Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Mike Lavigne]

loving the changes i am hearing to my digital playback performance tonight. earlier today after i left for work Emile remotely did his update magic and i've been waiting all day to come home and listen. spent the last hour or so sampling my reference tracks and i'm smiling ear to ear and tapping my toes. hearing a more vivid, veils lifted, texturally richer, presentation, very musically significant. less reproduced, more pure and free sounding. dynamics and bass weight increased and impact more visceral and alive. all objectively small changes, but at this level quite satisfying and unexpected.

nice to hear my 4xdsd again natively, as well as sounding better than ever to boot. and now i can acquire some 8xdsd and try it if i like.

thank you to Emile for the remote house call, very relevant to today's vibe.

 

[Taiko Audio]

thank you to Emile for the remote house call, very relevant to today's vibe.

You are the control patient being the only one not at home while the update was performed so we can establish a baseline for digital transmission potential

 

[the sound of Tao]

You are the control patient being the only one not at home while the update was performed so we can establish a baseline for digital transmission potential

Ever since the last Roon update my server and renderer have steadfastly refused to handshake... seems they are now practicing musical distancing...
Please note: this is not an Extreme server, (different platforms altogether).

 

[EuroDriver]

Thanks for the introduction @Taiko Audio
I've been closely following Emile and what he's doing for some years now, have been the first private tester of the original SGM2015 (and still own this very machine, which will hopefully turn into an Extreme soon) and subsequently helped him occasionally at shows or doing demos when his schedule was tough.
Fortune had it that when Emile made me a job offer I couldn't refuse, my professional career allowed me to make a sabbatical, which I gladly took.
I am very happy to join the great Taiko team and look forward to my upcoming tasks as well as chiming in in this interesting discussion.

Christoph

I had been bugging Christoph to visit Hengelo for the best part of 2years, and then the Alsyvox Botticelli’s arrived. Within an hour of hearing the Botticelli’s I was texting Christoph at his work place that he had to come to listen. I told Christoph this is what I am hearing, no BS, you need to come here to listen. The rest as one says is history

Christoph is one of the youngest High End Audiophiles in Germany, born in the same town as Beethoven. His knowledge of High End is Encyclopedic, and he hears like a bat.

Christoph’s Audio CV includes
- intern at Mundorf soldering Magico crossovers
- builder of several generations of CAPS music servers
- Entreq rebuilder
- Home brew copper tin cables

But most import of all, an absolute understanding and embrace of Taiko ethos of delivering the finest customer experience second to none

 

[Sablon Audio]

Ever since the last Roon update my server and renderer have steadfastly refused to handshake... seems they are now practicing musical distancing...
Please note: this is not an Extreme server, (different platforms altogether).

I suggest a hard reboot Tao. Unplug from mains for 30 mins or so, drink some wine, return...

 

[the sound of Tao]

I suggest a hard reboot Tao. Unplug from mains for 30 mins or so, drink some wine, return...

Many many thanks for that Mark, I’d hoped the same but I’ve reburnt the image card, hard rebooted, waited, disconnected the lan for a while then rebooted again and in between drunk most of a bottle... but it’s a persisting issue (the renderer and not my drinking ). I’ve changed the apps on the server and also reinstalled both the antipodes and the Sotm. I’m thinking the Sotm might have to go.

Your thoughts are much appreciated tho and even just the antipodes on its own continues to play great music so thinking I need to get myself into just one ecosystem so things like Roon rebuilds don’t knock my system around in unsupported ways. Much like the very great wisdom of being safely in Emile’s Extreme ecosystem.

 

[Kingsrule]

Many many thanks for that Mark, I’d hoped the same but I’ve reburnt the image card, hard rebooted, waited, disconnected the lan for a while then rebooted again and in between drunk most of a bottle... but it’s a persisting issue (the renderer and not my drinking ). I’ve changed the apps on the server and also reinstalled both the antipodes and the Sotm. I’m thinking the Sotm might have to go.

Your thoughts are much appreciated tho and even just the antipodes on its own continues to play great music so thinking I need to get myself into just one ecosystem so things like Roon rebuilds don’t knock my system around in unsupported ways. Much like the very great wisdom of being safely in Emile’s Extreme ecosystem.

