Audio: Listen to this article.
In the before times, immediately prior to the start of the pandemic, I decided to put an end to my endless DIY digital music server tweaking and optimizing, and purchase a digital music server that had all the tweaks and optimizations I was exploring, but taken to their (no pun intended) absolute extreme.
I took a leap of faith and purchased a Taiko Audio Extreme Music Server, and documented that odyssey in my 5 part Reality Quest: Going to Extremes with the Taiko Audio SGM Extreme review.
After adding a Sound Application 240V PGI TT-7 Power Line Conditioner to the party (review here), I updated my personal Laws for Digital Audio Optimization to the following:
- First Law: Invest in cabling, power, and digital hygiene to do as little harm as possible (directly or indirectly) to the DAC’s clock, ground plane, or reference voltage plane
- Second Law: Invest in a digital endpoint that moves bit perfect digital data from ethernet to a USB DAC with as little variability and as much timing and signal integrity as possible (aka, as close to precision real time data streaming to DAC as possible)
- Third Law: Invest in the cleanest and fastest and highest capacity power delivery to all your audio (and video) components
The Taiko Extreme delivers bigly on the Second Law (better than anything I have heard before), and the TT-7 does an amazing job on the Third Law.
Flash forward four years and Taiko has released their next generation music server, the Taiko Olympus Music Server, leaning heavily into innovations related to the First and Third Laws above, while pushing things to a fundamentally new level on the Second Law.
Given what a game changer the original Taiko Audio Extreme was, it is time to revisit the Taiko ecosystem, and have another long form exploration of what makes this new generation of digital music server the same, better, and different than the Extreme.
For those that do not have the patience for a 16,000 word two part review, here is the TL;DR:
- The Taiko Extreme remains the absolute pinnacle of the last “S” curve of digital audio, that others are still catching up to (but they have been steadily catching up over the last four years)
- The Taiko Olympus Music Server is the start of a brand new “S” curve in digital audio, that is better (and different) than anything I’ve experienced before
- The Olympus Server is miles better than the Extreme in every way
- Since getting my Olympus, I've only briefly listened to my Extreme to do some comparisons
- The USB output of Olympus is much much better than Extreme USB to my Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE with L2 DAC (USB out on the Olympus is by far the best I've ever heard)
- As incredible as Olympus USB is, the new Olympus XDMI Analog output is at a completely different/better level (better in all the aspects that USB digital excels, but also better in different ways than anything we’ve experienced with Extreme and predecessor DIY digital audio)
- The Olympus is better and fundamentally different than the Extreme in extremely interesting and compelling ways
- XDMI digital audio transport is fundamentally and transformationally better than USB/AES/etc for digital audio, so much so that even the relatively simple/modest DAC chip in the Taiko XDMI Analog daughter card in the Olympus is a giant killer
- I can't wait to hear what an insanely great XDMI DAC sounds like
- Skip internal storage on the Olympus Server, streaming music or playing music from your NAS or file server sounds better than music on internal storage
- The full Taiko network stack has a truly remarkable impact on sound quality (no penalty for streaming music vs local, and all music sounding better), and hints at the goodness the Olympus I/O system must bring to the party (alas, I haven't heard the Olympus I/O yet)
- Need/benefit of upsampling and higher resolution music is out the window with Olympus (which is both mind bending, and indicative of how much the world has changed with this new technology)
- Stick with Redbook or 96k music for the best sound quality on Olympus
- The vanishing low noise and ultra-fast dynamics of battery power for digital servers is a complete game changer
- Be ready to hear lots of things in your room and the rest of your system that you haven’t heard before
Net Net: If you get a chance to hear XDMI from the Olympus Server, jump at the opportunity – you’ll be among the first to hear what may be the future of digital audio.
For those that are interested in the gory detail. this review is broken into two parts:
In this Part 1, I review what has changed in the Taiko ecosystem in these past four years, dig into the hardware design and more unique aspects of the Olympus Server, and share some curious first impressions that had me scratching my head.
In Part 2, I dig into the correlation between power consumption and sound quality, the impact of power and network optimizations, listening impressions, and do a deep dive on what I think may be contributing to the unique Olympus sound.
Let’s dive in.
