Comments on the Olive Opus CD Player

My Opus is on the way...scheduled to deliver on Monday. As I develop my opinions, I will post them.

That audiocircle thread is wild! The main gist seems to be that OPUS digital out is less than top-notch for some reason, but that the internal DAC sounds very good. If I understand it correctly... (the lower-end Musica and Symphony units have fine digital out, it appears).

I have a Musica and like it. My intention is to eventually use it with an external DAC. That's an option worth considering if you can live with the smaller hard drive -- it's much less expensive, and the extra money can go towards a good DAC.

YEs Musica is the way to go.
I am the one who started that thread on the circle.

Anthony

Based on my research so far, I am going to keep my MCD205 CD Player and forget the Olive Opus or the McIntosh MS300 Music Server. The music server concept is very interesting but I have too many technical issues connecting a music server to my Router that I do not want to deal with. I am not convinced that the extra money spent for either unit is worth it. Playing one CD at a time works for me and my McIntosh MCD205 sounds great. Thanks again for all your help.

Hgefiman,

Isn't the MCD205 a 5 disc changer? If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's a great sounding machine, you won't do better in terms of sound quality.

I wanted to be sure you understand that the Olive units do not *require* a network connection. One of the beauties of these units is that they can be used as a drop-in CD player replacement. You can play CDs, rip CD's to the hard drive, and burn CDs, all without an Internet connection. Once ripped to the hard drive, you can use the front panel to find music by genre, by artist name, etc. Likewise, the built-in CD database will recognize most CDs and display album and song titles, without an internet connection. So basically a digital CD jukebox that holds hundreds of CDs in "lossless" format, plays individual CDs, and burns CDs. Again, no Internet connection required for any of that.

If you use the network connection, you get these additional benefits (again, totally optional -- I myself only currently use the CD update out of all these features):
- Updates to the CD database
- Ability to play certain Internet "radio stations"
- Ability to retrieve music off other computers from your network
- Ability to "serve up" music to other computers on your network
- Ability to do certain administration tasks via a web browser

So you get additional capabilities with a network connection, but the base functionality is all there without it.

Cordially,

Eric