This may, or may not, be misleading, depending on what relationship Olive has with copyright holders. Apple are about to try something which may be similar, but there one guesses that they do at least have a relationship with some copyright holders. Otherwise the notion that 16 bit CDs can be miraculously improved "at least 250x" seems just advertising garbage to me. Presumably internally the devices use 24 bits storage per sample, an additional 8 bits per sample over CD, so by the wonders shown by advertisers and their limited knowledge of the times 2 table they eventually work out that 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2=256, which is indeed great than 250. Where the magical extra information comes from when one puts in a CD is unexplained!
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This may, or may not, be misleading, depending on what relationship Olive has with copyright holders. Apple are about to try something which may be similar, but there one guesses that they do at least have a relationship with some copyright holders. Otherwise the notion that 16 bit CDs can be miraculously improved "at least 250x" seems just advertising garbage to me. Presumably internally the devices use 24 bits storage per sample, an additional 8 bits per sample over CD, so by the wonders shown by advertisers and their limited knowledge of the times 2 table they eventually work out that 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2=256, which is indeed great than 250. Where the magical extra information comes from when one puts in a CD is unexplained! -
Yes it is very misleading indeed
if the CD you load in is 16bit 44.1 then that's what it is ! you can convert 16 bit files to 24 bit but that wont make any difference to what they sound like !
sounds a bit like the nonsense you get with Bose (allegedly ! ) or the daft Brennan thing that always seems to be advertised everywhere
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I wouldn't say it's misleading unless you read into it what it's not actually saying.
As far as I can see it's not saying it has the ability to improve CD's just that it has 24/192k capabilities should you have any downloaded files in this format.Comment
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It does give a misleading impression but, if your read carefully, they do not claim that the device will transform 44.1/16 CDs to 192/24 quality. They state that the device can handle 192/24 music but they leave open the question of where this 192/24 audio comes from. This will probably lead many people to think the 192/24 refers to the CDs that can be loaded into the device.Comment
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Sorry Jasmine, for the cross posting.Comment
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Surely anyone seriously into high quality sound will play it from files via an external soundcard which for much much less than this kind of gizmo will give much higher quality ?
I usually use an echo audiofire 4 , costs about £200 and will record and playback at variable sample rates etc and its more or less at the bottom end of the marketComment
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A device of this sort would suit my wife very well, since she feels daunted by browsing through our extensive CD collection (most of it chosen by me but including a good deal of music she likes very much but the titles of which she never could remember!). What she wants is a simple user interface, and what I want is no compromise in sound quality. I have persuaded her that a Brennan is not the thing at all, but maybe this would be the device for us.
I don't see a con trick being perpetrated myself.Comment
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I think I'm with MrGG on this. It IS misleading. There's no way that putting a 16/44.1 CD into a gizmo will deliver 24/192 audio, unless the data is substituted - something which Apple may be trying to do, but at a lower quality level with their iTunes Match feature for the iCloud (**). To me the Olive advert suggests that any CD will be improved. Re Bose (msg 2), I recently heard a Bose iPod dock, and it was quite good - much better than I expected, but I was surprised at the price - over £500.
** Why would anyone want Apple to downgrade their CD rips to 256kbps aac? Maybe could actually be useful for convenience, but not for quality. http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/Comment
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rauschwerkOriginally posted by rauschwerk View Post
Have you looked at the Logitech Squeezebox kit, or the Sonos stuff? I hear good reports of the Squeezebox Touch, and some say the sound quality from Sonos is very good. Might help your wife. The Logitech kit can also work with an iPad or iPhone app called iPeng, which is reportedly good. You can also maintiain quality levels if you don't think the audio from a Logitech Touch is good enough by treating it as a transport device, and using an external DAC.Comment
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Originally posted by Dave2002 View Post
Surely those amongst us who have a nerdy interest in sound quality will simply buy a high quality soundcard and use a computer anyway ?
I've found it interesting to see that many of the composers of the most esoteric "high end" electroacoustic music who would insist on using at least Genelec or ATC speakers in their studios often have very basic and simple systems in their front rooms !
My objection to BOSE is that they have historically made some good things (noise cancelling headphones , 802's etc) but the daft "all in one" boxes that use their patented ("its only a bog roll with a speaker in each end") speaker system are just rubbish.
"You Cannae change the laws of physics "Comment
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Dave, if you read the Olive website carefully it does NOT make that claim.Originally posted by Dave2002 View Post
Admittedly they haven't made any effort to state that users would have to download 192/24 files in order to benefit from the 192/24 audio quality. Perhaps they are relying on people not reading their website carefully and on constructive ambiguity to bolster their sales.Comment
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John - See also - http://www.olive.us/products/music_s...s/storage.htmlOriginally posted by johnb View Post
I agree that if you read the text that the claim is not actually made, but the whole layout of the pages suggests that users will get something better than CDs - by a miracle.
It would have been better if the pages stated explicitly that the user has to import the high resolution files, though where these are going to come from is somewhat problematic. Some new recordings come as quite expensive downloads, while some older ones come on SACD in a format which is hard if not impossible to convert. HDCDs are notionally 20 bit samples, but it's not certain what the Olive machines will do with them. DVD-As are fairly few and far between,
and now even rarer than SACDs I think.
I suppose that advertisers are always up to these things. Car adverts often have young ladies draped over them, and maybe we're all supposed to be sensible enough to realise that these are not provided with the car.
Presumably it influences some people to buy though - or at very least go to find out about the cars.Comment
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