adding a 5th Taiko Tana/Herzan TS-140 active isolation unit.

[Mike Lavigne]

last June i moved my -2- Taiko Tana/Herzan TS-140 active isolation units from under my SGM 2015 server and my NVS turntable to under both my darTZeel 458 mono block amplifiers. the 458's had been sitting on Box Furniture amp stands for the last 6 years. when i did this move we listened before and after and myself and my helpers easily heard the improvements.

https://whatsbestforum.com/threads/...ct-ii-digital-nvs-tt.25310/page-5#post-515620

and for the last 10 months i've greatly enjoyed this change.

however; there was a trade-off. and that was that i had removed the Tana units from the SGM server, but more importantly, from the NVS turntable. the net effect with both was maybe negligible, since a rising tide raises all ships. but........how much had removing the Tana from the NVS reduced the performance? i had already done a A/B on the SGM so i had a feel for that change.

about this same time i decided to take a break from any system upgrades for a while.

i had not had the stock passive Wave Kinetics anti vibration shelf under the NVS since 2013, over 5 years. and back when i originally added the stock Herzan TS-140 for under the NVS the system was different in a number of different ways. so much has changed. the question was how much better might the now mature Taiko Tana TS-140 compared to the NVS platform? it seemed i was listening to less vinyl. could this be somewhat due to the lack of the Tana? i knew i needed to figure this out for long term strategic system building reasons.

then there was the question of how good were the Box Furniture amp stands which i had A/B'd 10 months prior? i knew from Ed from SGM's visits when he tested my floor that is was exceptionally calm sounding. might the floor sound better than the Box Furniture stands? might the floor sound nearly as good as the Tana under the dart mono's? do i really know how good those Tana units are doing under the amps?

and then there is the whole 'remove the tweaks' every once in a while to test the result and make sure it was not wishful thinking.

if i was going to consider spending 5 figures and adding a 5th Tana unit for the NVS tt i needed to do some investigations to justify it's ROI in my end game mentality.

i asked 2 local friends, Jazdoc and Andrew.....who are very familiar with my system and hear sightly different than me, to come over last Saturday afternoon and assist me moving the amps, turntable and Tana units and listening.

and that is what we did. first we listened to the Tana units under the amps, then shut off the active isolation, then removed the dart mono's onto the floor and listened again. after the cartridge warmed up it was a clear nod from all three of us to the Tana's under the dart amps. note that the build quality of the dart mono's is crazy good, and the dart mono's have a built in suspension system for the power supply.

since we had already listened to the NVS with stock passive platform, we now moved one of the Tana TS-140 units to under the NVS turntable. again, we all three agreed a clear benefit to the Tana TS-140 over the NVS stock passive platform.

mission accomplished. questions answered. many thanks to my good friends jazdoc and Andrew for their time and support. i could not have done this by myself and also appreciated their objectivity.

i ordered the 5th Tana unit on Friday, will be here in a month or so.

i'm excited to hear the NVS + Tana with the dart mono's + 2 Tana's. that should be awesome sounding.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Mike, your rate of change may have slowed down.
But good to hear not stopped, and always enjoyable to read about.

Maybe four Tanas under your MSB Select boxes and SGM Extreme in time?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike, your rate of change may have slowed down.
But good to hear not stopped, and always enjoyable to read about.

Maybe four Tanas under your MSB Select boxes and SGM Extreme in time?

i've had the Tana under the SGM in the past, but not under the MSB power supplies. it's really doubtful i would consider that.

this moved was pushed by my desire to simply take back the NVS performance i already had, without giving up what the 2 Tana units do for the whole system under my amps.

i'm already ahead of the game on the digital side. and i just ordered the SGM Extreme.

 

[jazdoc]

 

[LL21]

Congrats, Mike. Isolation is an amazing path that, once on, is remarkable in how long it continues to go. Look forward to reading all about it.

 

[microstrip]

(...) i'm already ahead of the game on the digital side. and i just ordered the SGM Extreme.

Do you already own the MSB ProISL adapter?

 

[spiritofmusic]

i've had the Tana under the SGM in the past, but not under the MSB power supplies. it's really doubtful i would consider that.

this moved was pushed by my desire to simply take back the NVS performance i already had, without giving up what the 2 Tana units do for the whole system under my amps.

i'm already ahead of the game on the digital side. and i just ordered the SGM Extreme.

