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".

 

If Roon, as is, is an audiophile version...
The Olympus is already an audiophile server. Why do you need the IO?
At this level, I've no desire to drive on all season tires.

 

@John T
Happy Birthday!

 

...he's probably out chopping wood.

 

No wood today Mark! I sold my Digital Brewing Rig/System to a friends son. To help pay for all these new audio toys! So my hat today is Brewing Instructor! Pulling a lot of information from the archives! Maybe we can connect it to the IO!!

 

No wood today Mark! I sold my Digital Brewing Rig/System to a friends son. To help pay for all these new audio toys! So my hat today is Brewing Instructor! Pulling a lot of information from the archives! Maybe we can connect it to the IO!!

That's a serious looking "homebrew" rig there, John! Makes my 7 gallon carboy approach seem crude.

 

That's a serious looking "homebrew" rig there, John! Makes my 7 gallon carboy approach seem crude.

Yes it is. Its a 20 Gallon system (HERMS). Heat exchanger in the hot liquor tank to recirculate the Mash. Able to dial the Mash in between 150-152. For Ales. We could automatically raise the strike water to 175. All the kettles have thermal wells for Temp. Controllers. The conical is 27 gallon also with thermal well. We kegged everything. Even used a Nitrogen/Co2 mix like Guinness with a creamer faucet for all of our stouts and porters. We were doing Lagers too, I was building yeast starters and fermenting down around 47! Cool shit, literally! Award winning beers...

 

The answer to this question, I believe, is quite simple.

Roon was developed around two main ideas:

• Efficient library management
  
  
• An audio transfer protocol, RAAT, which allows, among other things, easy integration with a veriety of hardware.

Its library management is simply the best around.

I’m not talking about ergonomics, which is subjective. I mean its ability to identify, name, and link pieces of music together.

I have around 7,000 classical music albums, almost all perfectly identified without me having to do anything.

Among these albums, for example, I have 43 different interpretations of Suite No. 1 in G major BWV 1007 by Johann Sebastian Bach. All these tracks are perfectly identified, and linked together, despite the files often being poorly tagged. No other library manager does this.

Beyond this small example, Roon offers all the features and functionalities we all are familiar with.


RAAT, which made Roon successful, filled a technological gap. It is one of Roon's backbones.

Such software is large and complex, meaning it's power hungry and therefor generates noise.

So, it is far from being something audiophile (low noise).


Quite the opposite of XDMS.

An audiophile version of Roon will never see the light of day simply because it is outside their core business scope.


But...

We now have the Taiko Extreme and Taiko Olympus!

Each in their own business bracket, offer the possibility of using Roon with audiophile sound quality.

• The Taiko Extreme via USB has little competition.
  
  
• The Taiko Olympus I/O XDMI has no competition (except perhaps the Wadax Reference…).

Conclusion: You already have an audiophile version of Roon ;-)

Cheers,

Thomas

Hi Thomas, thank you for the prompt reply and your view, you are right till the part quote”quite the opposite of xdms”
An audiophile version of Roon is outside of their core business scope is perhaps an assumption that only Roon knows, never say never…..
There is a forum that is very interesting, completely independent of Taiko and Roon, as far as i know, that is dedicated to tune Roon with the purpose of obtaining a better sound quality, with a lot of different members owning different makes of servers.
Besides the fine tuning prescribed by Taiko, it goes further on the tweaking.
Some of the tweaks work and others i cannot detect a difference, but that in my system.
Maybe other people with different systems will note better results.
All this and the mods made on the OS of Taiko servers (win 10/11), and fine tuning of Roon can lead us to the conclusions you make regarding your final statement on the Extreme/O/IO, so the sound we are getting is the sum of software+hardware.
Hardware at Taiko is getting better and better, but Roon maintains an almost static position regarding sound quality, as you certainly noted by the different itinerations (versions) of the same, up and down, during last years.
We are not talking about hardware here, because Taiko is implementing new technologies to better run Roon, without doubt, and not the contrary.
Software is very important and in Win OS, in a normal PC, if you disable some of the services running normally, you will note the PC will run faster.
The same happens on music servers, less memory allocations imply faster response and less noise, less energy consumption, and all this simply matters to us, the audiophiles, because it affects SQ.
Without doubt the Extreme/O/IO will reflect future software tweaks(remember the drivers for the usb and ethernet cards), and i only hope that Roon also follow the same path.
I wouldn’t mind paying for an audiophile version of Roon, not meaning the actual one doesn’t work well.
Only a wish.