Catching Up with Taiko Audio
First my usual caveat: Digital optimizations and hygiene in audio can be a contentious topic (bits are bits, right?). Rather than debate mechanics, I am sharing my experiences in my home with my equipment and my local power grid with my ears and my biases and my aspirations for connecting emotionally to remarkable musical performances. Almost certainly yours will vary. Hopefully my experiences are helpful to you, but if not, that’s OK too.
The big lesson I learned with the Taiko Extreme is that in order to make the “digital” part of “digital audio” disappear, you need a digital music server that is as powerful as possible, and make that digital music server do as little as possible.
With the Taiko Extreme, everything is over specified and over allocated and over built, not as a flex, but as part of a very purposeful design to have dynamic loads on the system during music playback perturb core components as little as possible.
Core elements of the Extreme design philosophy include:
- Have the best possible, most powerful and fastest components you can possibly have with the fastest most dynamic power you can deliver, and use them as little as possible
- Isolate processes from each other as much as possible so they have as few interrupts as possible
- Leverage affinity channels to allocate memory to different CPU cores, minimizing memory access contention
- Strip the OS and drivers to the absolute minimum, and tune tune tune tune to keep processes and drivers and OS from disturbing each other
Do this relentlessly, with a world class engineer like Taiko head guru Emile Bok (who also happens to have a world class ear for music) and you have the Magnum Opus that is the Taiko Audio Extreme.
Since my review of the Extreme four years ago, the Extreme platform has evolved considerably.
There was a disastrous Roon release that crushed sound quality on the Extreme, but in doing so, it shone a bright light on the potential deleterious impact of network activity on sound quality. That led to network driver changes that restored things (mostly), but clearly there was something important here that needed to be understood and optimized on the network side of digital music.
For the team at Taiko, the experience of a software update essentially killing the Extreme magic also made it clear that in order to deliver the highest quality experience for their customers, they needed tight control on what comes into and out of the Extreme.
This led to development of the Taiko USB card and driver, and development of Taiko’s own music software (first the Taiko Audio Server, and now the Extreme Direct Music Server or XDMS). These innovations gave even more insights on the criticality of control over music playback and digital audio transport streams, and resulted in major improvements in sound quality for us Extreme owners.
Next came the full Taiko network stack, with the Taiko Router, Taiko Switch, Taiko DC Distributor, and Taiko NIC card (with associated optimized drivers), and the opportunity to fully manage network traffic coming to the Extreme. The result was another huge step up in sound quality, with the non-trivial side benefit of streaming music (from a NAS or music services like Qobuz) no longer having a sound quality penalty vs local music content.
Along the way, there were also lessons in the lab about power enhancements with GaN supplies and batteries, that the best USB is no USB, and the importance of finding even more powerful servers and tuning them to do even less.
As the next step in enhancing the Extreme platform, Taiko’s initial intent was to release new power supplies and a PCIe-based DAC for the Extreme. The original incarnation of what eventually became the Taiko Audio Olympus Server was an external battery supply for the Extreme (same size case as the Extreme, that could run for 20 hours, with 4 hours for recharging), and a Taiko designed PCIe card that had a DAC built into it.
The goal with the PCIe DAC was to eliminate conversion from the music server to USB then from USB to I2S in the DAC, and replace it with a direct PCIe path from the CPU/memory of the music server to the I2S inputs of the digital to analog stage of the DAC.
Paired with the Taiko router+switch+NIC and the Taiko XDMS music player, these final additions would give Taiko complete control on all inputs to the server (power and network), and all outputs from the server (analog out), eliminating the headache of USB (and different USB implementations) for good measure.
Although these designs were complete, post-pandemic supply chain challenges limited commercial releases to the Taiko network stack (router, switch, NIC, DCD). With more R&D, it became clear that multiple battery systems improved sound even further, and that as powerful as the Extreme was (dual Xeon, etc), the power architecture and speed of the Extreme just wasn’t there to take full advantage of what the next generation PCIe DAC and what ultra-low-noise/high-performance battery power could do. It was time for a core platform change.
Fast forward to December of last year, and Taiko announces their next generation server, the Taiko Olympus Music Server. The Olympus Server has both digital and analog outputs, and an optional add-on Olympus I/O module to externalize the NIC (“I”nput) and Digital/Analog “O”utput. Both the Olympus Music Server and Olympus I/O would be battery powered, incorporating the power innovations Taiko had been developing for the last several years.
