GG, Nagra HD, Aqua Formula, and SGM server.

[spiritofmusic]

Sounds good is not the same as sounds better
It is a real struggle to get any half decent analog rig to sound at it's best
Eg it took hours of toil two days ago to dial in my tt, arm, cart and psu
From levelling the tt and platter, to cart alignment, vtf, vta and azimuth, to isolation to combat rumble
Both me and Peter really struggled w our failing hands, failing eyes and quite likely failing minds
It's all very well Ked jumping into the analog world hearing top rigs at the top of their games, but had you investigated analog over an extended period over decades, and maybe invested in yr own set up, upgraded, and had to deal w the complexities involved, you might have a different perspective on this
But I guess analog is like proper cooking, the end results are with the toil and effort, compared to take out

 

[bonzo75]

Sounds good is not the same as sounds better
It is a real struggle to get any half decent analog rig to sound at it's best
Eg it took hours of toil two days ago to dial in my tt, arm, cart and psu
From levelling the tt and platter, to cart alignment, vtf, vta and azimuth, to isolation to combat rumble
Both me and Peter really struggled w our failing hands, failing eyes and quite likely failing minds
It's all very well Ked jumping into the analog world hearing top rigs at the top of their games, but had you investigated analog over an extended period over decades, and maybe invested in yr own set up, upgraded, and had to deal w the complexities involved, you might have a different perspective on this
But I guess analog is like proper cooking, the end results are with the toil and effort, compared to take out

I agree with this, cost of discovery are high in analog, alternative is to get a good person to set it up for you. I am not at all saying it is an easy task - so I clarified it was purely from sounds of SQ - not convenience. You want easy good sounding music, get digital, sure

 

[gian60]

We have also consider that many people don't have a good collection of vinyl,or don't have a lot so is starting with digital
Vinyl in production now are not very good like 10/30 years ago,except audiophile label,so if you buy good analog setup is difficult find good vinyl

 

[bonzo75]

We have also consider that many people don't have a good collection of vinyl,or don't have a lot so is starting with digital
Vinyl in production now are not very good like 10/30 years ago,except audiophile label,so if you buy good analog setup is difficult find good vinyl

Yes I would like to get most music through streaming, and have analog for my top 100 records.

 

[gian60]

And also some tape with a studer

 

[dctom]

We have also consider that many people don't have a good collection of vinyl,or don't have a lot so is starting with digital
Vinyl in production now are not very good like 10/30 years ago,except audiophile label,so if you buy good analog setup is difficult find good vinyl

Good point, I probably would not have continued to upgrade my vinyl if I had not already got a couple of thousand LPs already. New vinyl pressings are a mixed bag except premium priced "so called" audiophile pressings.

 

[853guy]

Good point, I probably would not have continued to upgrade my vinyl if I had not already got a couple of thousand LPs already. New vinyl pressings are a mixed bag except premium priced "so called" audiophile pressings.

And also some tape with a studer

Hi dctom, Hi gian60,

And even then, we are and will be forever held at the mercy of the mastering engineer who cut the lacquer.

Of course, a vinyl/tape collection is predicated on the notion that one's taste is music is served by the medium. I have literally thousands of albums that will never see the light of day on a vinyl release, let alone one from an "audiophile" label or on a limited-release second generation 15ips.

Sometimes we build collections based on the music rather than the format, as I have. And anyway, I like what digital does and that what it does is different from vinyl. Much like I like what gin does that's different from champagne. In order to live life to its fullest, both are essential.

 

[spiritofmusic]

My new room is such a blank canvas and such a neutral backdrop, it was fascinating to hear how my cdp just immediately w no effort sounded better, instantly picking up one one form of isolation being worse and another better, but my analog was a REAL struggle to get right
As if the room was saying "you want better sound with a better medium, you better keep at it, until it REALLY sings", which it is now
For me, dialling in my sound, hearing a few really interesting alternate systems recently w wildly different top end gear and presentations and tech approaches, w both analog and digital to compare, yes analog always sounds more compelling, but the sharp improvements SGM bring to the party just seem to put other digital in the shade, and is close enough to the essence of what makes analog great, that I consider it THE breakthrough product for digital, three decades on from that first Phillips cdp

 

[bonzo75]