Cheers!

 

Yes it is. Its a 20 Gallon system (HERMS). Heat exchanger in the hot liquor tank to recirculate the Mash. Able to dial the Mash in between 150-152. For Ales. We could automatically raise the strike water to 175. All the kettles have thermal wells for Temp. Controllers. The conical is 27 gallon also with thermal well. We kegged everything. Even used a Nitrogen/Co2 mix like Guinness with a creamer faucet for all of our stouts and porters. We were doing Lagers too, I was building yeast starters and fermenting down around 47! Cool shit, literally! Award winning beers...

You are WAY beyond this piker! I would love that level of thermal control, but I'd fear the capacity, as it magnifies the mistake of a bad batch. Looks like you have a lot of janitorial work to keep it all going well. Very nice set up!

 

Bacch Lab Processor Device in tandem use with the Taiko's system? I am curious whether anybody has tried or used Bacch Lab audio processor system in his Taiko or other high-end system? A manufacturer (otherwise an utter serious purist guy usually disdainful of DSP or other digital artifacts etc. and whom I deeply respect) got gobsmacked upon listening to the system at the Capital Audiofest, concluding that with that system one need not treat the room anymore. The Bacch Lab does not seem to have a dealership network. My interest is further piqued by this article https://www.classical-music.com/articles/scientists-love-classical-music, where Princeton Professor Edgar Choueiri talked about how his love for classical music, in particular Bach's Mass in B minor (which, BTW, I consider to be the greatest music ever written, a view shared by Otto Klemperer and Eugen Jochum, which view I happened to find out), started his efforts resulting in the Bacch system (named in honor of Bach).

 

I did a few years ago. It seems to be mainly a very clever way of deconvolving the crosstalk between left and right ears. Had the full setup (Mac mini based then) for a trial including some conversations with the professor (who I deeply admire).
It was mind blowing for soundstaging but did not float my boat musically.

That was several years ago. Unclear how it is now, but Extreme connected a lot more musically/emotionally for me.

 

Based on what I read and the feedback I received, the improvement brought by BACCH system is nothing short of mind-boggling, as you said, that results from the subtraction by BACCH of a signal that should not have been in a given channel ("cross talk" from L to R and R to L channel, creating spatial distortion). However, the Mac Mini as a server used by BACCH (for Roon core) and the USB or optical in (from source) and out (to external DAC or preamp/amp) in that system leave much to be improved. Wish Roon or Taiko XDMS could license BACCH's DSP and integrate it with its player. It would be a new world of home audio experience (my guess is Olympus being improved by another 2x or 3x) that could make recordings sounding almost as good as live music experienced in nearfield. This review by Absolute Sound is very informative: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/ar...ied-physics-bacch4mac-stereo-purifier-review/

 

Based on what I read and the feedback I received, the improvement brought by BACCH system is nothing short of mind-boggling, as you said, that results from the subtraction by BACCH of a signal that should not have been in a given channel ("cross talk" from L to R and R to L channel, creating spatial distortion). However, the Mac Mini as a server used by BACCH (for Roon core) and the USB or optical in (from source) and out (to external DAC or preamp/amp) in that system leave much to be improved. Wish Roon or Taiko XDMS could license BACCH's DSP and integrate it with its player. It would be a new world of home audio experience (my guess is Olympus being improved by another 2x or 3x) that could make recordings sounding almost as good as live music experienced in nearfield. This review by Absolute Sound is very informative: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/ar...ied-physics-bacch4mac-stereo-purifier-review/

In case the processing being done real time (running a convolve engine?) would impact negatively the sound of the the Olympus or Extreme, perhaps an alternative would be a pre-processing of the files, creating new .wav files to be played by the Olympus or Extreme.