Mike, I get yr reticence re Tana'ing out the MSB psu boxes. All I can tell you is that Stacore'ing my 160lb Westwick balanced power transformer supercharged my system. To my very great suprise. All I'd say to you is that there is a good opportunity that this step could be very fruitful.

And now, time to give you back yr credit card LOL.

 

[marty]

mission accomplished. questions answered. many thanks to my good friends jazdoc and Andrew for their time and support. i could not have done this by myself and also appreciated their objectivity.

i ordered the 5th Tana unit on Friday, will be here in a month or so.

i'm excited to hear the NVS + Tana with the dart mono's + 2 Tana's. that should be awesome sounding.

I loved this report and admire the resolve it takes to do these sorts of experiments.

 

[spiritofmusic]

My GF is always asking me to show more resolve and not spend on the upgrade LOL.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Do you already own the MSB ProISL adapter?

i have the MSB Renderer v2 (supports Roon) currently (from a year ago), but don't have the I2S Pro interface module or the brand new MSB Pro USB stand alone module.

the beauty of MSB is it's module approach to interfaces as the swapping is so easy. and i'm definitely in the learning phase about this change. i expect this will end up being a 'swap it out' and 'listen to the result first' sort of thing. from what i hear so far, it's obviously better, but i'd like the opportunity to determine that for myself.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

ordered on the 15th of March (see above), the 5th Taiko Tana active shelf system finally arrived from Irvine, Calif. yesterday. and last night (Tuesday night) my son helped me install it. the previous day the Tana LPS arrived along with 2 Dazia's (one for the new shelf and one for the still coming SGM Extreme), 1 Setchi, and 2 sets of the new Dazia footers.

Monday night, since the shelf was not yet here, the only thing i could install was the new footers under the 2 linear power supplies for the Tana shelves under the dart 458's. if you thought "how big a deal might new footers under 2 power supplies for active shelves be?.......can't be too significant." you would be dead wrong. it was a very noticeable step up in focus and leading edge precision. more detail. what was also noticeable was the increased dynamic contrast, and slightly greater volume. images were more in the room and had more organic weight and mass. i got more sense of a mouth and chest of vocalists. more natural real type shapes and nuance from everything.....and this is all only with digital.

this is not the first time a small benefit provided to the dart 458's has really jumped things up. they seem to be clear windows to the event that tell more truth when their environment gets better.

at that point i'm feeling pretty darn great about what i'm hearing with these footers, the musical and immersive implications and i'm looking forward to hearing the shelf the next night.

forward to last night, as i said my son helped me move the NVS off the stock passive shelf, we replaced that with the active Tana TS-140 shelf, added the rubber membrane and Dazia, then re-installed the NVS tt. i installed the arm, and re-checked my set-up. chose a record, and listened.

this was a big moment for me.

for years as i owned the Herzan units, then later got the upgrades for those from Emile and Ed of Taiko, i had dreamed of a system with active devices under every piece of electronics. i had essentially done that the previous June when i took the Tana units from the NVS tt and SGM server and installed them under the dart 458's. it did great things for the digital, even though the MSB power supplies, and the server, were still on passive anti-resonance devices. but.......i knew in my mind that the big test would be turntable <-> preamp <-> amps.......all with active. and not only active, but full Taiko Tana active. and since 2 of my 4 Tana units were the smaller TS-150's, which could not accommodate the NVS tt, i had to wait for this 5th unit to arrive to get the full answer.

i was not prepared for what i heard, from the first note. how can we anticipate a leap in our reference? and this is a leap. every aspect of listening was clearly improved. i thought back to a month prior when i asked my 2 friends, Mark and Andrew, to come over and be my backstop and make sure that both the amps and NVS turntable were getting clear improvements from two people who listen a bit different than myself, and are not afraid to be honest with me. both said yes, it's clearly better and not by just a little. yet.....this difference now was multiples of the addition of both those deltas of change in the NVS and amplifiers.

my guess is that normally we have a feedback loop of distortion from speakers, to turntable, to preamp, to amp, to speakers, and so on. but if you completely stop that feedback loop you have taken a step into the beyond.

i've never heard vinyl like this, or even very close to this. and maybe no one has. no one else has access to these tools.

