[balu]

After months of ripping/encoding and then copying files from an NTFS to a FAT filesystem, I have run into another issue - my Olive Symphony recognizes the external hard drive and allows me to browse its contents but does not play most of the flac encoded files. In fact, the only ones that I have been able to play are those that were encoded using the FLAC frontend program. The rest (that were encoded through an option in EAC) are not recognized by Olive. I am guessing that the FLAC options I configured EAC with are somehow incompatible with the FLAC decoder in Olive. Does anyone know if there is an easy solution to this problem (short of decoding/encoding 1000+ albums)?

Thanks.

[Vinnie R.]

Hi Balu,

A few weeks ago I had a customer with a similar problem (his Musica could not see the FlAC Files that he ripped).  I'm not sure if this is the same problem that you are having, but this is what I wrote to him:

I spent last night looking into your Olive and why it doesn't read the song names from your USB hard drive.  I finally figured it out...it all has to do with the way your FLAC files are named in EAC/FLAC.
 
For example, this is how my individual tracks are named with EAC when auto converted to FLAC:
 
03 - Another Lonely Day - Ben Harper - Fight For Your Mind.flac
 
(The format is Track number - Song Name - Artist - Album)
 
When I put this on your hard drive, the Olive sees the song names and artist/album info/track number perfectly fine.
 
When I imported a song from my Olive to your USB Hard Drive, this is what it looks like:
 
01 Happy Together.flac
 
So it looks like the Olive wants to see the track number first and then the track name.flac
 
 
Now, here is an example of a track from you hard drive:
 
Alison Krauss-Forget About It-01-Stay-8609680B-Misc-1999.flac
 
This comes up as "unknown" on your Olive because of the formating. 
 
I renamed it on your hard drive to:
01-Stay-Alison Krauss-Forget About It.flac
 
Now the Olive should see it properly.
 
 
If you continue to use EAC to make FLAC files, do this:
 
Open EAC
 
Go to the EAC tab and select EAC Option.
 
Select "File Name"
 
In the "Naming Scheme" box, paste this in:
 
%N - %T - %A - %C
 
Check the box that says "Use various artist naming scheme" and paste this in that box:
 
%C - %N - %A - %T
 
Press OK.
 
Now go back to the EAC Tab and select "compression options"
 
Select ID3 Tag
 
Don't check any of the boxes, and in the box that says construction of filenames from ID3 tags, paste this in:
 
%N-%T - %A
 
Press OK.
 
If you rip your music with EAC in this format and then move this to your hard drive, the Olive should see it all.

I hope this helps.  Of course renaming all the files is not going to be fun 

Maybe there is a program that can do this for you?

Best regards,

Vinnie

[balu]

Further use of the external hard drive with the Olive revealed that there is no discernible correlation between how a file was encoded and whether it plays on the Olive. Some of the albums seem to play fine while some others are recognized, but playing them results only in a series of high-pitched clicks.
One of them caused the machine to go into an infinite loop (trying to decode the file, I presume) and I had to switch off power to the hard drive to regain control. Most of the albums, however, are not even recognized as music. In typical Olive fashion, trying to play such files yields no response at all - I can live with a unix-style error message, but this? Before someone asks me, I am able to play all the albums without any issues using Foobar 2000, so it certainly looks like some issue with accessing files or perhaps an outdated version of FLAC on the Olive.

[John Casler]

WAG (wild ass guess) it might be something to do with copy protection.

I have heard that clicking on a few CD's I tried to burn to my computer that was attributed to the copy protection program.

[Frihed91]

I just don't understand these problems.  They are NOT NOT NOT normal.  I have an Arcam cd-192T.  While i play mainly CDs, my kids play all kinds of stuff: wav, apple stuff(?), mp-3, you name it, it doesn't matter how or where it was recorded (ripped and burnt) ,the Arcam plays it all without ever never ever skipping a beat.

Why should Olive be so special?  I think you all are getting ripped off!

[balu]

The problem appears to be due to the presence of ID3V2 tags in more than half the .flac files on my hard drive. I had ripped my music on two computers and on one of them, I had configured EAC to generate ID3V2 info. Stripping these tags seems to make the Olive happy. Now, does anyone know of a freeware program that can perform such a task in batch mode?

