Olive Opus: First Impressions - Page 11

As you may have noticed, I am sort of a veteran on this forum, having bought the original Opus (now Opus 5), at the time without any problem (dleivered on schedule, pre-load completed in 5 business days).
Sound-wise, throug a decent system (Classé"Magnepan 3.6/Stax electrostatic headphones) I found the Opus to at leat equal a Naim CD player when playing music from the hard disk, but somewhat inderior to it when used as a CD player. There is a detailed discussion of the supposed benefits of hard disk playback in issue 177 of The Absolute Sound.

As to whether the DAC in the Opus is better or worse than the one in the Outlaw 990, only a bench test would tell, and I have not seen any test results for either the Opus or the 990 (there was a bench test of the DAC of an earlier, less expensive Olive server, the Musica, in Stereophile, but that DAC was entirely different from the one in the Opus).

I've also personally been happy with the sound quality. One thing I've especially liked is the near-silence of the unit when playing from the hard disk. I've sat relatively close to the unit and speakers with the sound turned down and have to strain to hear the sound of the hard disk spinning.

I agree with JackD's comment about the relative lack of other solutions in this area. There are products that will stream audio from computers or NAS boxes--Sonos and Squeebox are examples. Aside from the McIntosh, the only other server of this type that I know of is made by Escient.

I'm satisfied with the Olive, but at some point I will likely want to upgrade to a server with a bigger disk and perhaps other features, so it would be nice if this market segment were more competitive at that point.

Over the next few years, I think you'll see music servers come out of the wood work. That is the next big thing, IMO. That said, I hope that the Olive 6 is the near term answer.....sepecially since I'm going to get one...

I've known about this for a while...





http://www.olive.us/home.html

All the other models are gone???

I like this too...

I just read about the new Melody on Olive's site and am still unclear exactly how it works. If, for example, I have an Opus in the basement and I want to listen to it in my bedroom, I understand I can control the Opus with Melody but how does it connect to auxilary speakers? Do I need a second receiver/amp in my bedroom with separate speakers to be able to hear the music?

As far as I know it would hook up to another receiver and stream the music from your basement.

Indeed! Now the next cycle begins:

1. waiting for the first reviews
2. figuring out limitations and bugs
3. evaluating whether it's the proper thing to get
4. price drop
5. new product announced
6. back to 1.

Cheers - MM

Interesting that the No.5 is gone from the website. Based on what Oliver told me at CES, the No.6 would be available in April?

marty

I just bought a Harmony One universal remote and am wondering if the Opus 4 and 6 are fully controllable by the Harmony One including power on and off?

Also, the big selling point of the Opus 5 was its higher end audiofile electronics. The new Olive web site does not mention anything about the electronics inside the Opus 4. Based on the lower price, am I to assume that the electronics and thus sound quality have been downgraded to the Musica?

Hi-

I wrote Olive yesterday (the CEO answers mail) and was told that more technical specs about the new line will be posted in the near future on the web site.

The main changes in the new unit seem to be the touch screen navigation and the HD size: from 320 GB to 1TB. Enough for just about any collection (especially in FLAC). He hinted that they are using a different DAC, but I don't know that for sure. Other than the proprietary touch screen control, the underlying software is still Linux based.

I have a Musica. Played through quality playback components I don't think the analog output is very good - about like any standard consumer CD player, IMO. But I use the Musica with the digital out to an external DAC and think that it gives excellent sound as a CD transport/music server - comparable to lots of "audiophile" CD decks.

Based on my experience, I'd say that if you own an external DAC, go for the Opus 4 and forget about the extra cash for the Opus 6. If not, wait for the reviews of both and make your decision.

Danny

Well, I spoke with Olive yesterday. 4's to ship towards end of May. I'll be getting one (I was a wishlist winner who has yet to receive a unit) with a terabyte of disk space. 6's will go out towards the end of the year. At that time, I'll return my unit and upgrade to the 6.

Any news?

I was also told that the Opus 4 is suppose to ship in the first two weeks of May. May starts tomorrow, so the countdown begins.

Just spoke with Olive, now looking at June shipment for both the Melody and Opus...

On the bright side, I'd rather have it later rather than a bug-ridden mess now.

June of what year?

LOL...

True....

Anybody else think the design of this thing looks silly? It certainly doesn't look like a 1.5-2k piece of equipment to me.

I've looked around and really can't find anything else that will do what I want for this price so I will more than likely be picking this up... just wished it looked a little better.

I'll reserve judgment until when, make that if, I ever see mine.

Just called Olive. First 2 weeks of June is still on!

Just ordered one.....

O.K. I'm holding you PERSONALLY responsible if it doesn't happen.

Yes, well, I'm still receiving the same reply now that I did in early April after I got the newsletter announcing the Opus4. I asked about detailed tech specs and was told "they are about two weeks away". Two weeks then and two weeks now?

One thing I'm really curious about the references to HD audio. Any info or thoughts?

Apparently they are eliminating this feature, at least in the Opus 4. A shame, as it worked really well and was one of the best solutions around for recording LP's. Even the track splitting worked well.

Danny

Actually this feature was removed in the last no.5s