Olive+Thiel HD HiFi Music System

Olive and Thiel have teamed up with the help of zöet networking technology from a company called Bicom, and have created a complete media server/powered speaker system. Included in the system is a 2TB Olive 4HD music server which has been specially outfitted with an audio networking system using ethernet cables for connecting to the speakers.

Bicom's Charles Wills was on hand to explain that the biggest challenge was to get the custom 6.5-inch coaxial/coincident Thiel SCS4D IP-based self-powered speakers hooked up via the digital connections to be in bit-perfect sync with each other. The Olive can be controlled either with the small touch screen on the front panel or from an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The entire system including two speakers with internal 200W Class D Power Amps and the Olive 4HD will retail around $7,900 and should be available in about three months.

COMMENTS
CharlyD's picture

Seems like this system will have redundant DACs in the Olive 4HD, and the Olive will serve only as a control point and media server to the IP-connected speakers. Am I missing something?

EKiN's picture

The Olive 4+ unit used in the Olive+THIEL is a modified enclosure that does not have a built-in DAC. Because as you said it would be redundant...each of the speakers has a mono dac built-in, as well as an amplifier. So in essence, the Olive 4+ Media Server is just a digital audio source which happens to use Ethernet as the audio transport as opposed to traditional line outs.

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