Olive 4HD Review
We haven’t encountered a digital music system that’s elegant, well thought out, and better-sounding than this.
Highs: Killer sound, Absolutely quiet, Brilliant software for editing metadata, Can be expanded to a multi-room system,
Lows: Expensive, Limited placement options, Can’t edit metadata on tracks stored on other networked storage, Funky remote,
We review the Olive 4HD Hi-Fi Music Server and we think it may be the ultimate audiophile device.
Introduction
We can describe the Olive 4HD Hi-Fi Music Server in one word: Exquisite. If you love music—collecting it, archiving it, and above all, listening to it—this is the digital audio player you should own.
If you’re not an audiophile, on the other hand, you might dismiss this $1,999 device with a few other “ex” words: Excessive, extravagant, or extreme, perhaps. Indeed, there’s almost no task the Olive 4HD can do that can’t be duplicated on just about any properly equipped PC (we’re talking a machine equipped with the $180 Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card). But good luck finding a PC that’s entirely passively cooled in order to operate in perfect silence, as the Olive 4HD does—you can’t even hear this machine’s internal CD-burner spin. You might find a passively cooled home theater PC, but it won’t have a 4.3-inch touchscreen or the capability to stream audio to an equally exquisite client, and it certainly wouldn’t be this easy to use.
Features and DesignS
The Olive 4HD looks a little like standalone CD player, but it features a slot-feed optical drive so you never hear the whir of gears as a tray slides out to accept your disc. Olive went so far as to put a lip on the slot to prevent mechanical noises from leaking out (the internal hard drive is wrapped in eight layers of sound-deadening padding). The front panel is slanted, which makes using the touchscreen and the buttons easy when the device is placed on a surface between your waist and your chin, but you won’t want to place it any higher or lower. That presented a problem in our entertainment center, which is designed to house our A/V components above one of our tower speakers. The most frequently used device, the A/V receiver, is on the bottom shelf and our Blu-ray player is above that. We had to put the 4HD above that, which meant we needed a ladder to operate it. Olive maintains that the player can be stacked on top of a receiver, but we’d be concerned about the receiver’s ventilation and the player’s heat dissipation.
The entire chassis is fabricated from thick brushed aluminum (in your choice of black or silver), but the 4HD’s otherwise elegant appearance is marred, in our opinion, by Olive’s decision to cover the entire top with the names of musical genres (Opera, Rock, Disco, Reggae, Rap, etc.). You use the touchscreen to browse your music collection (by artist or album name, album cover art, or genre), configure network connections (wired or wireless), tune in Internet radio stations, and so on. Music can be stored on the 4HD’s internal 2TB drive or on any other device on your network (another DLNA/UPnP server, PC, or NAS box, for instance). You can also plug in an HDMI cable and switch the display to a television (which is great for viewing album art while you’re listening to music). Olive provides hardwired buttons for navigating the menus without the touchscreen and for pausing and skipping tracks.
Using the HD4’s HDMI output doesn’t prevent you from using the onboard DAC if you decide it delivers better sound than the decoder in your receiver, but your receiver must be capable of pairing its analog audio inputs with its HDMI input (a feature that seems to be increasingly uncommon in new A/V receivers). Alternatively, you could connect the HD4’s analog-audio outputs to your receiver and plug its HDMI output directly into your TV. Just mute the TV’s volume and use the receiver solely as an amplifier.
The 4HD’s back panel has stereo analog outputs (RCA), optical and coaxial digital outputs, HDMI out (for audio and video), and a gigabit Ethernet port. Showing great forethought on the part of Olive’s engineers, you’ll find two Wi-Fi antenna mounts (Olive provides only one antenna, but you can add a second one if you’re having problems establishing a wireless connection and wired networking isn’t an option); a USB port (for backing up the hard drive); and a digital audio input (so you can use the 4HD as an outboard digital-to-analog converter). And if you want to stash the player in a closet with a solid door, you can plug in an infrared receiver.
Why would you want to use the 4HD as an outboard converter? Because Olive chose Texas Instruments’ top-of-the-line Burr-Brown PCM1792A DAC for the task. This chip, which is also found in the aforementioned Xonar Essence STX sound card, boasts 24-bit resolution, sampling rates up to 192kHz, and 129dB of dynamic range.
*Editors Note 1/22/10: We called Olive tech support and verified that the 4HD does not play or burn SACD or DVD-Audio discs.
By: Ian Bell
January 15, 2010 @ 10:55 AM
I want one. Love the design and it sounds amazing.
By: Ian Bell
January 15, 2010 @ 10:55 AM
I want one. Love the design and it sounds amazing.
By: Ian Bell
January 15, 2010 @ 10:55 AM
I want one. Love the design and it sounds amazing.
By: Ian Bell
January 15, 2010 @ 1:55 PM
I want one. Love the design and it sounds amazing.