my first cuts were my reference tracks that i know inside and out......or i thought i did. in this post i'm not going to try and describe what i'm hearing. instead, i'm going to simply describe something objective that might provide insight into what is going on.

my dart 458 amplifiers have peak and continuous watt outputs on their face plates. and i know the volume settings i use for my reference tracks. i know from experience what sort of peaks i hit on these tracks. those peaks are now approximately 30%-35% higher than before with the same volume settings. basically what that means is that previously the peaks were smeared which lowered the peak signal, with the smear reduced or eliminated the peaks are much higher. apply that viewpoint to 100% of the music and it's musical implications are staggering. and that is what i am hearing. the dynamic range is so much broader that i have to turn the music down so the peaks are not too high. but since the noise floor is lower i'm not losing anything. and the delicacy and nuance is wondrous.

i listened for 2 hours with my jaw in my lap, then i called Mark to see if he could possibly come over and make sure i was not delusional. i knew he was leaving town at the end of the week. unfortunately no way he could do it.....too many things to do. i kept listening last night till after midnight, then was up about 4:30am to listen more until getting ready for work at 6:30am.

now tonight it's more of the same, and so i decided to post about what i'm hearing, with the provisional consideration i reserve the right to claim insanity once i get some alternate ears here to check it out.

this morning i emailed Emile and Ed and told them about my experience. Emile was not surprised at the result of the whole being much greater than the sum of the parts.

this from Emile.....

Actually it is not so surprising to me, as I have discovered the following (on a slightly lower level ;-) ). I have 7 pieces of equipment in my system, adding a Daiza to each separately is a very significant upgrade BUT, the 7th / last one just makes the biggest difference of all as all of a sudden the system just sounds right, it’s the best description I can come up with.

Interestingly, during this latest footer development, I had a certain issue with them, although overall performance increased significantly which each platform added, a slight smearing became evident, I spend weeks trying to find the source, to finally figure out it was actually distortion from components without platforms becoming more evident as the noisefloor of the components with platforms dropped. The solution was simply to treat them all lol.

anyway, somehow the 5th Tana has broken the code in some way. i will try to describe more details on exactly what i'm hearing.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Big congratulations, Mike! I am very, very happy for you that you have reached a new milestone in your relentless quest for the ultimate in sound reproduction!

 

[Tango]

ordered on the 15th of March (see above), the 5th Taiko Tana active shelf system finally arrived from Irvine, Calif. yesterday. and last night (Tuesday night) my son helped me install it. the previous day the Tana LPS arrived along with 2 Dazia's (one for the new shelf and one for the still coming SGM Extreme), 1 Setchi, and 2 sets of the new Dazia footers.

Monday night, since the shelf was not yet here, the only thing i could install was the new footers under the 2 linear power supplies for the Tana shelves under the dart 458's. if you thought "how big a deal might new footers under 2 power supplies for active shelves be?.......can't be too significant." you would be dead wrong. it was a very noticeable step up in focus and leading edge precision. more detail. what was also noticeable was the increased dynamic contrast, and slightly greater volume. images were more in the room and had more organic weight and mass. i got more sense of a mouth and chest of vocalists. more natural real type shapes and nuance from everything.....and this is all only with digital.

this is not the first time a small benefit provided to the dart 458's has really jumped things up. they seem to be clear windows to the event that tell more truth when their environment gets better.

at that point i'm feeling pretty darn great about what i'm hearing with these footers, the musical and immersive implications and i'm looking forward to hearing the shelf the next night.

forward to last night, as i said my son helped me move the NVS off the stock passive shelf, we replaced that with the active Tana TS-140 shelf, added the rubber membrane and Dazia, then re-installed the NVS tt. i installed the arm, and re-checked my set-up. chose a record, and listened.

this was a big moment for me.

for years as i owned the Herzan units, then later got the upgrades for those from Emile and Ed of Taiko, i had dreamed of a system with active devices under every piece of electronics. i had essentially done that the previous June when i took the Tana units from the NVS tt and SGM server and installed them under the dart 458's. it did great things for the digital, even though the MSB power supplies, and the server, were still on passive anti-resonance devices. but.......i knew in my mind that the big test would be turntable <-> preamp <-> amps.......all with active. and not only active, but full Taiko Tana active. and since 2 of my 4 Tana units were the smaller TS-150's, which could not accommodate the NVS tt, i had to wait for this 5th unit to arrive to get the full answer.

