Olive Symphony, the uber stereo

Updated

Here is a great review of Olive Symphony by the NYT’s David Pogue.

(Update: Though Om Malik thinks this Olive may be overrated, and questions why Pogue makes no comparison with the Sonos, which Om calls the “gold standard.”)

The $900 hi-fi super-stereo merges everything — your iPods, wireless networks, sound systems and personal computers — into one machine. It is being shipped to stores next week. Olive is a privately held San Francisco company, and there is surprisingly little…

…information about it on its Web site. Here is our last mention of them.

Pogue:

Once your music collection is safely ensconced on the Symphony, you can exile the original CD’s, tapes and records to the attic. From now on, you can call up any album right on the screen. You can also mix and match tracks into playlists of your own. Better yet, the Symphony’s CD player is also a CD recorder, so you can burn your music – including the tunes you’ve rescued from your old tapes and LP’s – onto shiny new CD’s.

If your head hasn’t yet exploded, there’s more: you can also connect an iPod or any MP3 player directly to a U.S.B. jack on the Symphony (which also recharges the player). Amazingly, the iPod’s own music collection now appears on the Symphony’s screen, ready for playing through your stereo system…