My new room is such a blank canvas and such a neutral backdrop, it was fascinating to hear how my cdp just immediately w no effort sounded better, instantly picking up one one form of isolation being worse and another better, but my analog was a REAL struggle to get right
As if the room was saying "you want better sound with a better medium, you better keep at it, until it REALLY sings", which it is now
For me, dialling in my sound, hearing a few really interesting alternate systems recently w wildly different top end gear and presentations and tech approaches, w both analog and digital to compare, yes analog always sounds more compelling, but the sharp improvements SGM bring to the party just seem to put other digital in the shade, and is close enough to the essence of what makes analog great, that I consider it THE breakthrough product for digital, three decades on from that first Phillips cdp

You mean your CDP in another room sounded better? So you change houses, digital is going to sound better or worse, which has to do with the room. That is the first thing you play. Pack, unpack, set up up, play digital, hey I have a new sound and it's better - implies room is better - your digital is still the same. And yes, you will take time to dial in your analog, everyone needs it

 

[spiritofmusic]

We're probably agreeing Ked
My point is that as a record collector since the 70s, and having refined my analog over two decades and 3-4 iterations, and IMHO seeing many swings and roundabouts, the SGM truly has upped the ante
But like Usain Bolt, analog always seems to have another 30% in the tank
For the first time, I can genuinely say I don't miss lps when listening to the SGM
But I certainly love 'em the most when I'm listening to my tt

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Thanks for the info and I appreciate the SGM makes the maximum use of windows 10. It having been designed from the ground up to integrate with win10.

I was just curious to hear others, if any, experience with Linux. My use of win 10 is only on a Dell laptop (SSD) and it is noisy - even running Linux on the Dell Jriver (linux) sounded better. I guess the striped down version of win10 would be better.

My fanless linux server is absolutely silent even at max vol.

Mike - do you find that digital does not match vinyl regardless of recording? You mentioned listening to some jazz and blues recently, I find that 50/60s bebop and blues from that era all sound much better on vinyl. Obviously the material is recorded in analogue so it makes sense, but music recorded digitally originally, the difference is not so clear cut. I am talking about bog standard vinyl not audiophile pressings, as a matter of interest are you listening to remastered or original pressings mostly?

yes; I can play 100 Lp pressings and unless I get into digitally sourced Lps, particularly more recent dsd sourced Lps, there is a clear advantage to Lp in musical connection.....it does not matter the genre. recent pop/rock recordings, since their pressing quality is so inconsistent, and they are almost always digitally sourced, are a crap shoot. so if one is mostly listening to recent commercial pop/rock then I'd likely stick with digital. but even in these cases I'd say I prefer the vinyl, but the digital is close.

I play lots of large scale classical, and lots of smaller scale string quartets, and plenty of vocals and solo piano. it does not matter, the advantage is to vinyl......and the vinyl is spectacular in a way that the digital cannot compete. and when you get into 45rpm or direct-to-disc vinyl it's like a different world of performance for the vinyl. the 45's are re-issues mostly, but equal to or better mostly than even original pressings. but original pressings are also very fine......I have some of those, or at least early pressings. and tape is also at least in this realm or even a little beyond. one can debate which is better on the forum, but 30 seconds of listening to this level of music reproduction and all discussion is mute.

there are so many levels of good, to very good, to excellent, and then to amazing......vinyl playback that it is hard to relate one vinyl playback level to another. so we have many different references for vinyl playback. and this can contribute to some degree of differences of opinion on the subject. but with some experience one can get a picture of how it works. someone like Ked, or maybe Edward, who travel around can hear where the highest level of vinyl gets played and view the delta of differences.

and yet, digital is potentially at such a level now that it can be fully satisfying and the centerpiece of a great system. let's just not try and compare it with the best of vinyl and we can be very happy.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Like I said Mike, SGM that I've heard a dozen times in a well sorted system never makes me miss Lp listening
But listening to lps at home makes me love them even more
Parallel races, w more convergence, but still parallel

 

[bonzo75]

Like I said Mike, SGM that I've heard a dozen times in a well sorted system never makes me miss Lp listening
But listening to lps at home makes me love them even more
Parallel races, w more convergence, but still parallel

HI, what are the well sorted systems you have heard SGM in? Bill's, Barry's and?

 

[Taiko Audio]

Let me introduce myself, I'm Emile Bok from The Netherlands. I'm responsible for a fair bit of the technical implementation of the SGM2015 and I signed up here to answer some of the more technical questions.

Re: Windows 10 as Operating System and it's safety in use.

