Organising a music collection isn’t as simple as filling up a CD tower with discs in the lounge room anymore, writes Stephen Fenech.

Since the invention of devices like the iPod and other digital music players, our music has become something we now store on a hard drive instead of in an entertainment unit.  For many that hard drive happens to be the one on their computer which is not exactly the ideal place to hear your music

When we were spinning vinyl and inserting CDs into a player, the place we listened to music was through a decent hi-fi system or using a surround sound system.

Today what we need is a device that can sit between all of these speakers and keep your music on one searchable place while still providing decent audio output.

The Olive O3HD is that product.

It looks a bit like a CD player – about the same width and slightly higher with a CD slot and basic playback controls.

But the major difference is the colour touch screen on the left side of the sloped front panel and the directional keys to the right of the display.

The unit is actually far more stylish than a regular CD player with its angled and curved edges and pattern of words listing the genres of music on the top of the product.

One of the best features about the Olive O3HD is the ease which it can be set up at home.

Connect the power, connect an Ethernet cable for your home network, connect the analogue outputs to your AV receiver. That’s it. No software installation, no connecting it to a computer and no network set up. It’s just plug and play.

This dedicated music server can put all of your music in one place and even make it searchable by arranging your collection by genre, artist and albums.

Getting your music onto the device can be achieved in a few different ways. The first and most obvious is by ripping CDs one at a time via the front-loading slot.

For our testing this took up to 12 minutes per disc depending on the CD but this was far from being a deal-breaker.

One of the reasons it took a little longer to rip was fact that it can provides lossless compression (FLAC) to provide the type of quality that we found to be easily superior to regular MP3.

It can also support up to 24-bit HD music tracks and also has on-board an excellent 24-bit Digital Audio Converter with 192Khz up-sampling which derives even richer sound from the digital files.

This is similar quality to that used in the recording studio and Olive claims it can offer 250 times the resolution of a regular audio CD.

It certainly came through in our listening that the quality was several steps above what were used to hearing with our digital music library.

And because it has a connection to your network and the internet, the Olive 0O3HD has access to a database of more than 2.7 million CDs and cover art.

The device recognises and labels each song and album as well as sorting it into the correct genre automatically.

Now there’s a good chance anyone who considers the Olive O3HD music server will already own a large music collection on their computer or on an external hard drive.

The good news is it that’s it’s quite easy to import your digital library that is usually accessed using iTunes. Mac and PC users can connect to the Olive O3HD via their home network and drag and drop the music they want to include on the music server.

External hard drives can be connected via the USB port on the rear panel.

With 500GB of storage on board there’s plenty of room for your entire music collection. That’s room for up to 1,500 CDs – which is a serious collection by any means.

Now if you have an exceptionally large collection it will take quite a while to import them into the Olive O3HD one at a time.

To save time Olive also offers a CD loading service where users can send the company the CDs they’d like to rip into the system. Once completed they can send everything back to you so customers will be able to listen to their favourite music out of the box.

With all of your music in one place the device offers the convenience of not just searching for artists but also creating and saving your very own playlists to enjoy as quickly and easily as picking out an album.

Apart from listening to your own music the Olive 0O3HD can also connect user to more than 3000 internet radio stations from around the world. Like your music collection, the radio stations can be sorted by genre, regions and languages.

Users can also set up digital presets and create a list of favourite radio stations.

When it comes to controlling the device we found it was easier with the Olive 0O3HD’s remote control. The remote was quite chunky and heavy but still made easier to navigate through a large collection of music.

The device’s screen, while colourful and clear, lacks the responsiveness and accuracy to enable easy navigation. The selection buttons on the menu and genre and artists names are quiet small and we found ourselves making incorrect selections on occasion.

iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users will be pleased to know there’s also a free app they can download to offer complete control of the Olive O3HD from the within your home network.

Once connected to the device users can search quickly through the artists and albums saved to the device on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch screen quickly and easily.

The app also allows complete playback control as well as displaying the album art and track listing.

Olive O3HD is an excellent digital storage solution for audio lovers who want to enjoy their favourite music in their listening area, home theatre, lounge room or anywhere else on their home network.

While network drives and home servers are nothing new, they can’t compare to the slick Olive O3HD when it comes to organising and listening to your music at home.