At the same time, Taiko also announced a new digital audio transport called XDMI (Extreme Direct Music Interface), as an extension to PCIe. XDMI was intended to replace USB (and other digital audio transport standards) with the highest performing/lowest latency digital transport possible.
XDMI grew into more of an umbrella term, encompassing the transport layer, and driver and system support required to optimize it for digital audio transport. With XDMI, Taiko would have full control of digital audio transport from the CPU/memory to PCIe to I2S to the digital to analog stage of a DAC, eliminating several digital conversion steps in the process. Taiko also announced an openness to be working with DAC manufacturers that wished to incorporate XDMI support into their DACs.
The optional Taiko I/O module (Input/Output) would externalize Input (network interface) and Output (digital out, or analog out with the Taiko DAC) into its own case with its own battery supplies and charging linear supply. The I/O module would connect to either the Olympus Server or Extreme via two XDMI PCIe cards and QSFP+ cables (think PCIe extenders).
The Olympus Server could also be purchased stand-alone, with Taiko XDMI input (NIC) and XDMI output (digital or analog out) cards installed directly in the Olympus. The original announcement of the Olympus also had a Taiko USB card included. All these cards and some system functions would be battery powered, with other system components powered by a linear power supply.
The newly announced Olympus was a ground up reimagining and reinvention of the Extreme, but at a huge increase in cost. Even with the introductory price of €60.400 (now €67,000) and generous trade-in credit for Extreme owners, the Olympus was getting into Zeus-sized wallet territory.
Nevertheless, Taiko received 100++ preorders, speaking volumes to the confidence this corner of the audiophile community has in Taiko Audio and its guru Emile Bok.
After opening up for orders December 2023, in February 2024 Taiko announced some significant changes in the Olympus – they were switching from an AMD Epyc 32-core CPU with an ASRock motherboard, to a higher performing just-released ASUS motherboard and AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU (24 core).
In this new configuration, Taiko was able to fully power the system from battery, with the built-in USB on the ASUS motherboard out performing the Taiko USB card.
The final production version of the Olympus Server is based on the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7960x (24 core) and ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WiFi motherboard, with 64GB of memory.
When purchased with the Olympus I/O, the Olympus Server has two XDMI cards for connecting to the Olympus I/O.
When purchased stand alone, the Olympus Server has a Taiko XDMI NIC card, and a Taiko XDMI output card, which can be optionally configured with a daughter card for digital audio output (AES/EBU & RCA) or a Taiko DAC daughter card for single ended analog output.
The Olympus I/O can still be purchased to add to the Taiko Extreme.
After several months of delays to switch to the new configuration, the Olympus Server started shipping in July 2024, with the first Olympus I/O’s shipping in August 2024.
For this review, I’ll be doing a deep dive into the Taiko Audio Olympus Server (alas, no Olympus I/O was available for review), focusing on key innovations (and implications for digital audio playback), and how the Taiko platform has evolved from the Taiko Extreme to the Taiko Olympus.
Enter the Taiko Audio Olympus
While the Extreme was a brute force powerhouse (a 100 pound beast with dual Xeons and 48GB of custom memory and 8TB of M.2 PCIe storage), the Olympus takes a more nuanced approach to speed and performance, but packs in extremes of power and passive cooling heft.
If the Extreme was the ultimate manifestation of what I now think of as previous generation digital music servers, the Olympus takes the hints and clues of “something more” that the Extreme teased with over years, and delivers “wow” level improvements and innovations, with a design that very intentionally brings some of those hints and teases very forward and very front and center.
During Covid lock down, I was doing my own (decidedly not safe) experimentation with hyper-fast battery power, and heard incredible hints of what might be possible. I halted that path, since I knew there was no way I could do all the work necessary to make what I was hearing safe, let alone figure out how to take all that battery goodness to other parts of my digital chain. With regret (but to the great relief of all the civilians in the house), I put all those battery experiments away.
As enhancements and improvements to the Extreme steadily rolled out, I was hearing hints and teases of what I had been hearing in my own experiments. Clearly there was something new hiding there in digital audio, but it would take an enormous amount of R&D and engineering to be able to pull it out and bring it front and center.
When I saw the Olympus announcement, it was clear that the Taiko team had spent years actually pursuing this very same prize. The new Olympus design includes advanced battery power end to end, hyper fast and dynamic motherboard and CPU, and the fastest/lowest latency connection possible between the CPU/memory and the digital to analog conversion stage of the DAC. By replacing traditional USB connections to DACs with something Taiko called XDMI (effectively, an audio-enhanced digital signal path built on PCIe), they were eliminating multiple digital conversion stages and creating the lowest latency path between the CPU and digital to analog stage possible.
