Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

ok thanks, I found that and can get to the credentials page but it wants a password for the Extreme. Is there a standard one?
Username: admin Password: SoundTest
 
Who could one day remotely disable Roon. Hurry up Ed!
They just paid for Roon. Why would they do that? Samsung and Harmon do not have any product that competes with Roon. They're buying the platform to provide the capability (and capture the revenue stream), not to capture and kill a competitor.

Although it certainly is a bit of corporate boilerplate, the Harmon announcement is here:


Further, Danny Dulai (Roon CEO) has this to say:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-acquired-by-harman-international/257414/3

We expected to fight hard for the existing lifetimers, but Harman was awesome and didn’t even consider not continuing to support them!

Danny Dulai​

danny

As an early Roon lifetime subscriber, I’m happy to read the above. Although nothing is forever, it's pretty early to be predicting the early demise of Roon at this point.

Steve Z
 
Will it ever end?
Having the house to myself this week, I have spent my evenings listening to the Taiko dream team of Switch, Router and Power Distributor (w/ default to Router and Alt 2 to switch, which is sounding amazing, but need to revisit all combinations). Still have been only listening to XDMS the past 2-3 years. Didn't touch a thing this week so pretty acclimated to the sound.

Enter latest XDMS update. On PST in western US, I am always amazed how Taiko delivers. There Ed was last night at 9:30pm (5:30/6:30am his time?) ready to help. Navigating some of my various Mac books and antiquated ipad, Ed persevered in his always most gracious fashion over a 2 hour span. Thank you Ed again.

I really enjoyed the SQ benefits from the switch (outperformed the m12 gold switch I previously had) and further felt the addition of the router and PD were transformative (posts below). The router/PD truly fell in the 'component upgrade' realm here.

w/ this software update, at least here, immediately apparent is less of a smear/slightly loose in the mid bass. The imaging has tightened (sharpened?) and generally the layering of the soundstage has been further refined. Can’t hear any lingering slight overhang I sometimes heard this week. Subtle but notable. Not on the order of what the router/PD did out of the box, but as a 'free' software upgrade, just awesome. Absolutely, no brightness and it feels like I could turn up the volume infinitum.

Of course eagerly await XDMS Beta/BPS, but how much better can it possibly get? Thanks to everyone at Taiko on this thread and working around the clock behind the scenes. Extreme owners are really fortunate, as I always try to explain to my wife, for these seemingly endless incremental improvements.

EDIT: Listening a day later for the past hour (including with the router software update), I can unequivocally say this is the best my system has ever sounded. damn. Taiko a gift that keeps giving for sure.


 
Last edited:
The router firmware update has been very positive on my end. I am back to using the 2.4 GHz radio which allow me to connect to the Extreme from outside my main music room via wifi. I also suspect that some of the earlier dropped signal issues have been rectified.

Much appreciated.
 
  • Like
Reactions: oldmustang
Hello everyone in this forum, Ed, Emile, christiaan, khyle. This is my first ever post on the forum, and in a somewhat epic thread that I had to catch up on for its first few hundred pages, then more slowly over the past four months.

i came into my extreme about a year and a half ago, with the ever continuous additions of network card/switch, router/distributor, up to the most recent router/roon update. Earlier on, with just the network card and switch in the signal path, I had a fully loaded MSB select 2 on demo, with XDMS, and while the soundstage was breathtaking with detail exceeding that of my system on roon, after two weeks of listening to each set up, it was clear that what i had with my system was more realistic on roon than even with the MSB on XDMS. My system dac is the wadax Atlantis, and possibly due to the fact it’s architecture was built on roon foundations and subsequent regard for rooms sensitivities, the sound from plain simple roon in my system has always engaged more realistic timbre over combinations of the extreme with other dacs on XDMS, in the same system.

My current set up includes everything updated and hilted with the taiko teams continuing improvements, and has lifted my listening to a place where my understanding over what is possible to hear on recordings has been completely recalibrated.

There are already so many accounts from everyone regarding decay, clarity, air, midrange realism, bass incisiveness and depth, I only have one small observation to add, and it is profound.

There is this sound we hear from acoustic guitar/banjo/uke in live performance - it is not the fact of accurate resonance of the strings with the chords played; this happens readily with almost any great system. The thing is, that resonance has always come to my ears as the mere sound of strings being plucked or strummed. With ever increasing levels of realistic timbre with each upgrade, it’s still always only just been there emanating from a specific place in the beautifully parsed and distinct soundfield. However, this sound of an actual guitar is the sound resonating from within the guitar itself as it radiates….not from plucked strings, fingers or fretboard, but from within that sound hole of the guitar, a particularly unique sound that helps one conclusively distinguish a recording from even the worse live acoustic performance. I heard this sound for the first time in my entire life on any system I’ve ever listened to, on my system after the most recent roon fix Emile created to solve certain issues inherent in roon build 1353.