The Windows 10 installation on the SGM2015 is far from standard. We spent many months on stripping it of everything non essential, finding the optimal balance between sound quality, usability and safety, and tailoring it to the SGM2015 as a package. After last years Munich event we rebuilt the OS from the ground up 3 times. Tuning software to hardware, getting the most out of it, is a very lengthy process. Were we to install our software package on a different system or even change a single component, we would have to redo the entire tuning process and end up with a differently configured OS. This is why there are so many after market software player and tuning applications and so many personal preferences for different configurations. There is an almost endless amount of combinations one can make and each component and/or setting influences the other.

If you spend enough time on this and have in depth OS knowledge, you could likely make Windows 10, Windows Server and whatever Linux distribution sound in about the same ballpark. Linux is the easier route to get good results, you can start off with the bare basic system and add the packages you need. Windows is the other way around, you start with a fully loaded system and you then need to figure out what you can take out. We went with Windows 10 for reasons mentioned earlier in this thread, altogether it provides us with the best combination of sound quality and usability.

As for safety of an internet connected device. The SGM2015 was designed to function as a music server, not as a machine to browse the more obscure parts of the internet, read your email and click malicious links. It has functionality to be accessed remotely from your local subnet for changing settings you would typically only do during the initial setup, and a function for remote support over the internet which has to be manually enabled and is only valid for a single session. Next to that it's accessible by Roon Remote and there's a facility you can copy your music files to for local playback should you so desire. All other functionality is gone/disabled. All additional services which would run on a normal Windows system which most definitely need regular updates and protection are simply not there.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Ked, do you deliberately misunderstand me, or do you just not get the difference between "well sorted systems" and me saying "A well sorted system"?

 

[Steve williams]

Let me introduce myself, I'm Emile Bok from The Netherlands. I'm responsible for a fair bit of the technical implementation of the SGM2015 and I signed up here to answer some of the more technical questions.

Re: Windows 10 as Operating System and it's safety in use.

The Windows 10 installation on the SGM2015 is far from standard. We spent many months on stripping it of everything non essential, finding the optimal balance between sound quality, usability and safety, and tailoring it to the SGM2015 as a package. After last years Munich event we rebuilt the OS from the ground up 3 times. Tuning software to hardware, getting the most out of it, is a very lengthy process. Were we to install our software package on a different system or even change a single component, we would have to redo the entire tuning process and end up with a differently configured OS. This is why there are so many after market software player and tuning applications and so many personal preferences for different configurations. There is an almost endless amount of combinations one can make and each component and/or setting influences the other.

If you spend enough time on this and have in depth OS knowledge, you could likely make Windows 10, Windows Server and whatever Linux distribution sound in about the same ballpark. Linux is the easier route to get good results, you can start off with the bare basic system and add the packages you need. Windows is the other way around, you start with a fully loaded system and you then need to figure out what you can take out. We went with Windows 10 for reasons mentioned earlier in this thread, altogether it provides us with the best combination of sound quality and usability.

As for safety of an internet connected device. The SGM2015 was designed to function as a music server, not as a machine to browse the more obscure parts of the internet, read your email and click malicious links. It has functionality to be accessed remotely from your local subnet for changing settings you would typically only do during the initial setup, and a function for remote support over the internet which has to be manually enabled and is only valid for a single session. Next to that it's accessible by Roon Remote and there's a facility you can copy your music files to for local playback should you so desire. All other functionality is gone/disabled. All additional services which would run on a normal Windows system which most definitely need regular updates and protection are simply not there.

Hi Emile

Welcome to WBF and thanks for taking time to explain the above issues. Thanks to Edward and many happy SGM users here for bringing this wonderful product to members' attention.

 

[bonzo75]

Ked, do you deliberately misunderstand me, or do you just not get the difference between "well sorted systems" and me saying "A well sorted system"?

So we agree there is a difference between a well sorted system and you calling a system so?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Many have visited Barry's system and consider it well sorted
I concur
Some have visited and don't
I disagree w them

 

[bonzo75]

Many have visited Barry's system and consider it well sorted
I concur
Some have visited and don't
I disagree w them

I had no idea he had well sorted vinyl. Anyway we digress

 

[spiritofmusic]

You obv didn't see his tt sitting to the right
Sinatra on it sounded better than his prev Aries-based dsd
Edward of SGM was beyond pleased how things sounded w SGM installed there, he's said so on these pages