The combination of advanced battery power and the development of an ultra-fast, ultra-low-latency new digital audio transport was the result of a profound level of R&D and proprietary innovations. Those R&D costs were also reflected in a fantastically expensive price point.
In the end, I bought in, knowing that a system designed and built from the ground up to amplify that ephemeral magic I had heard before would be a leap I couldn’t pursue on my own, and one that I couldn’t say no to.
Out of the Box
I put my order in as soon as the Olympus was announced last December 2023. Initial shipments were delayed when Taiko did a reset on their motherboard and CPU choice, with first shipments finally in July, and I received mine a couple weeks later in August 2024.
This mountain of a server arrived in a flight case strapped to a pallet.
Weighing in at 60kg/130 pounds (add another 10-15 pounds for the flight case), it is an absolute beast. Fortunately, my other hobby involves 300+ pound pinball machines, so I had furniture movers and a hydraulic lift ready to go to get the unit lifted into position without any soft tissue damage.
As I’ve come to appreciate from Taiko, the CNC milled casing is stunning, with the top and bottom halves milled out of solid aluminum blocks.
Unlike the Extreme which had cooling fins built into its sides, the Olympus has a fully encased cooling design, with the heavy cooling being done by a very large block of milled copper at the inside front of the unit.
On the back of the Olympus, there is (from left to right) a IEC outlet for the battery charging power supply, a couple grounding posts, 2 USB ports, an HDMI port for service (the Olympus is locked down and intended to be run headless), a NIC card with QSFP input, and single ended analog output from the Taiko XDMI Analog card.
Taiko recommends that you not use the two grounding posts on the Olympus unless you have unique circumstances that require them. The grounding post by the USB connectors grounds the chassis, which floats by default. The grounding post by the IEC inlet is connected to the charger power supply, which is grounded to ground on the IEC outlet. The charging supply is floating with respect to the rest of Olympus, and does not connect to the rest of the chassis.
On the underside of the Olympus, you can see the vents for passive cooling through the large internal heatsink on the front side of the case (the lower part of the photo, the case is face down on the rug). On the left is what appears to be vibration control for the large charging power supply, with large vents for the motherboard.
Taiko has shared that they have done extensive work with the casing to manage vibrations, and recommend that you use their provided footers. For those that wish to try their own, the footers can be easily removed and replaced with alternatives, but I did not experiment with this.
Handling the Olympus is no joke, but thankfully I was able to raise it with my hydraulic lift and slide it into place without having to call in any favors from the civilians in the house.
The Heart of the Mountain
I know I’m a hopeless engineer, but to me, the inside of the Olympus is more beautiful than the outside.
Other than the motherboard + CPU + Optane storage, there is nothing off the shelf to be found. At the front of the unit is an extensive Taiko proprietary battery and power management system. On the right is a massive Taiko power supply for charging the two battery power supplies (BPS). On the PCIe bus is a Taiko NIC, and a Taiko XDMI board with analog output daughter card. There is also a drop-dead gorgeous passive cooling system (no fans here) for the CPU, charging supply, and batteries.
A walk around the internals of the Olympus starts with a monstrous charging power supply. This supply is sealed so I can’t see the goodies inside, but there is a crazy hunk of copper for (presumably) heat and vibration management. Interestingly, I’m not feeling any vibration so there is something interesting going on inside. I suspect this is a GaN supply with some fun filtering caps and vibration controls, but that is unconfirmed (if someone cracks theirs open for a peek, please send photos!)
The outputs of the battery charging power supply connect to the two BPSs. The two BPS’s are encased within the very large copper block and heatsink on the front end of the unit (the heatsink is shared with the passive cooling pipes from the CPU).
Each BPS has its own battery management system (BMS) PCB. Taiko has a BMS management app that allows you to connect (via Bluetooth) to the BMSs.
The bottom BMS in the photo above is the dedicated XDMI BPS for the XDMI output card (upper left in the photo). The XDMI card by default runs purely on battery, and by default is set to charge between midnight and 7am. The charging behavior and time for the XDMI BPS is configurable in the Taiko BMS app. In practice, the XDMI card draws ~8W, and even during all day listening sessions, I never came close to depleting the battery. Clearly, the XDMI card has a dedicated BPS for sound quality reasons, not battery capacity reasons.
