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The Audiophile's Streamer: Olive's wireless music player offers superior sound quality and extreme versatility, but is it worth over a grand?
Music lovers are a demanding bunch. The subtle shades of Coltrane and guttural wails of Fall Out Boy must sound distinct and clear. Even a nonaudiophile can tell the difference between low-fi distortion and something pleasantly deep and rich. The Olive Musica is a step above the rest. Its built-in audio processor expertly converts digital music to make an immediate impression even on the most discerning listeners. If it weren't for a slightly confusing configuration process, the Olive Musica would be the streaming music player of choice.
Other value-priced streaming devices introduce a slight distortion effect that sounds like someone out a cloth over your speakers, especially compared with a home audio receiver from companies like Onkyo. Only the Sonos Digital Music System boasts comparable digital audio reproduction to the Musica.
An IBM PowerPC processor expertly converts digital audio, a soft rectifier limits interference, and a smooth linear power supply mimics an expensive hi-fi amp. The device supports digital optical, digital coaxial, and RCA cables, and it has a crisp four-inch LCD (400x160 pixels). The player sounds terrific once you get all the connections configured properly.
The device has so many ways to load audio that you could spend an hour or more getting them all to work. You could load a CD into the Musica and start listening right away, but you'll probably want to get more than that out of the $1,099 unit.
Two USB ports are on the back of the player, so you can attach an iPod and listen to songs locally. (You can also move songs from the Musica to your iPod, but not the other way around.) The player supports 802.11g networking, but the wireless configuration is a bit harder than on other devices we've tested. You can search to find available wireless networks, but if the network is encrypted, you must manually scroll through the digits on by one to enter the key.
The Musica is a powerful Windows XP network client, so it shows up automatically as a shared drive on any connected PC on your wireless LAN. If you use a Mac with Apple iTunes, it even shows up as a shared device. The Musica has a160GB hard drive, so you can transfer songs to the connected device from your PC or by ripping a CD directly onto the unit. The Musica supports Internet radio stations, but it won't stream files from services like Rhapsody.
Soon users will be able to use the Musica as a hub for a multiroom music system. You'll be able to stream music from the Musica to Olive Sonata music players, which are satellite receivers that connect directly to speakers. Each player costs $200, which is considerably less than a Sonos ZonePlayer ($500).
As you can imagine, all of these options are somewhat bewildering. The absence of a dedicated server program on a PC, like the Sonos has, makes configuration more obtuse (even if it does work as claimed). Once you're done with the setup, however, the Olive Musica plays files better than almost any wireless product available.