Many's the streamer that can assault your ears with audio of all sorts, but how many can do it simply, with irreproachable fidelity, and at a reasonable price? Few that we can think of, so that's exactly the tact being taken by Olive with its Olive One, a $400 dollar streaming player and amp currently on Indiegogo. It's a disk-shaped audio player with a built-in HD amplifier, single volume dial and 7-inch touchscreen to choose your music. It includes an iOS, Android and Windows 8 app so that your handset can work as a remote control, while letting you stream music from your slate or phone, too. So how did our (admittedly non-audiophile) ears take to the device when we saw it at CES? Read on past the break to find out.
The company's been around building audiophile devices since 2005, but is taking the crowdfunding route with the Olive One to bring it to a wider market as quickly as possible. While it used high-end audio components to please audiophiles, CEO Oliver Bergman said the company's also emphasizing the Olive One's versatility and ease-of-use. To wit, the device has a clever virtual three-dial interface to select music corresponding to artist, album and song, along with the aforementioned app, TV navigation via Miracast, aluminum and glass construction, Bluetooth 4.0 for the remote control functions, dual-band 802.11n WiFi for streaming, uPnP compatibility and Pandora built-in. An optional 1TB or 2TB hard disk will boost the price by $100 and $200 respectively, but give you the ability to stream all your tunes to any device wherever you're at, home-cloud style.
Considering it's still a prototype at this point, the Olive One worked pretty well despite a little balkiness. Choosing music manually couldn't have been easier with the new interface, and the system will automatically glean musical tastes for multiple users based on listening patterns, offering choices appropriately -- even by room or time of day. The listening experience itself was sublime, as the pair of built-in HD amps pumped out extremely clean-sounding music, to our ears, whether from a CD-quality or 24-bit source. That's because the circuitry will take the rough edges off more compressed audio, according to the engineers. We listened to the amp through a pair of $300 off-the-shelf speakers, but the company will offer its own model for $200 or so, which can be also used as a stand for the player or distributed around the room if you buy more than one.
The company has nearly approached its $200k goal on Indiegogo with three weeks left, but will start piling on extras like an extended warranty to early buyers, provided it meets certain benchmarks. They'll start to hit the market in July, according to Olive -- check the source and PR for more info, or see our hands-on and Olive's Indiegogo video below.
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