The top BMS is the System BPS for everything else. This BPS provides power to the entire system (motherboard, CPU, NIC card, drives, etc) except for the XDMI output card. It is charged continuously by the charging power supply, and feeds two Taiko regulator boards that do the DC2DC conversion to provide all the voltages required by the system. Other than switching off the charging supply or disconnecting power from the back of the Olympus, there is no way to turn off continuous charging of the System BPS.
Beneath the BMS PCBs you can see 6 battery cells per BPS (12 battery cells total). Taiko has shared that they use Lithium Titanate Oxide batteries for their BPS’s (selected for safety reasons and sound quality), and that each is capable of delivering 1000’s of amps of instantaneous current.
The ASUS motherboard accepts separate power for the PCIe bus and the AMD Threadripper CPU, so I suspect the regulators are dedicated to each of those two motherboard power planes.
In terms of power consumption, when the system is in standby mode, the system draws ~22W from the System BPS. When the system is on and Roon is idle (no music playing), the system draws ~63W from the System BPS. The amount of power used during music playback ranges between ~1W and ~30W, depending on the resolution of the music being played and whether it is PCM or DSD encoded (more on this later in Part 2 of this review).
Remarkably, a single System BPS is able to power the entire system(!)
Note that the ASUS motherboard in the Olympus can require extreme levels of peak power consumption, especially during start-up where 30-40A load spikes are common. This sort of load would be extremely challenging for the linear supplies we typically use in higher end DIY music servers, and switching supplies typically used with this type of motherboard are an audio no no. But with the System BPS being able to deliver instantaneous currents of 1000A+, the Olympus is able to support this beast of a motherboard, while still delivering the benefits of ultra-low noise and ultra-fast battery power.
Continuing clockwise around the insides, we have the PCIe cards. From left to right, the XDMI output card is in slot 3, with the large copper heatsink for the analog daughter card grounded to the chassis.
Next is the Taiko NIC card (again with large copper heatsink) in slot 2, HDMI connector cable (for service, the unit runs headless), and a PCIe storage card with a 280GB Intel 900P series Optane SSD for OS storage is in slot 1.
If you get optional internal music storage for the Olympus, the Intel NVMe SSD mounts on the copper heat mounting bracket on the storage card in slot 1, next to the Optane drive.
Looking at the block diagram for the ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WiFi motherboard in the Olympus, all three PCIe boards are on advanced PCIe 5.0 slots, with the NIC and OS drive on x16 PCIe channels, and the XDMI card on x8 PCIe channels.
The two external USB connectors on the Olympus are 10gbps USB Type-A connectors (ports 1 and 2 on the motherboard).
The Taiko XDMI card with Analog daughterboard
The XDMI output card is powered by its own dedicated BPS. By default, this BPS is not being charged when listening, and is programmed (via the Taiko BMS app) to charge after hours. In practice, you can listen to 20+ hours of music without charging the XDMI BPS, so no practical concerns here.
The XDMI card is direct-connected to the CPU via PCIe 5.0 x8, and currently supports a variety of daughter cards for different types of output. The daughter cards are attached to the XDMI card with 4 screws, and are pretty easily removed and attached.
I have the XDMI Analog out daughter card, which converts digital XDMI to I2S, which is then direct connected to what we believe is a Rohm BD34301EKV DAC chip (see this link for DAC chip capabilities). The daughtercard has an analog output section to drive RCA analog outputs that you connect to your preamp. Taiko does not support XLR outputs or analog volume control with the XDMI Analog card, but have announced that these are under development.
There are also XDMI digital daughter cards available for AES/EBU and RCA digital connections, but I have not evaluated those.
There are also XDMI cards that output XDMI signals to the Olympus I/O via QSFP. There are also XDMI daughter cards to connect to Lampizator DACs, and (soon) Taiko Link to MSB DACs. Aries Cerat has also announced that they are developing a XDMI interface for their DACs.
The Taiko NIC
The Taiko NIC card comes with a single SFP port, and is powered by the System BPS. By default it comes with an ethernet adapter, but it can also support direct attach cables (DAC) (recommended for least power draw), and fiber optic ethernet connections (not recommended because of power induced noise from the high power draw).
