Olive Media Products Inc. has announced the Opus, a new high-end CD player for home entertainment systems that integrates a 400GB hard disk drive, iPod connectivity and networking support. The $2,999 CD player is aimed at audiophiles and is available in either silver or black finishes.
The Opus is more than just a CD player with a hard disk, though. It also features a four-port 10/100baseT Ethernet switch and 802.11-g-compliant WiFi wireless networking capability. It’s compatible with Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) A/V and Apple Bonjour protocols, and can stream music from iTunes. You can review playlists and track information using a Web interface from a separate computer.
The Opus features four 24-bit/192kHz Digital Analog Converters (DACs) by Burr-Brown — two per channel. The device has 8x oversampling, which Olive claims eliminates noise and distortion. Other features include a separate temperature-compensated crystal oscillator, a linear power supply to reduce noise level and eliminate analog signal corruption, and more.
The Opus features a built-in LCD display that shows tags for music recorded on the hard drive. One-button operation enables users to store CD audio in lossless format on the internal 400GB, 3.5-inch hard disk drive, which floats on bearings to eliminate vibration and operating noise. Olive claims the Opus can store up to 1,100 audio CDs using lossless quality.
The music tag info is pulled from a built-in database of more than 2 million tracks, and that database can be updated from the Internet.
The Panasonic optical drive mechanism is a CD-R/RW, so you can also burn audio CDs. Two built-in USB 2.0 ports let you copy music to an iPod, as well.
The Opus also features a gold-plated analog RCA audio input and output, as well as SPDIF coax and optical digital outputs.