Good advice.
My protocol is that I download music (usually from Qobuz) using my iMac computer and from there I always straightaway copy it to a separate drive and then after that copy it to my Oladra. This means that I am not doing any formal ‘back ups’ of my Oladra but the music is also stored elsewhere in the event of a catastrophy.
I thought you looked a little bit distracted in that interview but never the less I think you got your points across.
Your posts with updates and insights into where you are headed are very much welcomed. Please do keep finding the time to do them.
I hope you continue to recover speedily. Best wishes.
It’s as if you are actually using the Oladra as a backup destination. That’s how I do it too. A folder on my NAS is actually the primary source. An app I run on my Mac then synchronizes it down to the internal drives on my Antipodes box. A nightly job also backs my entire NAS contents to external drives.
Thanks Nick. I still have a fair bit of brain fog and seem to need a lot of sleep but enjoying getting back into it - particularly working with the software development team on the new software stack. We had been happy to use the Sonicorbiter back-end (because it just works) and just improve the user interface for a couple of years there, but we have a lot of ideas concerning what we can achieve by building our own stack so that everything works optimally from firmware through operating system, orchestration layer, presentation layer and applications. We won’t be focused on the playback app till we have made sure the platform is optimised, but you will see some significant benefits soonish. I will post something more meaty soon.
I have a few backups, but doesn’t anyone else find the reloading a daunting enterprise? I upgraded to the latest Samsung SSDs, and loading the backup onto them, admittedly via the network was so slooooowwww.
Could you explain what is special about the new footing on the new product line?
Saying that the upgrade lifts the performance of the oladra isnt nearly enough info to help me make a decision on upgrading or not. I have no use for usb so i have to try to decide if spending 25% of the original cost of the oladra now is worthwhile solely for some unquantified improvement in the player engine. Personally i dont understand how a product that was at the pinnacle of music server SQ 6 months ago now offers an upgrade purported to be worth 25% more than the original cost.
I suppose the question i would like answered is whether the upgrade will give a noticeable improvement in SQ using the aes output?
From the linked page…
We also put a lot of design effort into the footers used on the Oladra, and this has trickled down to the benefit of all of the K series models in 2023. The footers include a special polymer that is specifically designed for vibration control, and the very detailed specifications provided by the manufacturer of this material allow us to precisely calculate the thickness to be used in each instance so that the pressure applied to the polymer is always precisely what is required for optimum vibration control performance. In the Oladra and the Performance Series the Polymer is used in a constrained layer damping design that makes it possible to tune each separate footer even more precisely to its optimum pressure, and allow a very small contact area with the equipment rack.
@tommytwotimes
The Player engine is upgraded, lifting performance on all outputs.
I’m REALLY pleased I have the opportunity to upgrade my K50 Mk2 especially with the uplift in USB performance allowing to use DOP to my DAC.
My previous server (Bryston) never gave this opportunity to update the hardware. This disappointed my greatly.
Accuphase (my other components) never give this opportunity to update the hardware. Never really expected it though
Verity Audio do allow a hardware upgrade (the isolation bases) but my speakers already had this.
The ability to update the hardware was one of the reasons why I chose Antipodes and went away from my previous supplier plus the supply of a forum where people could speak their minds which was not the case for my previous supplier
I’m no Antipodes “fan boy” just some one impressed by a company wanting to do the right thing
Keep up the good work!
I have been your client since DX3 and I was never asked about this.
I would say that 2 to 3 years cycle would be good. 1 years cycle for a high end product, doesn’t look well to me. I look around and I don’t see any top class high end product being updated every year. I see Sony, Marantz, Denon… doing that on AV products, but these brands are not at Antipodes level.
I do not want to throw fuel on this fire, but I want to explain some things, now that the heat has come down a bit. This topic, and the options we have, are the next thing to existential to Antipodes, so if it is currently top of mind for you then we ought to explore it, now.
This is a long post, but to talk openly about this topic we need to explain some facts of life.
Motherboard Example
Lets take motherboards as the first example. In many cases when we select and work with a motherboard, the ongoing availability of that motherboard is dependent on the Intel chipset remaining available. By chipset we mean the CPU and the motherboard chips that support that CPU and manage the board. We are mainly talking about chips designed for industrial use rather than consumer use. In that respect, Intel usually offers us an option of CPUs. One option is often a relatively standard chipset that has guaranteed ongoing availability till some future date. Other options, in our experience, are cheaper, sound better, but there is no guaranteed ongoing availability. When you select one of these better sounding chips then Intel can ask for ‘last orders’ at any time. In some cases if you don’t get your last orders in quickly, then you may not get your order filled at all.
So when we design a product, we will typically use the board with the better performance. If the chipset gets pulled then we can fallback to the one with longevity guarantees without having to change anything else about the product.
But when the ‘last orders’ call happens, you typically find that a whole new chipset is launched a little later by Intel and it out-performs the old one. So we typically buy some in the ‘last orders’ phase and wait to see what becomes available, and we end up making a change in the product. We typically add a few other upgrades to the product at the same time, tell people the product has been upgraded and offer people the ability to have their existing products upgraded. For this reason, we also design our products to a template that enables likely future changes in parts. How long the product stays unchanged is kind of up to the winds of change. If the changes mean a significant performance improvement them we embrace that change. If there is not an improvement for customers then we take mitigation steps to keep the product stable for as long as we can. But there are some cases where it basically means a model has become unviable to continue with. The chip shortages during Covid caused much more of these problems than usual, so you have seen more forced changes in the last few years.
To keep the models stable for say 3 to 5 years, we have at these three alternative options instead:
So it is pretty clear I think that under these options we would be more expensive and not sound so good and keep the product stable and become less and less competitive until the next release 3 to 5 years later.
