Olive Media Products

Infobox_Company
company_name = Olive Media Products, Inc.
company_
company_type = Corporation
company_slogan = Save the Sound
foundation = 2005
location = SOMA, San Francisco, California
key_people = Dr. Oliver Bergmann, CEO Robert Altmann, VP Business Development Dr. Tim Bussiek, CTO
num_employees = 35 (2007 approx.)
revenue =
industry = Consumer Electronics, Audio Equipment
parent =
products = Networked home audio systems, Hard drive based music servers, Digital audio players, Internet radio players, Digital music provider, Music library web applications, Preload CD import services, high-end audio DACs, PUSs
homepage = [http://www.olive.us www.olive.us]

Olive Media Products is a privately held company that produces wireless multi-room audio solutions focused on high-quality sound. It was founded by Dr. Oliver Bergmann and Robert Altmann in 2005, who had previously led Formac USA, an Apple Inc. peripherals company. Olive sees itself at the crossroads of high fidelity audio and digital media technologies, and looks to combine these into its solutions with a focus on higher quality audio reproduction for the home.

Opus hard-drive based music server/player

The first Olive Opus was introduced July 2005 with the name of “Symphony”, a similar version followed September 2005 with the name of “Musica”. They were renamed as “Opus No. 3” in August 2007. The more high-end or audiophile “Opus No. 5” line was introduced as the “Opus” in March 2006.These systems essentially replace other stereo audio sources such as cassette player, turntable, CD player and radio, as they are made to import the analog and digital content into one digitized music library. For this purpose the Opus systems have the relevant audio-in ports and large hard drive storage capacities. Once music libraries are consolidated they can be played back through the usual stereo system or via wireless and wired clients that are distributed around the house based on the UPnP protocol. As the Opus’s are connected to the home network and internet, they are also able to stream internet radio, which is currently based on the Shoutcast service.

Melody music player

Olive's Melody series was introduced in July 2008 with the No.2 version. It is a networked audio receiver utilizing the home network to stream music from available music servers, computers or Network-attached storage (NAS) devices based on the UPnP protocol, as well as from internet radio stations. The Melody complements the Opus for a complete home audio solution as a combination of music server and player clients. The user interface is the same as on the Olive Opus, with identical navigation allowing to browse and play, change ratings or delete tracks of the central music library. Olive also has a concept of shared and private playlists, where private playlists are only available in specific locations.

Olive Music Engine

With the introduction of the Opus No.5 in 2006, Olive for the first time defined its own technology platform, which it sees as the mix of audio components such as digital analog converter (DAC), sample rate converter (SRC) and power supply (PSU), with digital media components such as quiet hard drive, rip and burn capability, music library management and music browse and play user interface. With the Opus No.4, for the first time HD audio capability up to 96kHz/24bit was introduced, though only playable on the digital out channel. By adding the Melody No.2 in 2008 the platform was extended to include a networked audio receiver to be able to offer around-the-home high-end audio capabilities, including the streaming of HD audio content. Also in 2008 the user interface was enhanced with a color touchscreen and deep navigation capabilities based on a 3-level genre hierarchy and genre dependent metadata, and storage capacities were increased to 1 TB.

DRM-free CD-quality music

Since October 2007 Olive has been working with music labels to offer an online music store with a catalog of classical, jazz and blues music. The music labels represented include Concord for jazz, Alligator for blues, and Naxos for classical. Music is organized into playlists for moods or events, and collections per music genre. The music is made available in lossless quality (FLAC) and without DRM limitations.

Maestro and Rondo web applications

Maestro (formerly Playlist 1.0) is a drag & drop music library management software with a special focus on personalizing the multi-level genre-hierarchy as well as managing the metadata of classical music. To date it has not left beta status. Rondo is a software that allows the music browse and play interface to be available via the web on most other clients such as PDAs and computers.

Preload CD import service

As part of the digital consolidation of music libraries Olive like other ripping providers offers to do this in an automated way, so that when customers buy an Opus their own music is “preloaded”.

References

* New York Times/David Pogue: [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html www.nytimes.com]
* Business Week/Stephen Wildstrom: [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_49/b3962041.htm www.businessweek.com]
* Mad Penguin/Christian Einfeldt: [http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=4844 madpenguin.org]

External links

Olive official website: [http://www.olive.us www.olive.us] Shoutcast internet radio: [http://www.shoutcast.com www.shoutcast.com]