Olive 4 Review from Home Entertainment

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by wpines

Would you use Olive's digitizing service?

No for three reasons. First, I don't mind adding music while I am listening to another source. Second, I don't put all of my music on the servers. If I find I do not care for a disc after a few listenings, then it may get removed. Third, I use Music Collector to maintain a database of all of my music, what it is loaded on, where it is stored, etc. I would be updating this as I decide what to load.

[two dot]

Perhaps this has been answered... but can you "bulk" load to the Olive, say from another external hard drive?

[cmalak]

This is from the Olive website:

Join your network.
Just as easily as it hooks up to your stereo system, the Olive 4 Hi-Fi Server also connects to your home network. It sports wireless (802.11g) as well as wired (Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity and supports WEP and WPA encryption (up to 128-bit) to give you ultimate flexibility. An automated setup assistant gets you connected in just minutes.

Better safe than sorry.
Although we use only best-in-class hard drives, it is always a good idea to have a personal backup of your music. That is why the Olive 4 Hi-Fi Server features a high-speed USB 2.0 interface for backup to an external hard drive. Please note that we are strong advocates of intellectual property rights and don't condone any improper duplication of music.

If you can connect wirelessly or via ethernet to your network and it also has a USB port to connect to outboard USB drives so you can backup the hard-drive, I am assuming you can transfer music to its hard drive via these connections.

[Still-One]

Well I decided to pull the trigger on the Olive 4HD. It should arrive on Thursday. I am curious to see how the hi-rez files sound as compared to normal CD or SACD.

[jdandy]

Jim.......Congratulations. I know you will put it to the test, and offer us your honest insight on the Olive's performance. Looking forward to your review.

[cmalak]

Jim...congrats. Looking forward to hearing your impressions.

[Still-One]

With the 60 day satisfaction guarantee, ability to access the DAC's in the unit with another source, use the dacs in the MCD-500, they have an IPhone app, and a decent price it was a pretty easy choice.

[jdandy]

Originally Posted by Stillone

With the 60 day satisfaction guarantee, ability to access the DAC's in the unit with another source, use the dacs in the MCD-500, they have an IPhone app, and a decent price it was a pretty easy choice.

Jim.......I'll wait for your impressions, but that might be the way to go for a new music server added to the studio tube system.

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by jdandy

Jim.......I'll wait for your impressions, but that might be the way to go for a new music server added to the studio tube system.

Dan
It is the 2TB unit (mirrored drives) and you have the choice of FLAC or WAV (no compression) I will keep you posted.

[cmalak]

Jim...did you get the base Olive 4 or the Olive 4 HD (w/ the 24/192 Burr Brown PCM1792A DAC)? If you got the HD version, it would be interesting to compare the DAC onboard the Olive 4 HD vs. using a digital out connection from the Olive to the digital input on your MCD-500. Looking forward to your review.