The remote is mostly OK except that it isn’t at all (not even a little) backlit. It is extremely light and fits well in your hand. The navigation buttons land naturally under your thumb when you grab the remote. The playback controls are all above the navigation buttons except the ‘Record’ button which is inexplicably located on the very top on the left. I guess the thought was that it would stop the user from accidentally hitting it instead of ’Play’ (of course, now the user hits it instead of ’On’). There is no ’Pause‘ button (scratched my head for a while at that one) but hitting the ‘Play’ button a second time pauses playback.

The function buttons oriented horizontally under the navigation buttons correspond to the vertical buttons on the unit (had to look that one up). This makes it so you can control just about everything on the unit from the remote. It would have been nice if the function buttons were located next to the navigation buttons and oriented vertically like they are on the unit. This would have made them a little more intuitive. The eight Quick-keys on the bottom lead you to all the major functionalities of the unit. Of course, the remote isn’t backlit and the buttons are very small so it is easy to hit the wrong one, especially in the dark. If it were me, I’d have four buttons preprogrammed and four that were user configurable.

Overall, I found the sensitivity of the remote to be a bit lacking. This could be because the IR receiver was too close to the control wheel and sometimes blocked the remote’s signal. It seemed that sometimes I’d get stuck on a screen and have to get up to control the unit from the face. I also found myself pressing buttons multiple times trying to get it to recognize the command. When I’m sitting directly in front of the unit, I know it is not my position.

Listening Tests

Obviously, I listened to a great deal of music on this box. I ripped a number of CDs to it and compared it to what I had heard in the past. I also had the opportunity to explore some of the music that Olive was nice enough to provide for me. Since I had an unprecedented level of control, I decided to test the Death Cab for Cutie SACD to the CD version I burned to the Symphony using a FLAC format to the burned copy I made from with the symphony (mind boggling, isn’t it? I feel like I might have ripped a hole in the space time continuum or something). Switching back and forth as quickly as it took for the Denon AVR-3805 to lock on to the new signal, I both reaffirmed by belief that the CD and SACD versions of this album were identical and that the disc burned from the Symphony was just as good as the original. I also discovered that the Symphony sounded as good as any CD/DVD transport I’ve heard to date. No coloring of the signal was present in any form. The FLAC lossless compression made no audible difference that I could ascertain.

I took a listen to some of 25+ albums provided by Olive and was surprised by some of the vocalists I heard. Most striking to me was Lorna Hunt. I wish I could say that I was familiar with this artist before this review but I must admit that I wasn’t. The one album that they had loaded into the Symphony was All in One Day, her first of two albums (according to her website). The audio quality of this album was superb and the vocals were as interesting as they were compelling. The accompaniment was usually a guitar with a bass and some simple drums allowing her voice to take center stage. Reminiscent of early Jewel or Joni Mitchell, I have rarely been so captivated by an album so quickly. I think what drew me in was the honesty of her voice and the absolutely raw quality of the recording. It sounded live in the way that a new artist unfamiliar with the studio sounds their first time in. They don’t know that they can “fix” things in post production so they just sing the way they always do. She has a second album out… I’m guess I’m going to have to pick them both up.

Recommendations

At its price point, very little can touch the Symphony. I’d like to see a ’Standby‘ button on the remote as the ’Power‘ button shuts the unit down completely. Not a problem really except when dealing with Internet radio. If the unit goes to standby, the stations all stay in the buffer, if you turn the unit off, all the stations have to be reacquired. Reacquiring stations takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes in my experience and is an annoyance I don’t need. In fact, if the ‘Power’ button on the remote only put the unit in standby that would be OK by me. The ‘Power’ button on the unit could perhaps put the unit in standby with a regular press and shut the unit down completely with a held press.

Future software iterations will make the unit configurable and controllable over the Internet. While this is a great thing, I also would like to see a video output so that those of us with a display in our listening rooms could see something on the screen. Even if it was the same thing that was on the little display, that would be alright. Something. I don’t want to have to carry my laptop into my home theater to control this thing and I don’t think I should have to. There is also talk of an improved remote or the ability to interface with Crestron type remotes. That would work too.

Conclusions and Overall Perceptions

After reviewing several products in the $2000-$5000 category, I was hesitant to think the $900 Symphony could compete. Compete? No, it doesn’t. It dominates. In ease of use, flexibility, and overall performance, it is a least as good if not better than anything else I’ve tested at any cost. With universal players costing much more, I don’t see how this unit could be considered anything but worthy of inclusion into a high-powered system. It stores music in the form you want, it plays it back in the way you desire, and it makes itself available to every other device in your home. No worries about loss or compression, the Olive Symphony gives you your music back the exact same way it was recorded, bit for bit. Best of all, it looks as good as it works!