[Vinnie R.]

Hi Balu,

Thanks for sharing this info with us. 

I don't know of such a program, but hopefully it does exist so you don't have to manually do this 

Best regards,

Vinnie

[John Casler]

I just don't understand these problems.  They are NOT NOT NOT normal.  I have an Arcam cd-192T.  While i play mainly CDs, my kids play all kinds of stuff: wav, apple stuff(?), mp-3, you name it, it doesn't matter how or where it was recorded (ripped and burnt) ,the Arcam plays it all without ever never ever skipping a beat.

Why should Olive be so special?  I think you all are getting ripped off!

Will your Arcam CD-192T play a Hard Drive?  

[edsel6502]

The problem appears to be due to the presence of ID3V2 tags in more than half the .flac files on my hard drive. I had ripped my music on two computers and on one of them, I had configured EAC to generate ID3V2 info. Stripping these tags seems to make the Olive happy. Now, does anyone know of a freeware program that can perform such a task in batch mode?

Not sure about free. but tag&rename is worth every penny.

[Jampot]

Tag and rename is available here (30 day trial then $29.95 if you want to register)

http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

This is something I could be interested in so I did a quick search or two and found this

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/ClassicTagger

seems to be open source and therefore free but may be a bit buggy...

Although the problem is with the Olive, there is quite a bit of stuff about ripping and tagging at the Slim Devices forums

http://forums.slimdevices.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Be intersted to hear how it goes.

Jim

[Frihed91]

John, I understand your point, but that's not my point which is that the Arcam will play any kind of file that i can store on my hard disk, without missing a heartbeat.  I think Arcam is making a music server now and I know Cambridge is.  My guess is that the approach of these two companies is to put a hard disk in a CDP (plus some other goodies like a preamp and amp).  I think this produces a highly reliable system with excellent sonics. Putting a two channel audio system in a PC is not the way to go as far as I am concerned.

I am not against music servers, just ones that have crappy mechanical and/or sonic performance.

[balu]

Tag and rename is available here (30 day trial then $29.95 if you want to register)

http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

This is something I could be interested in so I did a quick search or two and found this

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/ClassicTagger

seems to be open source and therefore free but may be a bit buggy...

Although the problem is with the Olive, there is quite a bit of stuff about ripping and tagging at the Slim Devices forums

http://forums.slimdevices.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Be intersted to hear how it goes.

Jim

Thanks for the pointers. I downloaded Tag and a GUI frontend (appropriately named tag_frontend). I started out by stripping ID3V2 tags from a few albums by adding the individual tracks and selecting the option to remove ID3V2 tags only. After verifying that Olive recognizes and plays those albums without any issues, I set about stripping the tags from about 220GB of flac encoded files. Fortunately, tag_frontend allows one to choose a directory (including its subdirectories) that contains all the files to be processed, so it is relatively simple to automate the whole process. It is slow, however, since ID3V2 tags are written at the beginning of a file and so stripping them requires copying out the entire file without the tags and then renaming it. The program has been running for about 12 hours and has processed about 100GB of data. Hopefully, I should have all the files processed by tomorrow.

[budbrew]

Other than the tagging issue how do you like your Olive? Looking into getting one myself.

[balu]

Other than the tagging issue how do you like your Olive? Looking into getting one myself.

Other than the tagging issues and klunkiness of the UI, I think the (Vinnie-modded) Olive is a terrific unit. My current setup of the modded Olive, Signature 30 and Gallo Ref 3 sound so much better than I thought possible. I had posted my initial impressions of the Olive and the Sig 30 a while ago in a different thread and with further break-in, those impressions have become even more favorable. The slight leanness and restricted dynamics that I mentioned then are not a concern anymore except with CDs recorded at a low volume. However, there may be a solution for that too. While talking to Olive's tech support regarding the tag issue, I came to know that one can selectively boost the volume for individual albums (and perhaps even tracks in an album). My guess is that this is Olive's interface for setting Replaygain for those albums/tracks. I tried it on a couple of albums that tend to sound a little lean on the Olive and that did indeed make those albums sound fuller, richer, etc. I have to play around with this setting a little more to judge if there is a downside to it, but for now I am pretty happy with what I hear.