Partners
Here is another example. One of our partners promised release of something and we beta tested it, revised our products to use it, produced the products for launch on the date the partner promised to supply. If they were late, then we could slip it a bit too. The week they were meant to supply, they simply said “oh, we decided not to do that”, and clearly they decided not to tell us either. What they did say was that the item would be supplied ‘soon’. Since this item was software we launched our new product without it - since we had already manufactured stock, and pushing the software out later would not be a problem. Several months later, the item was supplied, and was so different from what we had tested that it worked in our newly released products, but did not work very well. That model was updated around two years later.
There is a simple answer to that one too. Don’t trust your partners, wait till they supply, then design and put up with the customers’ constant and bitter complaints “why can I not have this new software?” for a year while we design the new product that will work well with the new software. We have been there.
Disruptive Technology
Here is another example. At a point in time in 2020 we found that we could very significantly beat the performance of USB by reclocking synchronous outputs, so we did. The kludgy ways that were available to try and improve USB were ‘one step forward and one step back’. They changed the sound, yes, but often only smoother at the expense of communicating the music. We preferred to do the USB once, as well as it could be done on the mainboard, and not go down the route of the available means of regenerating the signal (basically they use a USB hub chip, add a decent oscillator and a decent power supply, BUT all of that can be done on the main board).
Along comes a new IC that enables you to do the job very well and the samples we received early were very promising so we started designing around it and we came to the conclusion that this was ‘good enough’ to do. By the time we received a huge order of these chips their performance was now extremely good.
We knew many of our customers would prefer to have this rather than not have this. Given the overhead cost of upgrading, we took the opportunity to add further benefits to help justify the hassle and cost of having your unit upgraded. And here we all are.
Our policy has upset a significant number of customers, so lets look at the options where we keep the product stable for 3 to 5 years.
Summary
What we do now, fits with what I feel is honest, ethical and customer-focused. For each of the alternative options I have set out above, I can name brands that I know take that approach. You will probably recognise some too. You are right. They seem to keep their models more stable.
We could change our approach if we discover customers value stability that much. But we do not have a crystal ball or magic wand that allows us to guarantee to you that the day you bought the product will miraculously be the day when no innovation of any kind will occur in the world until just before you feel like upgrading your system again.
We are being genuine when we say we are doing what we think is the right approach, not an approach designed by our non-existent marketing team. But if you really want us to change our approach, there are options, with trade-offs, and the point of this long post is to be very open with you about what the options really are, and get your thoughts.
IMO, you are doing it ethically and I do not see that a ‘significant number of customers’ are displeased, perhaps less than a handful of the same ‘whiners’ on this forum. We, as customers, buy or not - period.
I have just decided jump from a Gen 1 K50 to OLADRA because of my respect for you and high esteem of your products. Keep on Keeping on.
I for one have no issue with your current approach and applaud Antipodes for the openness on this forum.
Apple upgrades their phones and iPads every year. I keep mine until they wear out or the new one offers something significantly better.
In the world of computer hardware and software, built in obsolescence is part of the game, different from amplifiers, speakers and the like.
Your decision to keep striving for better is to be applauded, rather than resting on your laurels.
Anyway, my take on this thread is that the majority of users are happy with your approach other than a dissenting (somewhat self entitled) vocal minority.
Any chance of allowing oladra owners to upgrade the player engine only ie without the usb upgrade, to reduce the cost for users who dont use usb?
Tommy2x, Much as I might sympathise with you I doubt that Antipodes would want various half upgraded versions of their Oladra out there in the wild.
From my perspective and having thought about it for a few days I am now really excited to get my Oladra upgraded because the new Oladra USB and Oladra Player upgrades must be way above the ones being put in the K50 etc. It will be interesting when we can have a look inside each of them to see just how different the new Oladra boards are compared to the new K50 boards.
This is not very respectful. The exchange of ideas is always the best way to clarify and move ahead on any issue.
This has a name: “INTOLERANCE” and must not be accepted by the administrators or anyone on this forum.
We are all getting better and more detailed information about these upgrades from Antipodes, because the members require more information instead of simply acting as “YES MAN”, when doubts are still in someone’s mind.
We all should promote and welcome the participation of everyone. Even the most silly question should be welcome by everyone and replied by Antipodes.
Calling “Whiners” or use any other negative adjective to other members is not the right way and I want to clearly state that I demarcate myself from this negative attitude.
Accepted backlash and of course I agree with your stated feelings while also recognize why you in particular are upset. My concern is the lack of respect for Antipode’s exclusive right to manage their business apart from your and my position as customers, divorced from injecting how and when they improve and promote their product. I hope they continue to improve and make available those advances as they deem appropriate. This ends my comments as impertent to this thread and my apologies to those on it. Thanks
For sure we should treat each other in a respectful manner. Having said that though, I do think a sign of a healthy community is when members contribute to policing each other’s behavior, such as you have done. There were some extremely disrespectful remarks hurled in Antipodes direction. I see these “negative adjectives” as a means of pointing out that the behavior of some was clearly out of bounds. I think each of us should reflect on those words to try to understand how we can each avoid posting in a way that comes of as if we were just whining.
The poster in fact does tolerate your voice, he just does not respect it. And he does not need to. It‘s no surprise to me that you call for administrators to act - rather typical for someone who does not appear to know the difference between tolerance and respect. I see mainly two posters in this forum who give the impression as if they were speaking for a majority of Antipodes customers, here Oladra owners. And continuously question the intend, thruthfulness and business ethics of the company. You can of course do this, fair enough. But then please refrain from asking for moderation in the very moment someone dares to step on your toes.
And I agree, calling people „whiners“ is not helpful. I would submit qualifying other fellow users as „yes man“ is not either.