By: Greg Mombert
January 15, 2010 @ 3:11 PM
I also love the design, especially the silver version.
By: dang
January 21, 2010 @ 9:32 AM
It looks pretty tiny
By: dang
January 21, 2010 @ 12:32 PM
It looks pretty tiny
By: Tony
January 22, 2010 @ 10:29 AM
One thing is not clear to me yet…
Does it play/rip SACDs please?
If it does, then I'm sold.
By: Ian Bell
January 22, 2010 @ 1:41 PM
I called Olive and asked if it will play SACD or DVD Audio and it will not. It will not rip them either. He suggested we rip the music from a PC and then transfer them over. Total bummer. I will update the review to reflect that too.
By: Ian Bell
January 22, 2010 @ 4:41 PM
I called Olive and asked if it will play SACD or DVD Audio and it will not. It will not rip them either. He suggested we rip the music from a PC and then transfer them over. Total bummer. I will update the review to reflect that too.
By: Tony
January 23, 2010 @ 12:24 AM
Thanks for the input Ian.
That's a no-go to me.
No way I'd spend that money on this thing and be confined to CDs 16 bit 44.1 khz unrealistic sound world.
Other than that having to use a PC to rip my collection, to me, defeats the entire purpose.
With that said, with all due respect, this is unfortunately far from being “the ultimate audiophile device”.
Oh well…
By: Tony
January 23, 2010 @ 3:24 AM
Thanks for the input Ian.
That's a no-go to me.
No way I'd spend that money on this thing and be confined to CDs 16 bit 44.1 khz unrealistic sound world.
Other than that having to use a PC to rip my collection, to me, defeats the entire purpose.
With that said, with all due respect, this is unfortunately far from being “the ultimate audiophile device”.
Oh well…
By: Ian Bell
January 23, 2010 @ 3:42 AM
Agreed, total oversight on Olive in my opinion.
By: Eduard Fischer
January 26, 2010 @ 8:57 AM
It's not a decision by Olive; the SACD standard prohibits digital access to the output for copying. Complain to Sony and Philips, companies that designed SACD with this limitation. The Olive does import high-definition audio files from online providers that are the digital equivalent of stereo SACD sound.
By: Eduard Fischer
January 26, 2010 @ 11:57 AM
It's not a decision by Olive; the SACD standard prohibits digital access to the output for copying. Complain to Sony and Philips, companies that designed SACD with this limitation. The Olive does import high-definition audio files from online providers that are the digital equivalent of stereo SACD sound.
By: Sam
January 26, 2010 @ 12:19 PM
Would have been nice if Olive mentioned that on their website. If people knew it was not by choice and it was explained why, I am sure they would be forgiven.
By: Dan
February 7, 2010 @ 12:05 PM
But then Olive reads at least the CD-Layer of a SACD, doesn't it?
By: Dan
February 7, 2010 @ 3:05 PM
But then Olive reads at least the CD-Layer of a SACD, doesn't it?
By: Ian Bell
February 7, 2010 @ 3:24 PM
You would think so, but my guess is that it probably won't.
By: Eduard Fischer
February 8, 2010 @ 9:23 PM
It does read the CD layer; that's the way the hybrid SACD is designed.
By: Eduard Fischer
February 9, 2010 @ 12:23 AM
It does read the CD layer; that's the way the hybrid SACD is designed.
By: jimbreakey
February 9, 2010 @ 8:18 AM
I've been using the 4HD for a month or so. Obviously it would be better to rip SACDs directly but it is very easy to transfer from a PC. The 4HD has a shared file you can see from your network. You just drag and drop.
It's a pretty cool piece of equipment. Not perfect but bad.
By: charlie
February 20, 2010 @ 4:20 PM
The size is given in the article. It's a pretty standard size for audio equipment – about 17″ wide, 11″ deep and 3″ tall.
By: IsRealLite
April 17, 2010 @ 11:37 AM
I have a 4HD. Had it for 4 months. I am playing CD's I have owned since the '80's and hearing things I never heard before. It is as close to analog as I have heard from a 2-channel,digital player.
By: Arthur
April 24, 2010 @ 9:54 AM
I've had a 4HD for three months and really like the sound of my CDs played from the hard disc. The only downside for me is the playlist management using Olive's Maestro system. Once a track had been dragged onto a playlist I can find no way to remove it without removing the entire list – a problem when some of my playlists contain 2000+ tracks. But the sound is great and up there with my DCS for CD replay. It only seems to support FLAC lossless files too and I don't know if other lossless files can be easily converted?
By: Don
May 27, 2010 @ 11:20 AM
The review said 4HD can't access things stored on a NAS. What is the purpose of the usb port? So if the Olive fails all of the music on the drive is lost?
By: Ian Bell
May 27, 2010 @ 12:09 PM
You can add an external USB hard drive, but a NAS drive would be accessed via Ethernet on the network.