I'm hoping there are more surprises (positive, of course) in store. During the limited time that I had an external drive connected to the Olive, I found (or perhaps, just imagined) that an album ripped using EAC sounded much better than the same album ripped by Olive to its hard drive. I'm not completely convinced that EAC can make such a significant difference, so I'll have to do some extensive listening before I can state that with confidence. It would be interesting to see how a EAC-ripped album sounds when it is imported into Olive's hard drive ...

[budbrew]

Balu, thanks! I'm on the fence about the Olive. I'd like to incorporate some form of PC audio in my main system, but I'm just not sure what yet. I have a Mac Mini-based system in a small back room who's purpose right now is primarily to rip albums to. I also have a Wavelength Audio USB DAC. But I don't want the noise and clutter of a full PC system in my living room (the hard drive fans are pretty noisy). The Olive sounds to me like a good option in terms of being one unit. With the Squeezebox you still need a PC somewhere.

My Sig 30 impresses me more and more. After continuing to break it has filled out nicely. Early on it was lean and closed in, more so at low volumes, but now it's really opened up. I believe I've reached a point where I don't miss my SET amps. There are some things they do better, but in the big picture I really enjoy listening to music with the Sig 30. It has a nice level of detail and dynamics, but most importantly it has the ever important character of musicality. It brings me close to the music and it's fun to listen to. A real music lover's amp.

[ZLS]

Hello,

    If you like the sound of the Sig 30, you will like the sound of the RWA modded Olive.  They are of one piece.  The sound is full, deep and rich.  Being battery powered, besides the incredible quiet, the smoothness of the power source allows for all of the nuances of the music to be revealed.  Again, as good as the SB sounds, the Olive sounds better.  The convenience of it being an all in one unit is an additional benefit. 

[Vinnie R.]

Hi Balu, budrew, and ZLS,

Thanks for sharing your impressions of your RWA gear... be it the Signature 30, modded Olive, or both in Balu's case 

However, there may be a solution for that too. While talking to Olive's tech support regarding the tag issue, I came to know that one can selectively boost the volume for individual albums (and perhaps even tracks in an album). My guess is that this is Olive's interface for setting Replaygain for those albums/tracks. I tried it on a couple of albums that tend to sound a little lean on the Olive and that did indeed make those albums sound fuller, richer, etc. I have to play around with this setting a little more to judge if there is a downside to it, but for now I am pretty happy with what I hear.

Last night I typed in the IP address of my Olive into my web browser (internet explorer) for the first time and immediately connected to my Olive via my laptop....pretty cool.  I noticed that you can gain the gain of the recording, so I'm going to try it on one of my CDs that needs to volume to really be turned up to hear it well. 

I also like how I can type in the names of "unknown albums" and their tracks (usually mixes that I have) with my computer instead of having to do it with the Olive's jog wheel. 

Making playlists is also easier!

Once that Wireless PDA interface come out (via software update), things are going to get even better!  Olive told me that the software is coming along well and they hope to have it out this year.  I will post when I hear about more updates. 

I also sent another modded Olive to Srajan for his review.  Hopefully this unit will work a lot better for him and once I receive his back, I'll look into it.  Jeff Day of 6moons and Larry Borden of Dagogo also each have one for review...

Thanks again,

Vinnie

[ehart]

Hi Vinnie,

Do you find the web version of the interface to be very slow?

On another question (and I may have asked this before), would you consider modding just the analog input side of a Musica and nothing else? 

Cordially,

Eric

[Vinnie R.]

Hi Vinnie,

Do you find the web version of the interface to be very slow?

On another question (and I may have asked this before), would you consider modding just the analog input side of a Musica and nothing else? 

Cordially,

Eric

Hi Eric,

Yes, it was a little slow.  This should all be corrected with the new software 2.3 that will be out soon.  The interface has changed. 

Regarding the mods, I will only be offering the full-package mods as shown on my website (complete battery conversion, analog output and input mods, digital output mods, vibration control, etc.). 

Best regards,

Vinnie

[jackthecat]

Hi Vinnie
More Olive questions 
Can you explain why youre not doing any mods with the Opus? ...only the musica and symphony ?
And would you know if the olive brand is sold under some other name outside the US? I saw something looking very similar here in NZ but with a different brand name.
Thanks for your time.
Tony