TAIKO Olympus Server + Olympus I/O XDMI system

We Don’t Care was the very first track I heard through the Olympus. And it instantly gave me goosebumps. It was not a instrumentally complicated track, a duel of two acoustic guitars played by Eric Bibb and Habib Koité on Brothers in Bamako album that were accompanied by shakers and bass. My goosebumps were not induced by music as such; it was phenomenal separation of the sounds that left me speechless for a moment. Each faintest sound, the vibrations of strings, the resonances of guitar bodies, steel and wood, the voices born in chests… As if Sherlock Holmes’ magnifying glass was replaced by electron microscope imaging. Well, another audiophile device that overly accentuates details, you may think. Not at all. The Olympus was far from throwing needles at me. Yes, it was incredibly nuanced and microscopic, yet all the extra information and separation was fluid, colourful, delicate and superbly musical, it served the music and made it more alive and more there. The music glowed with rhythm, the grains in the shaker were almost trackable in their journey through the instrument, the voices were palpably articulated and velvety smooth, and they radiated intimate warmth.  Those were the rare moments when you inhaled and forgot to exhale.