Since most of us are using Roon, why don't u start a Roon thread to take these observations out of the Extreme thread? I'm thinking many more members will be looking at it also

 

[Samsoum]

I completely agree. The people at Roon have done a great job as far as user experience and feature set but Roon has become so bloated with code that it has also become its own worst enemy. If you look on the Roon forum, people over there seem hung up on features. No one talks about SQ as if Roon has no role to play here. Some people still believe that with bit-perfect playback, it's just a bunch of 1s and 0s and that playback software could not possibly impact SQ.

For some time now, in my DIY builds, I have been incapable of getting Roon to sound as good as other players. In fact, with regards to SQ, it is probably at the bottom of the pile. Not just Audirvana but also Stylus, JRiver, LMS/Squeezebox, Foobar, etc., have the potential to sound better than Roon. In comparison to Euphony's Stylus, which was my previous reference player, Roon sounded bloated and lacked control and precision leading to considerable overhang. For orchestral music with complex instrument lines, Roon can sound atrocious and no matter what OS I chose or what fiddling I did, I could never get it to sound as good as Stylus. That is until the Extreme. Somehow, Emile figured out how to tame Roon and so it has been a pleasure to enjoy Roon's superior user interface while also enjoying even better SQ than I was getting from Stylus and others.

I agree with you romaz.
I have a copy paste of your ex server powered by 2 keces p8.
I have to agree stylus sounds way way better than roon, but the interface is horrible!I wich i could have roon player interface with stylus sq.

 

[pleroma]

I had been bugging Christoph to visit Hengelo for the best part of 2years, and then the Alsyvox Botticelli’s arrived. Within an hour of hearing the Botticelli’s I was texting Christoph at his work place that he had to come to listen. I told Christoph this is what I am hearing, no BS, you need to come here to listen. The rest as one says is history

Christoph is one of the youngest High End Audiophiles in Germany, born in the same town as Beethoven. His knowledge of High End is Encyclopedic, and he hears like a bat.

Christoph’s Audio CV includes
- intern at Mundorf soldering Magico crossovers
- builder of several generations of CAPS music servers
- Entreq rebuilder
- Home brew copper tin cables

But most import of all, an absolute understanding and embrace of Taiko ethos of delivering the finest customer experience second to none

Christoph was very kind in his response to my first query about internet tweaking. I meant to tell him that I was in Köln this same time last year (I believe Emile said he was coming from Köln, though a quick refresher shows LvB was from Bonn).

I love Germany; I was stationed there in the military when I was much younger, and love to go back; can't get enough of it. Last year we flew into Paris and took the train up to Amsterdam and then over to Köln (the same route my Extreme took btw), and then drove down the Rhine and Mosel valleys for my favorite wines .

So again, Herzlich willkommen!

 

[romaz]

PS I still would like an answer...Roon is not JUST an organiser/Man Friday for yr library? It's also an algorithm that the music is controlled by?

I agree with you romaz.
I have a copy paste of your ex server powered by 2 keces p8.
I have to agree stylus sounds way way better than roon, but the interface is horrible!I wich i could have roon player interface with stylus sq.

Software is very audible, much more than people realize. It took 2 CPUs and 20 cores for Emile to be able to counter the audible impact of both Windows and Roon. Had he gone with a different OS and software player, he might have not needed this much hardware.

Back in 2018, I discovered AudioLinux, a specialized distro of Arch Linux that Piero Olmeda tuned for low latency that sounded incredible. This simple OS paired with an inexpensive NUC was outperforming purpose-built devices with high-level clocking and ulta-low noise linear regulation from established manufacturers for a fraction of the cost. As time went on, with kernel upgrades and the addition of more and more features, AudioLinux somehow lost its magic.

I moved to Euphony which is also based on Arch Linux but was still using the older kernel. This OS brought back the magic that AudioLinux once had and Euphony's proprietary software player, Stylus, to my ears, made Roon sound broken. Željko, Euphony's principal programmer, used me and a few others as a sounding board to make sure that coding changes he made to either Euphony or Stylus didn't somehow negatively impact SQ and it was AMAZING to all of us how the simplest changes, including the compiler that was used, could result in audible effects. Basically, anything that altered CPU or disk utilization had audible impact.

