Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[cat6man]

Thks ! I was hoping to avoid a usb cable upgrade. : )
Wich sotm r u using?

dx-usb-hd with super clock option. Powered by battery.

It was magical with totaldac d1-dual, with sonore microrendu as naa, hqplayer with no processing at all, wav files on nas.

Then I got on the stupid upgrade train, software was updated by sonore and hqplayer, tried a supposedly superior reclocker, etc and never got the magic back.

Fast forward to buying the extreme, fabulous software upgrades by Taiko and buying back my sotm dx-usb-hd (for what id sold it for) and in Jan I had achieved magic+ with now a totaldac reclocker sublime and Triunity DAC.

I am a fully convinced disciple of the "software is at least 90%" which can be hard to believe but was so obvious when Taiko upgraded, in dec.23, just the priorities that processes were assigned across the cpu cores......to my ears the single biggest jump in sound quality yet and this was with the exact same windows software! My conclusion-- Taiko really knows and understands what they are doing.

 

[Kris]

dx-usb-hd with super clock option. Powered by battery.

It was magical with totaldac d1-dual, with sonore microrendu as naa, hqplayer with no processing at all, wav files on nas.

Then I got on the stupid upgrade train, software was updated by sonore and hqplayer, tried a supposedly superior reclocker, etc and never got the magic back.

Fast forward to buying the extreme, fabulous software upgrades by Taiko and buying back my sotm dx-usb-hd (for what id sold it for) and in Jan I had achieved magic+ with now a totaldac reclocker sublime and Triunity DAC.

I am a fully convinced disciple of the "software is at least 90%" which can be hard to believe but was so obvious when Taiko upgraded, in dec.23, just the priorities that processes were assigned across the cpu cores......to my ears the single biggest jump in sound quality yet and this was with the exact same windows software! My conclusion-- Taiko really knows and understands what they are doing.

Fantastic
Are you getting into Totaldac with AES or Spidf?
Also did you enter Taiko Olympus train ?

 

[2ndLiner]

While I was in dreamland last night Ed @EuroDriver did some updating. As always after a remote visitation by him XDMS either works more smoothly or there is an improvement in SQ. I have a busy day ahead but all I want to do is sit and listen. Thank you, Ed!

 

[lwr]

As a relatively new owner of an Extreme, I am absolutely blown away by the quality of Taiko support and Ed’s logging into my system and making all kinds of adjustments that result in SQ upgrades. I happened to be at home and seeing the windows desktop when he was working on it the other day. I quickly lost count of all the files he opened, inspected, made changes to, and saved. I believe that I counted 3 re-boots, each followed by a series of cascading script screens. Brilliant work! Thank you Taiko support and Ed!

 

[2ndLiner]

Hi Emile @Taiko Audio! I've been reading that internal storage on the Olympus can to a small degree degrade SQ and that it is best to disengage and/or remove it. Would the same hold true for the Extreme? Apologies in advance if this has already been addressed in a thread...

 

[cat6man]

Fantastic
Are you getting into Totaldac with AES or Spidf?
Also did you enter Taiko Olympus train ?

sonore dx-usbHD converts extreme usb to aes/ebu. this then goes into the totaldac chain.

olympus, i'm sure, sounds great but is not in my budget, so i'm waiting for promised upgrades coming to the extreme in the future.

 

[nenon]

Hi Emile @Taiko Audio! I've been reading that internal storage on the Olympus can to a small degree degrade SQ and that it is best to disengage and/or remove it. Would the same hold true for the Extreme? Apologies in advance if this has already been addressed in a thread...

Local storage on the Extreme sounds best... better than streaming Qobuz/Tidal, better than streaming from a NAS, etc.

Technically speaking, all SSD drives (HDDs as well) degrade the sound. But let's say on the Extreme it is a necessary evil. Taiko has done quite a bit of work to make sure that local storage sounds as good as it does.

Is there a case where you may want to remove the local storage on the Extreme? Maybe, if you never listen to local files. You can power off the Extreme and remove the Asus card. You may or may not hear an improvement. I never tried that. Instead I was buying the albums I liked the most so I could play them from local storage as that's how they sounded best.

 

[Kris]

Local storage on the Extreme sounds best... better than streaming Qobuz/Tidal, better than streaming from a NAS, etc.

Technically speaking, all SSD drives (HDDs as well) degrade the sound. But let's say on the Extreme it is a necessary evil. Taiko has done quite a bit of work to make sure that local storage sounds as good as it does.