I heard it first on Christopher Jak’s ‘breaking’, and have since been hearing this magical sound of realism on almost all the acoustic stringed tracks I play.

This little nuance of resonant air is, of course, evident in everything else about timbre and decay that is the comprehensive soundfield Emile and team have created through their latest experiments. It is not merely my being eerily startled, it’s often with shock I now listen to how realistic my music is each night over the past week. I cry at times when emotion takes me over. Streamed music had been my escape each day for between two to five hours every evening the past four years. It is now my treasured medicine.

This note is to thank everyone who has participated in this thread, who unknowingly helped my journey understanding what needed to be added, changed, considered or reconsidered, augmented, or simply, configured on an app or laptop. My gratitude is as profound as the music I am hearing. Emile, Ed, christiaan, khyle, thank you so very much for this unbelievable gift that is the sum total of everything you have discovered in the immediate source chain.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all and everyone from the very bottom of my heart - kevin
 
Hello everyone in this forum, Ed, Emile, christiaan, khyle. This is my first ever post on the forum, and in a somewhat epic thread that I had to catch up on for its first few hundred pages, then more slowly over the past four months.

i came into my extreme about a year and a half ago, with the ever continuous additions of network card/switch, router/distributor, up to the most recent router/roon update. Earlier on, with just the network card and switch in the signal path, I had a fully loaded MSB select 2 on demo, with XDMS, and while the soundstage was breathtaking with detail exceeding that of my system on roon, after two weeks of listening to each set up, it was clear that what i had with my system was more realistic on roon than even with the MSB on XDMS. My system dac is the wadax Atlantis, and possibly due to the fact it’s architecture was built on roon foundations and subsequent regard for rooms sensitivities, the sound from plain simple roon in my system has always engaged more realistic timbre over combinations of the extreme with other dacs on XDMS, in the same system.

My current set up includes everything updated and hilted with the taiko teams continuing improvements, and has lifted my listening to a place where my understanding over what is possible to hear on recordings has been completely recalibrated.

There are already so many accounts from everyone regarding decay, clarity, air, midrange realism, bass incisiveness and depth, I only have one small observation to add, and it is profound.

There is this sound we hear from acoustic guitar/banjo/uke in live performance - it is not the fact of accurate resonance of the strings with the chords played; this happens readily with almost any great system. The thing is, that resonance has always come to my ears as the mere sound of strings being plucked or strummed. With ever increasing levels of realistic timbre with each upgrade, it’s still always only just been there emanating from a specific place in the beautifully parsed and distinct soundfield. However, this sound of an actual guitar is the sound resonating from within the guitar itself as it radiates….not from plucked strings, fingers or fretboard, but from within that sound hole of the guitar, a particularly unique sound that helps one conclusively distinguish a recording from even the worse live acoustic performance. I heard this sound for the first time in my entire life on any system I’ve ever listened to, on my system after the most recent roon fix Emile created to solve certain issues inherent in roon build 1353.

I heard it first on Christopher Jak’s ‘breaking’, and have since been hearing this magical sound of realism on almost all the acoustic stringed tracks I play.

This little nuance of resonant air is, of course, evident in everything else about timbre and decay that is the comprehensive soundfield Emile and team have created through their latest experiments. It is not merely my being eerily startled, it’s often with shock I now listen to how realistic my music is each night over the past week. I cry at times when emotion takes me over. Streamed music had been my escape each day for between two to five hours every evening the past four years. It is now my treasured medicine.

This note is to thank everyone who has participated in this thread, who unknowingly helped my journey understanding what needed to be added, changed, considered or reconsidered, augmented, or simply, configured on an app or laptop. My gratitude is as profound as the music I am hearing. Emile, Ed, christiaan, khyle, thank you so very much for this unbelievable gift that is the sum total of everything you have discovered in the immediate source chain.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all and everyone from the very bottom of my heart - kevin

Thanks for the observations.
A couple of my test tracks are from "hop, skip and wobble" by Jerry Douglas and friends. Listen to "From Ankara to Izmir" and "Travels of Mr Hulu" for a quartet of fabulous guitars and strings. The entire album is on my desert island list.
 
Hello everyone in this forum, Ed, Emile, christiaan, khyle. This is my first ever post on the forum, and in a somewhat epic thread that I had to catch up on for its first few hundred pages, then more slowly over the past four months.