i was not prepared for what i heard, from the first note. how can we anticipate a leap in our reference? and this is a leap. every aspect of listening was clearly improved. i thought back to a month prior when i asked my 2 friends, Mark and Andrew, to come over and be my backstop and make sure that both the amps and NVS turntable were getting clear improvements from two people who listen a bit different than myself, and are not afraid to be honest with me. both said yes, it's clearly better and not by just a little. yet.....this difference now was multiples of the addition of both those deltas of change in the NVS and amplifiers.

my guess is that normally we have a feedback loop of distortion from speakers, to turntable, to preamp, to amp, to speakers, and so on. but if you completely stop that feedback loop you have taken a step into the beyond.

i've never heard vinyl like this, or even very close to this. and maybe no one has. no one else has access to these tools.

my first cuts were my reference tracks that i know inside and out......or i thought i did. in this post i'm not going to try and describe what i'm hearing. instead, i'm going to simply describe something objective that might provide insight into what is going on.

my dart 458 amplifiers have peak and continuous watt outputs on their face plates. and i know the volume settings i use for my reference tracks. i know from experience what sort of peaks i hit on these tracks. those peaks are now approximately 30%-35% higher than before with the same volume settings. basically what that means is that previously the peaks were smeared which lowered the peak signal, with the smear reduced or eliminated the peaks are much higher. apply that viewpoint to 100% of the music and it's musical implications are staggering. and that is what i am hearing. the dynamic range is so much broader that i have to turn the music down so the peaks are not too high. but since the noise floor is lower i'm not losing anything. and the delicacy and nuance is wondrous.

i listened for 2 hours with my jaw in my lap, then i called Mark to see if he could possibly come over and make sure i was not delusional. i knew he was leaving town at the end of the week. unfortunately no way he could do it.....too many things to do. i kept listening last night till after midnight, then was up about 4:30am to listen more until getting ready for work at 6:30am.

now tonight it's more of the same, and so i decided to post about what i'm hearing, with the provisional consideration i reserve the right to claim insanity once i get some alternate ears here to check it out.

this morning i emailed Emile and Ed and told them about my experience. Emile was not surprised at the result of the whole being much greater than the sum of the parts.

this from Emile.....


anyway, somehow the 5th Tana has broken the code in some way. i will try to describe more details on exactly what i'm hearing.

View attachment 50753 View attachment 50754

WOW!! Congratulation! You caught a big fish.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

That is unbelievably good news, Mike. To eek out such gains in a system / room that has already received so much attention to this point is awesome. Can’t say I am surprised that the NVS is at a new level back on the Tana with the Darts also on their own Tana.

What I find interesting is the notion that the whole chain leaps when you have everything covered. At my much more modest level, I will do the same with passive Daizas.

I know I have mentioned this before but I truly believe that your system might get another large leapfrog if Emile / Taiko team produce a dedicated speaker Daiza for your system as this is surely the final frontier

 

[spiritofmusic]

I suspect I'll get a couple of Daizas for my streamer and dac when that happens.

Re that "whole greater than sum of it's parts" phenomenon Mike is describing, the nearest I've got to that is when completing my Sablon cables loom a few years back, and also recently, finally nailing every aspect of analog reinstall in the last few weeks.

Just that LAST cable, and the LAST tt/arm setting, and WHOA!!!...

I suspect Mike may have used stronger words than me LOL.

 

[dminches]

Congrats, Mike. It is very exciting to be able to bring the sound and music enjoyment to a new level.

 

[adyc]

Congrats. Now you need to save up for two more platforms for MSB power supply.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Congrats. Now you need to save up for two more platforms for MSB power supply.

yes, yes, of course.

and let's not forget under the SGM Extreme either.

next Miguel will ask me to put them under the Tripoint Troy Sig and Elite.

i would be less than honest if i said that these things had not crossed my mind already. i'm pathetic.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Mike, the fun bit would be putting Tanas under yr other Tana LPSs. And then Tanas under those LPSs. And then those LPSs etc etc ad infinitum. Like the most Hellish series of Russian Dolls.

 

[Taiko Audio]

I know I have mentioned this before but I truly believe that your system might get another large leapfrog if Emile / Taiko team produce a dedicated speaker Daiza for your system as this is surely the final frontier

Envision Mike having to place his 4 towers on top of something like that