Is there a case where you may want to remove the local storage on the Extreme? Maybe, if you never listen to local files. You can power off the Extreme and remove the Asus card. You may or may not hear an improvement. I never tried that. Instead I was buying the albums I liked the most so I could play them from local storage as that's how they sounded best.

Removing storage Cards from Extreme has no impact on the streamed sound .
In my experience and to my surprise sound quality was exactly same.

But yes. Whatever was stored on those internal drivers always sounded much better than streaming.
So if Extreme is in use I would always recommend to have internal storage and play everything from it.

 

[dminches]

I agree local sounds best but adding the Taiko router and switch brought local and streaming sound quality much closer together.

 

[cat6man]

Removing storage Cards from Extreme has no impact on the streamed sound .
In my experience and to my surprise sound quality was exactly same.

But yes. Whatever was stored on those internal drivers always sounded much better than streaming.
So if Extreme is in use I would always recommend to have internal storage and play everything from it.

i'm not surprised, as emile has said that the usb card is the single noisiest contributor. an alternate to the usb interface would seem to be the low hanging fruit for upgrading the extreme.

 

[pk_LA]

I do not understand the need for both the router and the switch. I say this primarily as a question.

A switch simply routes traffic within a network and a router manages traffic between internal devices and the outside (assigning local IP, managing traffic etc).

I can understand either one but definitely not both. A router can easily also do switching - in fact, they do. The limitation is the number of ports.

So, why the multiple devices?

 

[Steve williams]

I do not understand the need for both the router and the switch. I say this primarily as a question.

A switch simply routes traffic within a network and a router manages traffic between internal devices and the outside (assigning local IP, managing traffic etc).

I can understand either one but definitely not both. A router can easily also do switching - in fact, they do. The limitation is the number of ports.

So, why the multiple devices?

It's all about how to achieve the best sound quality. . Like you I was a skeptic until I tried both

 

[pk_LA]

I am not being skeptical. I am curious. I am confident there's a good reason. I would love to know more. On this, I doubt there is any kind of secret stuff. I am assuming that only one RJ45 or SFP/SFP+/QSFP+/QSFP28 is required for the system.

To my understanding, one or more of the following must be happening.
1) The router is not handling some of the typical duties of a router
2) The switch is doing an additional layer of clocking on the port
3) There is some added cleanup happening at the switch.

In my experience, less is more with network fabric.

 

[Taiko Audio]

I am not being skeptical. I am curious. I am confident there's a good reason. I would love to know more. On this, I doubt there is any kind of secret stuff. I am assuming that only one RJ45 or SFP/SFP+/QSFP+/QSFP28 is required for the system.

To my understanding, one or more of the following must be happening.
1) The router is not handling some of the typical duties of a router
2) The switch is doing an additional layer of clocking on the port
3) There is some added cleanup happening at the switch.

In my experience, less is more with network fabric.

Hi @pk_LA ,

You are absolutely correct, the switch provides no added technical functionality over the router.

What it does provide is a lower power consumption (lower noise) processing environment.

This is especially beneficial if you make use of DAC (Direct Attach Copper) SFP cables. Those are most beneficial on the server (receiving end) as their power consumption and processing overhead is 10-15 times lower than the standard RJ45 interface.

However this comes with the downside of a higher sensitivity to upstream noise, it’s not decoupled like rj45, you can blow up these ports for example if you create a ground loop, which is not possible to do with rj45.

Here the switch comes into play as the router consumers 6 watts, the switch consumes 1 watt, the switch can be outfitted with lower current, lower noise regulators and better performing filters, aka it’s “quieter”.

With the Extreme the switch is a very considerable upgrade over using the router alone.

With the Olympus though, the impact of the switch is lower, it’s still there, but I personally can absolutely live without. With the Olympus I’d actually rate the impact of the DC-Distributor (DCD) higher then that of the Switch. Which even on the “bypass” setting, which is not really bypass due to parasitic capacitances, allowing it to make use of the very high frequency filter sections of the DCD, provides me with a much wanted upgrade.

If you add the Olympus I/O this downwards slope of power usage / processing noise adds an additional stage as this externalises the Network Interface Card which is then powered by its own battery, disabling ground loop paths, and is lower noise then any regulator. This creates the following “cascaded” path: 6 Watts - 1 Watt - 500 milliWatts, by then you’ll only be using the Switch combined with the DCD for it’s ability to tune your sound signature, not to increase performance in absolute terms. This alone is however something the vast majority of our customers appears to appreciate very much.

