Olive 03HD Music Server First Look

[admin]

Looking to consolidate your entire CD collection? Look no further than the Olive 03HD Music Server. The Olive 03HD music server features their own Music Engine which seamlessly integrates innovative touch-screen technology with intelligent software designed for people who collect music and care to hear it in original quality. Simply insert your CD, and the O3HD automatically recognizes, labels and imports your music at the touch of a button and categorizes it by genre, artist, album and track. The 03HD sports premium 192kHz/24bit DAC's for high resolution audio recording. Purists need not worry as the 03HD is built with a very quite Teac transport and the HD is cushioned into 4 layers of padding to drop the mechanical noise and the unit is passively cooled with no internal noisy fans.

Discuss "Olive 03HD Music Server First Look" here. Read the article.

 

[jmjensen]

Sound Quality
I bought the 3HD for playing background music rather than as my primary source. The thing is the sound quality is not bad, and while I have not done any side by side tests (and probably won’t)the quality and convenience make it a winner. It’s like going from LPs to CD.

Observations
While Olive market it as a internet capable device, that can be used as a standalone, it really is not. I only got internet capability in my media room (via a EoP, not recommended), after I had ripped my CDs. The Olive music Data Base does not have album artwork, and did not have the album data for a third of my CD’s. So once I had a internet connection it took me some time to find and load all the album artwork.

Bottom line here is to get the most from the Olive, it needs access to the internet.

Functionality
The functionality when coupled with the internet is great and being able to browse and play my music without getting of my bum is a pleasure

The not so Good
I expected that all the functionality of the 3HD would have been available when browsing and playing music from my PC, which is not the case. The most frustrating omission is the lack of volume control.

Other notable omissions:
• internet radio
• The problem with not being able to eject some CD’s. I don’t know why, what I can tell you, it is two specific CDs which the Olive cannot read and struggles to eject. Both play on my CD player without any difficulty
• The search function does not workl
• It would be nice if the Blackberry could be used as a control device, not just the iPod/Phone

Conclusion
I wanted the server so I could select and play background music when we entertain, it does that perfectly. But I now realise I can do so much more, and have a whole new set of options (like using the 2HD to bring sound into the rest of the house), but I am not sure if the Olive is the server for the job. So for now I am just going to wait and see if the functionality challenges are addressed/fixed when Olive do a software update.

So on balance I am happy with the Olive, but it has been frustrating.

 

[XEagleDriver]

jmjensen,

Thanks for the review.

Your comments along with other ommissions in the 03HD's design convinced me the $1K 03 is not the server solution for me.

- A 500GB HD is borderline small for a product clearly designed for use with larger, lossless and high bite-rate files like FLAC.
- No video output to a TV, or other display, make it a walk-up to browse device--unsat if you are not an iPhone or iPad owner.
- From your review, the "Olive music Data Base does not have album artwork" suprised and disappointed me, considering the website shows album art prominently on the promotional pics.

The 04HD covers most of these deficiencies, but $2.5k is a very high "Ouch" factor.


Still looking,
XEagleDriver

 

[davidtwotrees]

He said the olive does not have artwork in it's database, but I believe you need to have it hooked up to the internet via a ethernet cat5 cable, as my older Escient Fireball is. If your music is by obscure independent artists, or often classical discs have odd, obscure details, they are not logged anywhere, so you are sol on artwork. BUT. 98% of music that I listen has artwork that can be found on the Gracenote service that Escient uses. Having the artwork is nice, but has little to do with the playback of the music. Also, a music server will reproduce sound as good as any digital source you can find- why wouldn't it?
Also, this is their entry level model with 500 gb- I believe you can go up to a couple of TB if you spend the coin.
Gosh, 500gb will hold a lot of cds..........
it would be disappointing if it didn't display on a TV, as well. If you are in the sweet spot of your system, to not have it up on the screen would be a downside, at least to me. My escient only does OSD on my TV, and it is not good for background music as you have to fire up the plasma to see what you are doing. A server should have both options for navigating, imho- a display on the server itself, and the ability to bring it up on the TV, too.
I do like that olive has adopted a trayless cd player option. It seems much more efficent than a tray clunking in and out, to me.

 

[XEagleDriver]

To me, the "music server" experience I am looking for should contain:
- A reasonably high AQ playback (Olive excels here)
- Ability to surf your music collection, with album art, from the sweet spot (i.e. leverage your HDTV), also implies remote control.
- A 1 TB or larger HD so storage is not an issue down the road
(cost difference from 500GB to 1 TB being only $30-40 these days, why not?)
- Internet connectivity (wireless being much more prevalent these days)
- Control software that is easy and fun to use, a ZUNE HD is one good example
(more familiar with it since my son has one, than I am with iPod/Phone's)

I guess for the entry level I wish Olive placed more emphasis on the user interface described above, and not on expensive DACs; most of us have pretty reasonable DACs in our AVRs we are using already. But the jump from an entry level $1k to their mid-level 04 at $2.5K is steep IMHO.

XEagleDriver

 

[emorphien]

This just misses on several levels for me.

For this amount of money there's no reason to have only a 500gb drive and the exclusion of WiFi and standard internet radio stream compatibility (not some groomed selection, which may or may not include what I want) is inexcusable.

 

[cschang]

I would like to read opinions on why someone would purchase something like this over a Squeezebox or Sonos.

 

[jmjensen]

Just a clarification, I am referring to the Olive 3HD onboard library. not the online Olive music Data Base. Hence my point it is not really a standalone device.

Once I had internet access in my media room I was able to rip the balance of my CDs without any difficulty.

 

[jp_over]

I would like to read opinions on why someone would purchase something like this over a Squeezebox or Sonos.

As would I.

We always have a PC + laptop in the family (expensive enough as is without buying additional components that do the same thing with less functionality). I really want a good solution to integrate our network with my receiver. My research is just beginning, so I'm not quite familiar with all the products yet. Squeezebox & Sonos are two that keep popping up as is the option of a network AVR.

 

[burbis]

Why would I choose this over a Dell Zino cube computer, with 1TB storage, USB and S/P DIF outs, HDMI out, remote control, Blu-ray player and CD/DVD burner, built-in wireless networking, currently selling for $599?

 

[jmjensen]

"Dell Zino cube computer, with 1TB storage"

Looks like a nice option. When i was looking for a music server, I looked at PC based solutions, hybrid and standalone solutions.

My criteria where; Good sound quality, good value and simple. I wanted an out of the box solution without clutter i.e. keyboards and monitors. I did not find a perfect solution the Olive was just the best fit for me.

If money was not a consideration my solution would have been different.

 

[bikemig]

I suspect someone would buy this over some of the other options because it hopefully is fairly seamless for someone who is not comfortable with computer based audio. Other than that, I agree a PC makes a lot of sense. I use a macmine but the dell zino cube is obviously a good choice as well. The advantage of a PC is that in addition to being a platform for streaming music, it also streams video which is great if you hook it up to your TV. For the price difference between the olive and a PC, you can buy a heck of an outboard dac or simply use the dacs in your AV receiver if you have one. The SB touch is a great choice as well and the sound is better than from the analog out of a computer.