 

In case the processing being done real time (running a convolve engine?) would impact negatively the sound of the the Olympus or Extreme, perhaps an alternative would be a pre-processing of the files, creating new .wav files to be played by the Olympus or Extreme.

Taiko doesn’t recommend or support any dsp, including Bacch, with the Olympus as the dsp produced noise would be revealed in the quiet sonic environment of the Olympus.

I tried Bacch a few years ago and respect what they are doing, but my subjective experience was that it stretched the soundscape in a way that seemed less natural to me than Stereo. It seemed to lose density. Maybe I’m just conditioned by years of Stereo to prefer it.

Bottom line for me is not to mess with what the Taiko team is doing.

 

In case the processing being done real time (running a convolve engine?) would impact negatively the sound of the the Olympus or Extreme, perhaps an alternative would be a pre-processing of the files, creating new .wav files to be played by the Olympus or Extreme.

Thought the heart of BACCH is DSP (the rest is an inferior Mac server etc.). All servers have and run engines, including Olympus'. If the much cleaner Olympus's engine could include the BACCH DSP (which can be turned off) via its own player, the result could be phenomenal. BACCH's cross-talk cancellation can be varied from full (100%) to reduced to be optimal for a given album. Hope Taiko could experiment to determine. Taiko and BACCH address different issues of sound reproduction and they may complement each other very well. BACCH's DSP like Roon's DSP could be turned on or off to suit different needs.

 

Cutting to the chase...
Had a not so subtle uptick the other day..
Appears to be sustainable..
Roon sounds quite wonderful..
Yes, my preference is......
Marc

 

The bottom line as I see it is Roon with Olympus is indeed nothing short of phenomenal and is clearly vastly superior to XDMS with Extreme. However I anxiously await the true comparison of XDMS vs Roon on the Olympus . I just think that with the countless hours of alpha testing by members and Taiko staff as well as the money spent on the Extreme, that when XDMS is worked out for the Olympus, Emile isn't going to settle for just anything

 

Hi al,,

I've been meaning to follow up on my last comparison with the MSB xdmi and taiko analogue for a while but got side tracked. After reading how the MSB xdmi needed a lot of time to open up i gave it another shot after initially shelving it in favor of the taiko analogue xdmi. I now have well over 300 hours on the MSB board and it definitely needed the time to break in. When i initially did my comparison it felt like the taiko analogue was hands down a better product. With the Taiko, I would hear pure "black" when there was no notes being played, the bass was strong, the violins and female vocals in particular were amazing and detail and clarity were supreme. While i still believe all those things to be true the MSB is a much closer comparison.

The MSB used to feel like there was some "veil" or pressure when no notes were being played. I don't know how else to explain the feeling but it wasn't as calm or quiet as the Taiko was. That has almost all but dissipated. I've noticed that the MSB now presents a lower bass reproduction than the taiko. Listening to "otherside" by red hot chilli peppers you can notice the difference almost immediately in the first riff the bass just sounds deeper than the taiko presentation. Listening to "crash into me" by dave matthews, the sound of the cymbals being hit had more weight to it. With the taiko it felt like someone was very lightly tapping on them vs the MSB seemed to give them a little more power to it. When it comes to detail, the MSB and Taiko can go roughly blow for blow but i felt i could make out individual strings being plucked a little more consistently with the MSB.

Now while all of this makes the MSB immeasurably better than my previous comparison, but i still find that the MSB doesn't compare favorably for me when it comes to the tone of the violins, guitars and female vocals. Immediately listening to violin heavy classical presentations i lean very favorably to the taiko implementation. It just sounds so much sweeter to me. Inversely a lot of my rock/metal songs with heavy bass to it sound lean on the taiko now. If it was easier to swap cards i would likely do so depending on the listening night now.