 

[dminches]

Has anyone come up with a clever solution for stacking the router, switch, DCD and LPS? Right now I have them on 2 separate shelves which is waste of space given how short/sleek each item is.

 

[pk_LA]

Hi @pk_LA ,

You are absolutely correct, the switch provides no added technical functionality over the router.

What it does provide is a lower power consumption (lower noise) processing environment.

This is especially beneficial if you make use of DAC (Direct Attach Copper) SFP cables. Those are most beneficial on the server (receiving end) as their power consumption and processing overhead is 10-15 times lower than the standard RJ45 interface.

However this comes with the downside of a higher sensitivity to upstream noise, it’s not decoupled like rj45, you can blow up these ports for example if you create a ground loop, which is not possible to do with rj45.

Here the switch comes into play as the router consumers 6 watts, the switch consumes 1 watt, the switch can be outfitted with lower current, lower noise regulators and better performing filters, aka it’s “quieter”.

With the Extreme the switch is a very considerable upgrade over using the router alone.

With the Olympus though, the impact of the switch is lower, it’s still there, but I personally can absolutely live without. With the Olympus I’d actually rate the impact of the DC-Distributor (DCD) higher then that of the Switch. Which even on the “bypass” setting, which is not really bypass due to parasitic capacitances, allowing it to make use of the very high frequency filter sections of the DCD, provides me with a much wanted upgrade.

If you add the Olympus I/O this downwards slope of power usage / processing noise adds an additional stage as this externalises the Network Interface Card which is then powered by its own battery, disabling ground loop paths, and is lower noise then any regulator. This creates the following “cascaded” path: 6 Watts - 1 Watt - 500 milliWatts, by then you’ll only be using the Switch combined with the DCD for it’s ability to tune your sound signature, not to increase performance in absolute terms. This alone is however something the vast majority of our customers appears to appreciate very much.

thank you very much for this!

might I ask one more thing? I noticed what looked like a QSFP+ connection in the back on Steve's Olympus. If what I saw is correct, I am curious. I have been shocked at the differences in my own system by just changing the SFP/SFP+ plug (Juniper to FS.com to Finisar etc). Is the QSFP+ there because it simply sounds better?

 

[Taiko Audio]

thank you very much for this!

might I ask one more thing? I noticed what looked like a QSFP+ connection in the back on Steve's Olympus. If what I saw is correct, I am curious. I have been shocked at the differences in my own system by just changing the SFP/SFP+ plug (Juniper to FS.com to Finisar etc). Is the QSFP+ there because it simply sounds better?

That is correct, it’s QSFP-DD, but it’s strictly used between the Olympus and the Olympus I/O as we need more conductors and bandwidth as SFP+ provides. For network connections we use “regular” SFP/SFP+.

 

[dminches]

Does anyone else use Roon on their Extreme and access it via their home network vs. the taiko network?

If so, do you find that your ability to connect to Roon is broken after while? I think this is because I also have XDMS installed on my Extreme. I can regain my Roon connection by 1) opening the XDMS app; 2) switching from Roon to XDMS; 3) Switching back to Roon. Once I do this I can again access Roon from my home network.

I did contact tech support about this 3 months ago but I don’t think anyone is looking in to it. They sent it over to Ed but he is too involved in the XDMS build to address it.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Does anyone else use Roon on their Extreme and access it via their home network vs. the taiko network?

If so, do you find that your ability to connect to Roon is broken after while? I think this is because I also have XDMS installed on my Extreme. I can regain my Roon connection by 1) opening the XDMS app; 2) switching from Roon to XDMS; 3) Switching back to Roon. Once I do this I can again access Roon from my home network.

I did contact tech support about this 3 months ago but I don’t think anyone is looking in to it. They sent it over to Ed but he is too involved in the XDMS build to address it.

Hi @dminches ,

The problem is we cannot reproduce this. It would be of great help to find others with the same issue. If anybody does please report it to support@taikoaudio.com .

 

[dminches]

Hi @dminches ,

The problem is we cannot reproduce this. It would be of great help to find others with the same issue. If anybody does please report it to support@taikoaudio.com .

That’s the biggest challenge with tech support, not being able to replicate and issue. My guess is that it has to do with the portforwarding rules set up to run XDMS from my home network. Something must be conflicting since when I lose the ability to run Roon from my home network I can still run it from my Taiko network. That seems to point to port forwarding. I should try eliminating all the XDMS portforwarding rules and test that out.

Thanks for responding. I know this stuff is a total PITA.