Originally published November 29 2005
New stereo from Olive diversely manages music
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Symphony from Olive has an 80-gigabyte hard drive that stores up to 20,000 songs. It can connect directly to any MP3 player, copy CDs and make playlists. Olive will also pre-load all of your CDs for free.
Similarly, many an electronics company has tried and failed to slap together a decent product from buzzword-compliant components - say, iPods, wireless networks, sound systems and personal computers.
So you might not have high hopes for the Olive Symphony, a $900 hi-fi component (www.olive.us) that merges all of those technologies and more.
If you're looking for a one-line description, well, think of the Symphony as an iPod for your stereo.
Inside is a completely silent, fanless, 80-gigabyte hard drive that stores up to 20,000 songs.
The front panel's scroll wheel and bright, monochrome screen permit quick navigation through gigantic music collections by song title, playlist, album name and so on.
What makes the Symphony, which will be shipped to stores next week, so interesting is all the different ways music gets onto and off of it.
The process takes about 45 seconds a song; you choose the audio format and quality setting.
(You get the quoted 20,000-song capacity only with the MP3 format, which is not exactly the audiophile's dream. Choose WAV, AIFF or FLAC for better quality. These are lossless formats - meaning "adored by classical music nuts"- that fill up the hard drive much faster. The Symphony stores about 2,000 songs in FLAC format.)
If you're willing to connect your tape deck or record player to the Symphony, it can turn each song into a full-blown digital track that behaves just like the songs you've copied from a CD.
Once your music collection is safely ensconced on the Symphony, you can exile the original CD's, tapes and records to the attic.
If your head hasn't yet exploded, there's more: you can also connect an iPod or any MP3 player directly to a U.S.B. jack on the Symphony (which also recharges the player).
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