I want to end by saying that very often i've found myself thinking i heard some small detailed difference and then the idea takes hold and it becomes certainty, and then i'll blind a/b and be confused again and unsure. So in regards to my comments about the harder hitting cymbals and more details in the strings, while I do think i heard it on multiple occasions, i was very critically listening and it was subtle so i'm not 100% sure if that's something everyone will hear (or perceive they do). I mention this so i can say that the couple things that i do know without a doubt was the difference in the presentation of the tone of violins etc and the bass. I would say if you prefer your music to have a deeper overall sounding presentation the msb is likely for you. if you prefer it to have a sweeter sounding presentation the taiko will likely fill all your needs. Neither one sounds anything less than amazing and i'd be happy to live with either one. I would love for someone to let me know which presentation is more accurate as well. While the violins sound so much better to me on taiko they might not be as accurate as the MSB and vice versa (not that it would change my preference anyway )

The final message is to let your msb, lampi etc board really really break in before doing a comparison.

 

Hi al,,

I've been meaning to follow up on my last comparison with the MSB xdmi and taiko analogue for a while but got side tracked. After reading how the MSB xdmi needed a lot of time to open up i gave it another shot after initially shelving it in favor of the taiko analogue xdmi. I now have well over 300 hours on the MSB board and it definitely needed the time to break in. When i initially did my comparison it felt like the taiko analogue was hands down a better product. With the Taiko, I would hear pure "black" when there was no notes being played, the bass was strong, the violins and female vocals in particular were amazing and detail and clarity were supreme. While i still believe all those things to be true the MSB is a much closer comparison.

The MSB used to feel like there was some "veil" or pressure when no notes were being played. I don't know how else to explain the feeling but it wasn't as calm or quiet as the Taiko was. That has almost all but dissipated. I've noticed that the MSB now presents a lower bass reproduction than the taiko. Listening to "otherside" by red hot chilli peppers you can notice the difference almost immediately in the first riff the bass just sounds deeper than the taiko presentation. Listening to "crash into me" by dave matthews, the sound of the cymbals being hit had more weight to it. With the taiko it felt like someone was very lightly tapping on them vs the MSB seemed to give them a little more power to it. When it comes to detail, the MSB and Taiko can go roughly blow for blow but i felt i could make out individual strings being plucked a little more consistently with the MSB.

Now while all of this makes the MSB immeasurably better than my previous comparison, but i still find that the MSB doesn't compare favorably for me when it comes to the tone of the violins, guitars and female vocals. Immediately listening to violin heavy classical presentations i lean very favorably to the taiko implementation. It just sounds so much sweeter to me. Inversely a lot of my rock/metal songs with heavy bass to it sound lean on the taiko now. If it was easier to swap cards i would likely do so depending on the listening night now.

I want to end by saying that very often i've found myself thinking i heard some small detailed difference and then the idea takes hold and it becomes certainty, and then i'll blind a/b and be confused again and unsure. So in regards to my comments about the harder hitting cymbals and more details in the strings, while I do think i heard it on multiple occasions, i was very critically listening and it was subtle so i'm not 100% sure if that's something everyone will hear (or perceive they do). I mention this so i can say that the couple things that i do know without a doubt was the difference in the presentation of the tone of violins etc and the bass. I would say if you prefer your music to have a deeper overall sounding presentation the msb is likely for you. if you prefer it to have a sweeter sounding presentation the taiko will likely fill all your needs. Neither one sounds anything less than amazing and i'd be happy to live with either one. I would love for someone to let me know which presentation is more accurate as well. While the violins sound so much better to me on taiko they might not be as accurate as the MSB and vice versa (not that it would change my preference anyway )

The final message is to let your msb, lampi etc board really really break in before doing a comparison.

Tomas, thanks for the detailed report. Which MSB are you talking about? Cascade? Select? Reference? with/without DD?

 

600 hours in for me with MSB XDMI/Cascade and things are still evolving. Body, realism, bass
Strings don't sound sweet, they have rasp and rosin and bow hair and for me the XDMI delivers. Same with voice.
Acoustic guitar has picks and finger slides and plucks. Nothing sweet. Just amazing micro dynamics.....
Everything just more real....

 

select with DD. I think when i say "sweet" its just a more appealing tone for me. it may be incorrect (or not) but its more pleasant to listen to. they both have amazing details and microdetails but i do think the msb is edging out the taiko now in that category after much more break-in. the word body describes what i'm hearing now in the cymbals and plucks of the strings. i find it to be ever so slightly better on the msb now but i still find them both very comparable now.