Olive HD4 Music Server
The Olive HD4 Music Server is a logical next step in home audio. It is a radio and music storage/player with an interface that anyone with an MP3 player will instantly understand. However, this is really for a person with a large CD library that hasn’t gotten around to digitialising their music collection or would rather not use their computer as a jukebox.
The music server houses a 2TB hard drive and will encode your CDs in one of several flavours; WAV, FLAC, AAC and MP3. Since this piece of kit is intended for Hi-Fi audiences, you really wouldn’t want to capture your music in anything less than FLAC. Having said that, if you don’t have speakers that compliment Hi-Fi audio set ups, you won’t be missing much by ripping to MP3.
What I find fantastic about the Olive HD4 is that it will play back at the same resolution as Blu-Ray audio. What is not so great is how the marketing would suggest that if you capture your CDs with this unit, it will magically turn them into HD quality recordings. It won’t and can’t. If it isn’t an HD source going in, it won’t be any coming out. Everything else about this unit is amazing.
High quality convertors make for a less noisy cd rip. The hard drive will store between 3,500 and 35,000 songs depending on how you rip them. It has nothing but HD output and will act as an internet radio player. For you iPhone users out there, there is an “iMaestro” app that allows you to browse what’s on your HD4 and use your phone as a remote. To top it all off, if you buy one directly from Olive they will pre-load 100 CDs from your personal library, rip them at the highest quality and then ship them back to you with your new purchase.
Positives – A well-designed solution for all your music with great quality playback. Negatives – somewhat misleading marketing material. If you ask me, the positives outweigh the negative by a wide margin.
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Featured Contributor: Eric McDonald
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