John Martin wrote:My friend has an Olive 06HD. Its very nice and heavenly but would not invest in a P230k equipment. You might want to consider a higher level such as the 04HD or 05HD. Not sure of the model.
I am very happy with the 04HD. Imho, what you are buying is convenience, more than anything else, particularly if you are just starting a digital library, starting from CDs and/or high rez downloads.
The main differences among the various models are the DAC and the storage size.
03HD: Has 500GB of storage. You can do the math and see if this is good enough for you.
Has no digital out, so you are captive to its built-in DAC. Suggest you listen and see if the SQ makes you smile.
04HD: Has 2TB of storage. This should be good enough for most humans.
Has a better DAC and digital out, allowing use of an external DAC. To some, including me, this is key.
06HD: Has 2TB of storage, the best DAC, digital out (and a bigger screen). But you pay for all these.
The downside to all of the above is that Olive uses proprietary technology to store and process all the music. While ripping, storing and backing up all the music is very easy, you cannot use any of these files if you decide to migrate to another (non Olive) platform. If you do, you go back to Step 1, start from scratch and redo everything all over again.