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Advice buying a Music Server? Just Olive 4HD?

Hi All,

I have a custom tube preamp/amp and a Rega Apollo for my CD collection. It is wonderful, but I dream of having my CDs all ripped onto a simple and quiet device, that wirelessly synchronizes music from my macbook when I rip it / download.

I do not want a Squeezebox + DAC [I do not want to have to use a computer with my stereo and I do not want two components, just one simple device].

I do not want a RedWine Audio IPOD, although this represents almost what I need [easy music synching with my library of Apple lossless files, easy UI, improved acoustics, etc.]. Here the sound is not quite what I want, and the storage is limited by the iPod.

It seems like the Olive 4HD is the only thing out there that has plenty of storage, WiFi for easy music synchronization, and high quality DAC componentry. But $2500 seems crazy.

I don't need the Olive CD transport [I can rip on my macbook]. I don't need internet radio. Is there really no $1000 solution to this problem? The Olive 3HD just makes me think that I'll want a better DAC, so please don't point me there.

Thoughts?
thanks,
Keith
kbigelow

Showing 3 responses by herman

herman
2,277 posts
 
The Minis are very quiet even up close, I recommend that route. Headless Mini + iPad + external drives. With an Airport Extreme you can have multiple external drives in another room and stream wirelessly. It works great, no noise, no dropouts, no lag, no interference. I can stream from the basement to the second floor with no problems.

Plus you have an iPad to play with. With the mini you can upgrade it as needed and run a variety of programs on it such as iTunes, Pure Music, Amarra etc, You have something that holds value and you can sell or keep for other purposes if you decide to change your plans later. You can use USB, toslink, or firewire DACs with it. Other computers can share the drives if you want to play music on other systems.

With a dedicated server you have a dedicated computer that locks you into their software and will be obsolete and basically worthless at some point.

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herman
2,277 posts
 
The software converts the AIFF to Apple lossless before it streams it and the AE coverts it back to 16/44.1. The toslink output of the AE is also much higher in jitter than what your cdp can do. It is not surprising that a $99 multifunction wireless device can't perform as well as the transport in your player but in my experience it performs much better than "not even close to CD quality."

Were all of the signal processors in iTunes turned off and the volume all the way up?

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herman
2,277 posts
 
ALAC is compressed. That file size is about 40% smaller than AIFF and can't be played directly. It must be processed to re-create the 16/44.1 data just like iTunes must decompress ALAC before it can play it.

As I understand it the streaming computer takes the AIFF file and compresses it into ALAC so less data must be transmitted., streams it to the AE, which decompresses it to 16/44.1. There are some who feel this active compressing/decompressing degrades the sound.. otherwise why have AIFF at all? Others say this is nonsense and the sound is identical since the data is identical.. I suppose like most things you would have to try it and see if you can here a difference.

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