Olive Media Products

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Olive Media Products, Inc.
Type Corporation
Founded 2005
Headquarters SOMA, San Francisco, California
Key people Dr. Oliver Bergmann, CEO
Robert Altmann, VP Business Development
Dr. Tim Bussiek, CTO
Industry Consumer Electronics, Audio Equipment
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,
DACs,
CD player
Employees 35 (2007 approx.)
Website 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.

Contents

[edit] 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 of 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.

[edit] Pure Audio System

With the introduction of the Opus No.5 in 2007, Olive for the first time defined its own technology platform, which it defines 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.

[edit] DRM-free CD-quality music

Since October 2007 Olive has started working together with MusicGiants to offer an online music store with a catalog of classical, jazz and blues music. The music labels represented include Concord for jazz 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 and without DRM limitations.

[edit] Playlist and Rondo web applications

Playlist 1.0 is a music library management software with a special focus on managing 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.

[edit] 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”.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Olive official website: www.olive.us
Shoutcast internet radio: www.shoutcast.com