Now you move to a behemoth program like Roon where you have multiple programmers who are probably not audiophiles and where stability, compatibility, convenience and features are the goal. It should come as no surprise then that Roon ranks at the bottom of the pile when it comes to SQ. The same could be said for Windows versus an OS like Euphony that was designed from the ground up for high-fidelity audio playback. This makes what Emile has accomplished with the Extreme all the more astonishing. He basically took on the slowest, fattest kid he could find to compete in the Olympics with and came out on top.

I am certain there are servers in existence that perform as well as the Extreme with regards to SQ but these machines are likely using command line interfaces for music playback and so this would appeal to almost no one these days. There is a reason Roon is so popular and it's not because of SQ. The overall user experience for many is just as important, if not more. What worries me with Roon, based on their priorities, is that this recent SQ misstep won't be the last time.

 

[onsionsi]

This makes what Emile has accomplished with the Extreme all the more astonishing. He basically took on the slowest, fattest kid he could find to compete in the Olympics with and came out on top.

I like your example here @romaz about Emile.
Indeed I sort Emile one of the best server designers ever exist and I like his approach and thinking of how to enhance his server.
I think IMHO his Server is in the stratospheric level and the other servers on the ground level and they will take many years to catch his server level.
As this is my first post here I would like to thank you Emile, @romaz and other audiophiles for your contributions in this hobby.

PS: @Taiko Audio if you don't mind can you shed some light on your methodology when you designed the PSU for Extreme.

 

[pleroma]

Software is very audible, much more than people realize. It took 2 CPUs and 20 cores for Emile to be able to counter the audible impact of both Windows and Roon. Had he gone with a different OS and software player, he might have not needed this much hardware.

Back in 2018, I discovered AudioLinux, a specialized distro of Arch Linux that Piero Olmeda tuned for low latency that sounded incredible. This simple OS paired with an inexpensive NUC was outperforming purpose-built devices with high-level clocking and ulta-low noise linear regulation from established manufacturers for a fraction of the cost. As time went on, with kernel upgrades and the addition of more and more features, AudioLinux somehow lost its magic.

I moved to Euphony which is also based on Arch Linux but was still using the older kernel. This OS brought back the magic that AudioLinux once had and Euphony's proprietary software player, Stylus, to my ears, made Roon sound broken. Željko, Euphony's principal programmer, used me and a few others as a sounding board to make sure that coding changes he made to either Euphony or Stylus didn't somehow negatively impact SQ and it was AMAZING to all of us how the simplest changes, including the compiler that was used, could result in audible effects. Basically, anything that altered CPU or disk utilization had audible impact.

Now you move to a behemoth program like Roon where you have multiple programmers who are probably not audiophiles and where stability, compatibility, convenience and features are the goal. It should come as no surprise then that Roon ranks at the bottom of the pile when it comes to SQ. The same could be said for Windows versus an OS like Euphony that was designed from the ground up for high-fidelity audio playback. This makes what Emile has accomplished with the Extreme all the more astonishing. He basically took on the slowest, fattest kid he could find to compete in the Olympics with and came out on top.

I am certain there are servers in existence that perform as well as the Extreme with regards to SQ but these machines are likely using command line interfaces for music playback and so this would appeal to almost no one these days. There is a reason Roon is so popular and it's not because of SQ. The overall user experience for many is just as important, if not more. What worries me with Roon, based on their priorities, is that this recent SQ misstep won't be the last time.

As always you offer a fascinating perspective Roy. But this was not my take on Emile's selection of Windows 10 LTSC, unless of course you're dramatizing the result which is certainly justifiable. Emile said he selected Windows because the LInuxes he tried sounded hollow in the middle.

 

[romaz]

As always you offer a fascinating perspective Roy. But this was not my take on Emile's selection of Windows 10 LTSC, unless of course you're dramatizing the result which is certainly justifiable. Emile said he selected Windows because the LInuxes he tried sounded hollow in the middle.

Darryl, I think you missed the point of my post. It had nothing to do with Windows versus Linux or why Emile made the choices that he made. Clearly, to the ears of all who have purchased an Extreme, Emile made the right choices.

