't like the 24-96 version)
--my default music converter has always been dbpoweramp which, after fixing metadata in a tag editor, i use to convert flac sources to wav.
--my dac is limited to 24-192 so higher bit rates are a non-issue here.
--all my SQ evaluations of WAV/FLAC have been red book only, which is the vast majority of the music i listen to.
--if everyone had ordered a black olympus, by now we'd probably have them all shipped AND the wav/flac fix available!!!!

When you, and @oldmustang, talk of Taiko potentially coming up with a solution to providing WAV files through the Olympus:

— Are you referring to decompression /conversion of only local Flac files stored on a NAS, or also steaming Qobuz Flac files?

— And, would this be possible through Roon or more likely through a future version of XDMS?

Is the primary challenge likely to be finding a method to run the Flac to WAV decompression/conversion (in real time)on the Olympus without creating noise on the signal?

 

When you, and @oldmustang, talk of Taiko potentially coming up with a solution to providing WAV files through the Olympus:

— Are you referring to decompression /conversion of only local Flac files stored on a NAS, or also steaming Qobuz Flac files?

— And, would this be possible through Roon or more likely through a future version of XDMS?

Is the primary challenge likely to be finding a method to run the Flac to WAV decompression/conversion (in real time)on the Olympus without creating noise on the signal?

@wil
1. both local and streaming flac. chez moi, they sound pretty similar so the incremental effects of streaming flac vs. local flac have been sorted.
2. i can't say (or even guess) really, until the exact mechanism gets determined. as someone once said, "something is going on, but we don't know what it is, do we mr. wil"
3. same as 2, tbd.

 

I have most of the hi-res alums you referenced above, but love none of them in terms of SQ. I know that many studios now record natively at 24/192 (smaller or orchestra labels sometimes record in DSD256, like LSO Live series, BIS or Channel labels, some of which I have). They record that way to give themselves all the options for future, but it does not mean necessarily that the native format sounds best in one's own system. Again, my ears and system consistently prefer WAV lower than 24/96, WAV over FLAC, etc. For example, I have Honeck/PSO's Bruckner 9 (which is not a great performance) on Reference label in all formats (DSD256, the native format, DSD64, 24/192, 24/96, 16/44.1 released by Reference) - I like the 24/96 the best, but it is not a recording which sounds nearly as good as some old analog recording reissued in redbook (like Bohm/BRSO's glorious Bruckner 7 1977 live performance on Audite) (in fact, I love none of the recent Reference recordings I have, none). Another example: I compared Honeck/PSO's live Tchaikovsky 5 (in 24/96) with Monteux/BSO's 1958 RCA studio recording (red book), while the newer album has more dynamic range etc., the old one sounds more live and natural - the lush and gut-wrenching strings of Boston Symphony overwhelmed me; the brass has more presence and impact; Monteux is also heads and shoulders over Honeck in terms of performance). All personal.

Okay, but with classical, for me and others, it's not always about cherry-picking SQ, but loving a specific performance of a great piece of music, and then in the best SQ available. Indeed all personal.

Happy holidays.

 

Okay, but with classical, for me and others, it's not always about cherry-picking SQ, but loving a specific performance of a great piece of music, and then in the best SQ available. Indeed all personal.

Happy holidays.

Thank you, same to you. That's why I cherish many mono recordings, such as those by the incomparable Furtwangler/BPO or /WPO live recordings made during the war years. Love recordings by Monteux, Fricsay, Kempe, Klemperer, Bohm, Kubelik, Munch, Jochum, Reiner, Szell, etc. made in the golden years of 50s to 70s. Many (or most) new recordings do not stack up to the great recordings made in the last century in terms of performance (and often even in SQ). The great Jochum Bruckner recordings on DG (esp. 4, 6, 7, which have not been surpassed and have few equals, even in terms of natural SQ).

 

here is my link where you can download the WAV and FLAC versions of Guantanamera. I've cut off the end of the track so there should be no music license violation.

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

...well the good folks at Cardas finally got my adapters out the door. My pre is balanced-only (can add SE module) so I just-now added the adapters to use the Taiko analog output into the WestminsterLab Quest pre after warming them up for an hour in my pocket.

Yep. That's the business now.

USB sounds very good from the O into the MSB Ref into the Q. But this is another variety of fruit altogether.

More of everything you always wanted. I give it two-thumbs up right out of the pocket warmer, with Cardas Clear adapters.

In a couple of weeks the MSB daughter board will come along and then we'll have an old-fashioned gunfight. Can't wait.

 

Does anyone with an Olympus/XDMI-MSB shipping have a Cascade DAC?

 

No; Select Dac here.

 

Does anyone with an Olympus/XDMI-MSB shipping have a Cascade DAC?

Yes.
I expect my Olympus/MSB XDMI to ship any day....

 

Yes.
I expect my Olympus/MSB XDMI to ship any day....

Indeed, the MSB modules have arrived, we’re testing all of them now, we do need to make some minor modifications to the mounting brackets.

They’re performing really well. The improvement over USB is very similar to the XDMI Lampizator link, which is an interesting datapoint as MSB PRO ISL connects over fiber and Lampizator over copper. I still have to try a copper DAC cable in stead of fiber, but I suspect others may get around to that before me

 

...you get us the modules and we'll get you the data, Emile! Can't wait.

 

Yes.
I expect my Olympus/MSB XDMI to ship any day....

I'm really interested in a Cascade to Cascade comparison, as my order is way back at the end of the column.

 

Hello Team Taiko, for those of us looking to get our weekly fix, any update on next batch under construction and/or how far into the queue expected before the holidays? I can imagine timing gets complicated at the factory as well as catching people at their shipping destination.
Thank you!

“Black Olympus servers under construction: 44, 53, 54, 56, 60, 61, 62” - those are all finished.

“We currently have 45 chassis waiting to be anodised” - those are finished and in transit, arrive Monday/Tuesday.

I’m unsure of how many chassis are queued up at the anodiser(s) now and I cannot check that till after the weekend.

 

That is fantastic. So it looks like like close to order #100 might have chassis in house next week, assuming they are up to snuff, ready to be incrementally built out.

 

Indeed, the MSB modules have arrived, we’re testing all of them now, we do need to make some minor modifications to the mounting brackets.

They’re performing really well. The improvement over USB is very similar to the XDMI Lampizator link, which is an interesting datapoint as MSB PRO ISL connects over fiber and Lampizator over copper. I still have to try a copper DAC cable in stead of fiber, but I suspect others may get around to that before me

FWIW, MSB says that fiber run can be quite long, allowing significant separation of the server from the DAC (I'm using vague words because I can't remember how long he said ).

 

Have 34.1, 40, 42, 49 shipped?

 

Have 34.1, 40, 42, 49 shipped?

Kindly reach out to support@taikoaudio.com for the status of individual order numbers.

 

FWIW, MSB says that fiber run can be quite long, allowing significant separation of the server from the DAC (I'm using vague words because I can't remember how long he said ).

Would a kilometre suffice?