And the Symphony Played

New HiFi component from Olive Media Products combines wireless streaming, CD ripping and burning, a 32-bit IBM Power PC processor and an 80GB hard drive.

Here’s yet another new HiFi component trying to crowd itself into your home entertainment system. The Olive Media Products Symphony, a hard drive based unit with a wireless function, will be available for purchase in mid-August at $899.

The Symphony, Olive said, is a wireless digital music center which produces a quality high fidelity sound through proprietary technology which combines a 32-bit IBM Power PC for processing of audio in lossless quality, a fan-less design and a digital output to an audio receiver. Users can record music off of CDs and other media forms to the Symphony to be stored on the device’s 80GB hard drive. A database integrated into the unit can identify, tag and archive the music automatically.

Other features of the Symphony include WiFi streaming of the archived music to other rooms, music CD burning through the integrated CD-RW drive, music sharing with an iPod and Preload, a service which allows owners to ship their CDs to Olive so that they can load the collection onto the Symphony’s hard drive.

“The quality limitations of lossy audio formats and problematic integration of convergence technology have made most digital solutions unacceptable for music aficionados,” said Oliver Bergmann, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and President of Olive Media Products, Inc. “Olive enters the market from the perspective of a true audiophile, eliminating the PC experience entirely.”