The bundled ethernet SFP adapter is a Uptimed UP-TR-1G-RJ45-CI, but I have not fiddled with different SFP adapters (I found the choice of SFP adapter quite impactful with my Extreme). I’m using the preferred/recommended direct attach cable connection going to my Taiko Switch (more on that later)
The Olympus uses a ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WiFi motherboard, a AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7960x with 24 cores running at 4.2GHz, with 64GB of DDR5-4800 memory. (Yeah I’m linking to Anandtech….RIP)
Taiko offers an internal music storage option for the Olympus, based on the Intel NVMe drives (4TB–64TB). Playing music from internal storage impacts sound quality, heat, and power, so Taiko encourages not having internal music storage, and playing music from streaming services or from a local file server or NAS. (more on this later)
On the software side, the Olympus runs a highly customized and tailored version of Windows 11 IOT Ent LTSC 2024. The OS and BIOS are locked down to prevent tweaking (performance is very sensitive to system configurations and processing load).
While the Extreme had a lot of DIY flexibility and the ability to get in and experiment with different types of OS tweaking, that is gone with Olympus – the Olympus is what the Olympus is.
With Olympus, the only thing an end user is able to do is to connect via Roon from their laptop or mobile device. Roon is the only music playback option (at least for now…we can expect to see a port of Taiko’s XDMS music player to Olympus in the future).
From within Roon, you can access streaming services like Qobuz or Tidal, and connect to your music library on your file server or NAS. If you have the optional internal storage, you can mount the D: drive on the Olympus from other systems to copy over your music to the internal storage drive.
If you need any support or upgrades to your system, Taiko will remote into your Olympus to do the work for you.
Taiko does provide a BMS management application on the app store. This app connects to your BPS’s via bluetooth, and lets you track battery charge and power consumption, and manage different aspects of your BPS’s.
As a new Olympus owner, after DHL or FedEx drops off your new 150 pound server on your driveway and you get some friends to help put the unit in place, plug it in, switch on the charging power supply switch (back of the Olympus) to charge your batteries, plug ethernet in, connect analog out to your preamp (or USB or one of the other XDMI digital out options to your DAC), and bring the unit out of standby using the standby button under the front panel.
From your phone, use the Taiko BMS app to pair with your BPSs (000000 is the default code), and set the timezone and charging window for XDMI BPS (auto by default).
Once the system has booted, find it and connect to it with Roon. Set up Roon with XDMI Analog as your audio device, connect to your favorite streaming service and your music library, crack open a time-of-day appropriate beverage as a reward, and hit play.
My System Setup
My music setup from left to right:
- Voxativ 9.87 speakers with Voxativ 4D drivers (104dB sensitivity) sitting on Voxativ Pi bass units
- Taiko Audio Olympus Music Server
- Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE w/ L2 DAC and Takatsuki 300b tubes (on Taiko Daiza platform)
- Taiko Audio SGM Extreme (on Taiko Daiza platform) with Taiko USB card and Taiko NIC
- Taiko Audio network stack (Taiko Extreme DC Power Distributor, Taiko Extreme Router, and Taiko Extreme Switch) on a Daiza platform, powered by a Paul Hynes SR4 (yeah, still “waiting” on my Paul Hynes custom power supply) or PowerAdd Pilot Pro2 battery + DXPWR DXP-3A0DS Combo dual stage power supply
- My audio equipment is powered by a dedicated 30A circuit, Sound Application 240V PGI TT7, and a combination of QSA Lanedri Spectra Infinity King, QSA Lanedri Gamma Infinity, Sablon Audio King, and Pangea Audio power cords
- QSA Lanedri Ultimatum speaker cables, Iconoclast 1x4 Gen 2 RCA cables for analog out of Olympus to my Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE, and Shunyata Omega USB cable for USB connections to my Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC
- In my bedroom closet, I have AT&T fiber to my home (Qobuz for streaming), a trashcan Mac Pro (stock) as a file server with my music library
First Impressions – Straight Out of the Box
After letting my batteries charge for a couple hours, I connected XDMI Analog out to my Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE, and set Roon up with my Qobuz credentials just to do a quick test of whether things were working.
From the very first note with XDMI Analog output, I was struck by how very different the presentation was from what I was used to with the Extreme (and every other digital music server I’ve had).