There is this sound we hear from acoustic guitar/banjo/uke in live performance - it is not the fact of accurate resonance of the strings with the chords played; this happens readily with almost any great system. The thing is, that resonance has always come to my ears as the mere sound of strings being plucked or strummed. With ever increasing levels of realistic timbre with each upgrade, it’s still always only just been there emanating from a specific place in the beautifully parsed and distinct soundfield. However, this sound of an actual guitar is the sound resonating from within the guitar itself as it radiates….not from plucked strings, fingers or fretboard, but from within that sound hole of the guitar, a particularly unique sound that helps one conclusively distinguish a recording from even the worse live acoustic performance. I heard this sound for the first time in my entire life on any system I’ve ever listened to, on my system after the most recent roon fix Emile created to solve certain issues inherent in roon build 1353.

- kevin
@Kevin YES! I play classic guitar for my own pleasure and have taken lessons from so have heard some of the best classical guitarist play and have never had more than a few realiazations of that 'correct' sound from the sound hole with my system. This would include other unplugged stringed instruments where the 'body' of the instrument is heard. I am using a lesser system than yours, optimized Pacific2 and OLADRA, and what you have achieved is my goal - whether attainable or not. Great insight and post - Thanks
 
@Kevin YES! I play classic guitar for my own pleasure and have taken lessons from so have heard some of the best classical guitarist play and have never had more than a few realiazations of that 'correct' sound from the sound hole with my system. This would include other unplugged stringed instruments where the 'body' of the instrument is heard. I am using a lesser system than yours, optimized Pacific2 and OLADRA, and what you have achieved is my goal - whether attainable or not. Great insight and post - Thanks

on "Hop, Skip and Wobble", Jerry Douglas is playing a dobro (resonator) so the body sound is key.
 
Just curious when the Extreme will be a done product ? Or is Discord and TestFlight going to be intergrated into XDMS ?
 
Just curious when the Extreme will be a done product ? Or is Discord and TestFlight going to be intergrated into XDMS ?

We don’t intend to stop improving it. But you can stop getting updates at any time you desire and call it done :)
 
Just curious when the Extreme will be a done product ? Or is Discord and TestFlight going to be intergrated into XDMS ?
Just to clarify, Discord is a messaging platform for exchanging feedback which Taiko chose to do as part of the XDMS app launch so it would never be integrated into XDMS as such. TestFlight is owned by Apple and is used for alpha / beta testing apps pre-release.

I think I know where your question was going anyway, and in my opinion the Extreme (which includes XDMS) will continue to evolve over time as it has been. If it is a done product, none of us would continue to enjoy the amazing jumps in SQ that we have all enjoyed since its release. I’m sure XDMS will get to its full potential soon enough but at least we’ve had the benefit of upgrades along the journey. So to be done, IMHO, would be a disservice to all of us and Taiko who I know want to continue to evolve this amazing product :)
 
Just to clarify, Discord is a messaging platform for exchanging feedback which Taiko chose to do as part of the XDMS app launch so it would never be integrated into XDMS as such. TestFlight is owned by Apple and is used for alpha / beta testing apps pre-release.

I think I know where your question was going anyway, and in my opinion the Extreme (which includes XDMS) will continue to evolve over time as it has been. If it is a done product, none of us would continue to enjoy the amazing jumps in SQ that we have all enjoyed since its release. I’m sure XDMS will get to its full potential soon enough but at least we’ve had the benefit of upgrades along the journey. So to be done, IMHO, would be a disservice to all of us and Taiko who I know want to continue to evolve this amazing product :)
I was being sarcastic, I'm all for updates to improve sound . I'm just curious when the XDMS app will be done .
 
  • Like
Reactions: Levitator

About us

  • What’s Best Forum is THE forum for high end audio, product reviews, advice and sharing experiences on the best of everything else. This is THE place where audiophiles and audio companies discuss vintage, contemporary and new audio products, music servers, music streamers, computer audio, digital-to-analog converters, turntables, phono stages, cartridges, reel-to-reel tape machines, speakers, headphones and tube and solid-state amplification. Founded in 2010 What’s Best Forum invites intelligent and courteous people of all interests and backgrounds to describe and discuss the best of everything. From beginners to life-long hobbyists to industry professionals, we enjoy learning about new things and meeting new people, and participating in spirited debates.

Quick Navigation

User Menu

Steve Williams
Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator
Ron Resnick
Site Co-Owner | Administrator
Julian (The Fixer)
Website Build | Marketing Managersing