Olive Symphony

Posted by: peter

Olive Symphony - 28/07/2005 19:04

http://www.olive.us

It's like a Rio Central, but with wireless, FLAC, UPnP and DAAP client and server, and less cheesy plastics. USD900 for the Central-like thing, USD200 for its attendant UPnP FLAC Receiver-like things.

Four years after we released the Rio Central, have we suddenly got competition?

I'd love to know if anyone gets some of this gear (they only ship to the US and Canada). Does it actually work?

Peter
Posted by: msaeger

Re: Olive Symphony - 28/07/2005 20:15

I like the design but after having the central I would prefer something that streams from a pc. The sonos device looks interesting.

The problem with onboard ripping and storage is I end up having to rip and store my music in two places.

I also would like a video out that screen looks smaller than the central one.
Posted by: adavidw

Re: Olive Symphony - 30/07/2005 15:09

The actual music management software that ships with it only runs on Mac OS X. Heh. That's a new one.
Posted by: peter

Re: Olive Symphony - 19/08/2005 13:58

Quote:
Does it actually work?

Not gapless, says El Reg.

Peter
Posted by: The Central Guy

Re: Olive Symphony - 19/08/2005 17:16

Quote:
The problem with onboard ripping and storage is I end up having to rip and store my music in two places.


Hi Matt,
I hadn't noticed your earlier comment...I've had pretty good luck using a Central to rip tunes, fixing up the tags, and then using the jEmplode "download" function to copy the tunes to my PC for backup or if I want to copy the tunes to my portable player.

I also find that the Central-ripped tunes sound fantastic at 256K, and when I rip CDs using other consumer products on my PC (like Easy CD Creator, etc.) the MP3 files just don't sound as good as the Central-derived files.

Did you have a different experience? Thanks, Randy
Posted by: msaeger

Re: Olive Symphony - 19/08/2005 21:14

I haven't been using the central much but I don't remember the sound being better than stuff ripped on my pc.

The central did work ok for ripping but there is that bug with ripping multiple disks and my unit will not upgrade to the latest software version for some reason.

Rio music manager is about as easy to use for ripping as the central and it also has a multi disk mode.

Even if I did rip everything on the central then copy it to the pc I still have extra steps I think it would just be easier to store it all on a pc and stream to the player.

I think the Sonos player with the display on the remote control sounds like about the best idea.
Posted by: peter

Re: Olive Symphony - 20/08/2005 10:46

Quote:
I've had pretty good luck using a Central to rip tunes, fixing up the tags, and then using the jEmplode "download" function to copy the tunes to my PC for backup or if I want to copy the tunes to my portable player.

Note that you can't do this with the Olive Symphony -- copying music from the device, except to portables or to Olive's own custom Backup Disks, is deliberately disabled.

Peter