My post had to do with the pitfalls that lay ahead. A stock install of Roon on top of a stock install of Windows 10 on a basic PC is probably not going to sound better than a stock install of Stylus and Euphony on that same PC to most ears. This is because Euphony and Stylus were designed with SQ as their top priority whereas Roon and Windows were not. As these products continue to evolve, Euphony and Stylus will continue to evolve with SQ as their top priority whereas Roon and Windows will continue to evolve with other priorities in mind, at least based on historical precedent and this means we will need to continue to rely on Emile to have to rescue us. There may come a time when Emile will be unable to offer a fix.

With the OS, it's less challenging because it can be forever locked down. With Roon, you cannot forever avoid updates. What would be ideal is if Roon could create a spinoff product called Roon Lite that was free of all the bloat and focused only on 3 things: (1) Sound quality, (2) sound quality, and (3) sound quality. Even better would be if Enno Vandermeer asked Emile to head this up. Otherwise, I see something other than Roon in my future.

 

[kswanson27]

And could you define "bloat"?

 

[romaz]

And could you define "bloat"?

bloat = an excess of software code that has nothing to do with SQ and likely is negatively impacting SQ often due to high latency

This is typically seen in software that tries to do too much.

An example of a software player with no bloat would be something like Bug Head Emperor which had a cult following once upon a time because it focused on doing only one thing well and that was excellent SQ. It had an archaic interface but the whole program was only about 60MB.

Roon Core is many GBs in size when you include the metadata database. Probably no one wants to go back to something as archaic as BHE and so this is why people buy an Extreme because it requires an Extreme to get something like Roon to sound as good. Should Roon continue to bloat up, even the Extreme may not be enough to rescue it and the dreadful sound I heard coming out of my Extreme the other day tells me this could happen.

 

[tsaett]

Welcome, Christoph. I can't imagine a more interesting and fulfilling sabbatical than to be able to work with Emile and the other talented Taiko team-members on a daily basis.

Steve Z

Thank you Steve, that were my exact thoughts as well!

 

[tsaett]

Christoph was very kind in his response to my first query about internet tweaking. I meant to tell him that I was in Köln this same time last year (I believe Emile said he was coming from Köln, though a quick refresher shows LvB was from Bonn).

I love Germany; I was stationed there in the military when I was much younger, and love to go back; can't get enough of it. Last year we flew into Paris and took the train up to Amsterdam and then over to Köln (the same route my Extreme took btw), and then drove down the Rhine and Mosel valleys for my favorite wines .

So again, Herzlich willkommen!

Thanks, I do live in Köln for many years now, but actually grew up in a wine region (Ahr) close by!
For whites I tend to go for German wines too, for reds I like to look a bit more south

 

[EuroDriver]

Thanks, I do live in Köln for many years now, but actually grew up in a wine region (Ahr) close by!
For whites I tend to go for German wines too, for reds I like to look a bit more south

What I left off from Christoph's CV is that he is

- Barrista par Excellence with his custom blend of Arabica and Robusta
- Italian Cuisine Gourmet cook
- Slow Food practitioner

 

[Blackmorec]

And could you define "bloat"?

Bloat is normal when you have:

• Multi-purpose software whose aim is to be ’all things to all men’
• Single product companies, where SW development teams are permanently deployed on enhancing a product. By definition the product is never ‘finished’. Worse, the vast majority of users expect capability enhancements with each new release, so bloat is actually desirable for most of their installed base
• Companies with multitudinous or generic goals like ‘market share’, market penetration and ‘share holder value’, who try to outdo their rivals with a host of new features intended to ‘add value’

The problem will always exist when you develop highly targeted products based on outsourced systems where you have no strategic relationship (partnership) or input into product development. If the products you’re using head off in the wrong direction, there’s nothing you can do other than work arounds then finally looking for alternatives.
For the likes of Microsoft and Intel, the audiophile market, being small and unconsolidated really has no voice whatsoever. For Roon, audiophiles concerned with SQ is really a very small niche, so Taiko Extreme users are a niche within a niche and unlikely to be listened to unless Roon users suddenly experience an epiphany in terms of sound quality but I wouldn’t hold your breath

 

[bonzo75]

What I left off from Christoph's CV is that he is

- Barrista par Excellence with his custom blend of Arabica and Robusta
- Italian Cuisine Gourmet cook
- Slow Food practitioner

Strong enough reason for me to join as well. I won't need a salary then, just Christoph's stuff