I was part of the John Casler Olive group buy. Now that the controversy over the OPUS has died down, I thought I would give a mini review, to be updated as I become more familiar with my unit. I will start out with my initial observations and impressions.
Upon receiving my OPUS, I was immediately impressed by the fact that it was shipped in a wooden box! No need to worry about damages. As much as I wanted to, I resisted the temptation to open it; because I had decided to send it on to Doug, at Reference Audio Mods, for his "basic" power supply and analog output mods. In the past, I had read that the main criticism of the Resolution Audio Opus21 was its lack of dynamics...Since the OPUS is rumored to be heavily based on the Resolution Audio player, I thought that these mods would provide the biggest bang for the buck. I want to thank Doug for taking the time to answer my many questions and still get the OPUS back to me in under 2 weeks.
When I finally unpacked the OPUS, my first impression was that the picture on the website does not do it justice. It has the look and feel of a high quality component. I have been burning it in for the past several days; so at this point I cannot make any judgements regarding the sound--other than to say that the first things that came to my mind were smooth and nuance. It is detailed without being IN YOU FACE. Also, some people have mentioned that their units get quite warm. I would say that mine is only mildly warm to the touch--However, I do have it temporarily out in the open. Also, other than a short period of clicks, when a CD is first inserted, my unit is practically silent. All in all, I am quite please with both the OPUS and with Reference Audio Mods (Thanks again Doug!)
Now I do have one question for other Olive owners: I just today started to copy my CD collection, and before I get too far, what is the difference between AIFF and WAV? So far, I have been using AIFF encoding--Is there any reason why I would want to switch to WAV?