It was neither analog nor digital, but something perhaps in between, simultaneously familiar but also different. This is definitely something new here that I haven’t heard before, as well as more goodness of the kinds of good things I have heard before.
Starting with the familiar, I was hearing absolutely incredible bass (best I’ve heard on any system), with an incredible sense of space and detail and speed, without any blurring or booming or washing together. I could crank volume very high without losing any control or creating stress when listening. Doing so made the music all that much more enveloping, so the temptation was very high to crank volume higher and higher. That being said, even at very low volumes, detail and space remained. Extremely compelling and engaging, same but somehow a very different presentation than I’m used to.
For the new, I was hearing a level of cohesion and balance and integration of sound I simply hadn’t heard before in my system. There was the proverbial wall of sound but with depth, and a seemingly infinite amount of detail and no strain or effort required to focus on any part of it. The decay on instruments would go for miles, but feel like it was all part of the same note. There was crazy more to hear, but it was taking crazy less effort and attention to hear it.
For close mic’ed minimal recordings, the performers are in the room (or more precisely, I’m in the room where the recording happened). For more complex pieces, they are remarkably without clutter. I have the sense of looking at a rich landscape of sound without distraction, just getting to be there in the moment, being part of the large ensemble performance.
Even with my single driver speakers (they excel at the intimate, but can lose the plot on intensely complex pieces), they are sounding more like big traditional multi-driver full range speakers than I’ve ever heard them before, and the precision and detail that they excel at are elevated to the next level.
Noise levels and backgrounds are pitch dark, it feels like they are just gone. Control is off the charts, with distortion also seemingly gone.
The combination of exquisite digital detail and resolution and speed with pitch dark noise backgrounds and relaxed hyper detail makes for a decidedly non-digital and non-analog experience. This feels like a new third category of music source, and my brain is a bit discombobulated switching between these different aspects.
In these first few hours, my Olympus clearly is going through some burn-in, but I’m experiencing a level of brain burn-in I haven’t experienced since my first Chord DAC experience (Mojo) many many years ago. Back then, my brain was contending with temporal and phase cues I hadn’t heard in music playback before (and which started me down my Reality Quest). This is different though – here it is a combination of incredible resolution and detail and control, with a huge sense of cohesion and relaxedness where it all just comes together.
Stepping through my usual reference tracks (including many upsampled and high resolution tracks), I’m very confused though. Some tracks are simply sublime, while others sound flat and lifeless in comparison. My favorite DSD512 tracks seem dullest of all, which is the exact opposite of what I’ve been hearing and seeking in a decade of pursuing better and better upsampling and high resolution music alternatives.
As soon as I think my brain (or system burn-in) is leading me astray with these duller, more lifeless tracks, I switch back to the sublime tracks and they are still sublime. I have never heard this type of radical spread in sound quality and experience in my reference track collection, and it is just amping up my discombobulation.
After several hours of just letting this new experience happen, I switch back to my Extreme with USB out to my Vinnie Rossi, and everything is back to what I expect – reference tracks all shine in ways I love, with DSD512 upsampled versions of these tracks really bringing out something truly magical in the Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC. This is all as expected.
Switching to Olympus USB out to the Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC, all that traditional USB digital character that I know so well is back, but with the Olympus USB being much better than Extreme USB in every way (and in all the familiar ways). The sound quality I hear from my Extreme today is massively ahead of what I heard when I wrote my Extreme review four years ago, but USB out of the Olympus just eclipses it. Olympus USB is by far the best USB digital audio I’ve ever heard, taking all the familiar sound quality dimensions I know so well and taking them to new heights.
However Olympus USB is missing that newness and difference I was hearing with Olympus XDMI Analog. Going back and forth, I’m starting to get a sense of the “new” that XDMI is bringing to the party, and the improvement in traditional USB that the Olympus platform and power is bringing to the party. Now we’re getting somewhere.
I’m still confused though – the Rohm DAC chip in the XDMI Analog card should be benefiting from DSD512 the same as the DAC chip in my Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC (in both chips, DSD512 bypasses any internal digital processing in the DAC chip). Why is DSD512 so lifeless and bad sounding with the XDMI Analog on Olympus?
The answer is intriguing, and gives some hints to what XDMI is uniquely bringing to the Olympus experience. More of this in Part 2, but at this point in my listening tests I’m just content to enjoy Qobuz Redbook audio playing on XDMI Analog.
