Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Rhapsody]

Emile at 46 and me at 31 both prefer 7 FWIW.

At 68 I like 7 BUT, there is no doubt that with completely different systems/rooms and different listeners and different types of music there are going to be different preferences.

Another fun variable in the overall equation to dial in the music so that each individual enjoys the presentation.

 

[tsaett]

At 68 I like 7 BUT, there is no doubt that with completely different systems/rooms and different listeners and different types of music there are going to be different preferences.

Another fun variable in the overall equation to dial in the music so that each individual enjoys the presentation.

That sums it up pretty well!

 

[audioquattr]

Visit to Jeroen's system in 2020

Yesterday I had the brief but intense pleasure of visiting Jeroen in his lovely home, thanks for the invitation!

Jeroen is living in a beautiful home in a very nice neighborhood and can consider him lucky to have an excellent dedicated listening room for his amazing system.
I was anxious the whole day to hear his system and see what the bigger brothers (or rather great great granddad?) of my own speakers are capable of doing. Rest assured, I was not disappointed.

His system is well documented here, so I spare you additional infos and photos, though i can assure that in person it is even more impressive.
https://whatsbestforum.com/threads/audioquattr-system-from-a-to-z.27192/
We only listened to digital.

I asked Jeroen to start with some of his music recommendations, which were mostly very good Jazz trio / quartett recordings, something I enjoy myself very much. As soon as the first note started, you are there with the musicians.
I heard an enormous soundstage, reaching well outside the room walls. The musicians were standing firmly within that soundstage, having body, weight and a "face", bringing the illusion of witnessing a real live concert. The speakers were able to project sounds well into the room, compared to the Alsyvox speakers at Taiko the music is more "they are here" rather than "you are there", something I know and value from my own system. Don't take that too literally though, usual hifi-lingo does not capture the experience in full.

Tonality wise I was surprised to hear a very pleasant (not to be confused with sweet) rendition of all tracks, no sharpness, no glare, no thinness or flatness, essentially nothing I negatively witnessed on several exposures to big Cessaros in Munich. Jeroen clearly has tamed these beasts and created a system to which you can listen for hours, keep you engaged big time and won't induce listener fatigue - It just sounded right.

I then asked Jeroen to play a few of my reference tracks, Kenny Burrel ("Mule") for musicality, Leonard Cohen ("Amen") for voice and The Stimulators ("new years eve on the waterfront") for stage rendition.
On Mule, I was immediately set back to '63, zooming out for the whole track and just enjoyed what the musicians were performing. The Stimulators showed incredible texture on the bass, very realistic voice rendition and bringing maybe the greatest micro dynamic shading I ever heard from a system. The bass felt perfectly integrated and seamless!
The Leonard Cohen recording also was immensely enjoyable, but showed the only area where I thought it is not perfect: On the same perceived volume level as before (and only on this track) I reached out for the remote to turn it down lower than I would have liked, as I felt a bit room overload - not really a fault of the system though.

My takeaways:
- Cessaros are great speakers which react to the slightest (and i mean slightest) change in the playback chain (I kind of knew that already from home)
- Alieno are fantastic electronics, something I might want to look into myself
- Music reproduction is such a diverse field, you can achieve incredible results with many different approaches

Thank you Jeroen for an incredible experience, I think I can confidently call your system one of, if not the best system I have heard.

Christoph

Thank you for the nice report Christoph!
It was my pleasure to have you both overhere. I am happy you enjoyed it.

 

[musicfirst1]

View attachment 65101

The analog version. Every birthday you get to click it on a notch

Heres hoping we all make it back around to 'O'

 

[Steve Williams]

I then asked Jeroen to play a few of my reference tracks, Kenny Burrel ("Mule") for musicality, Leonard Cohen ("Amen") for voice and The Stimulators ("new years eve on the waterfront") for stage rendition.
On Mule, I was immediately set back to '63, zooming out for the whole track and just enjoyed what the musicians were performing. The Stimulators showed incredible texture on the bass, very realistic voice rendition and bringing maybe the greatest micro dynamic shading I ever heard from a system. The bass felt perfectly integrated and seamless!
The Leonard Cohen recording also was immensely enjoyable, but showed the only area where I thought it is not perfect: On the same perceived volume level as before (and only on this track) I reached out for the remote to turn it down lower than I would have liked, as I felt a bit room overload - not really a fault of the system though.

Leonard Cohen track

It's interesting for me that the demo track that dissuaded me from number 3 was a song by Cohen that is a go to must demo in situations like these.It's called You Want It Darker. In the first 20-30 seconds of this song there are some low bass strings plucked. At 3 it sounded congested and slightly bloated whereas at 7 it "just sounded natural"

I would recommend this track to use for the male voice. At 3 his voice was slow and gravelly whereas at 7 the PRAT was right on

 

[marty]

Strange how some say 3 is bloaty and slow and some say 7 is bloaty and slow, i.e. the exact opposite. My understanding is it is also age related, i.e. younger ears trend towards 1 and older ears trend towards 10. Not sure at which age you start moving in the opposite direction though...

Whoa, there is way too little sampling data to make a meaningful age-related conclusion. BTW, I'm 104 years old (at least that's the way it feels in the middle of the pandemic).

 

[howiebrou]

Whoa, there is way too little sampling data to make a meaningful age-related conclusion. BTW, I'm 104 years old (at least that's the way it feels in the middle of the pandemic).

LOL. I wasn't making the comment based on what people said here. It is what I have been told separately from an Extreme user.

 

[Kingsrule]

LOL. I wasn't making the comment based on what people said here. It is what I have been told separately from an Extreme user.

I'd take this Extreme user's insight with a grain of salt

 

[howiebrou]

I'd take this Extreme user's insight with a grain of salt

He didn't make it up either. I understand it came from the Extreme development team. No.one is saying it is statistically significant, double blinded, repeatable and with sufficient statistical power to be worthy of a peer reviewed paper. Its just a comment...

 

[Taiko Audio]

He didn't make it up either. I understand it came from the Extreme development team. No.one is saying it is statistically significant, double blinded, repeatable and with sufficient statistical power to be worthy of a peer reviewed paper. Its just a comment...

Not from us, although I do vaguely recall a phone call where we discussed a whole range of hypothetical explanations as part of a brainstorm in which it may have been raised. It does not seem to apply though.

 

[Steve Williams]

Not from us, although I do vaguely recall a phone call where we discussed a whole range of hypothetical explanations as part of a brainstorm in which it may have been raised. It does not seem to apply though.

I believe it to be totally system dependent as well as one's own personal preference. The changes are subtle rather than overtly obvious

 

[howiebrou]

Not from us, although I do vaguely recall a phone call where we discussed a whole range of hypothetical explanations as part of a brainstorm in which it may have been raised. It does not seem to apply though.

Yes, i can’t see a pattern yet and like a Steve said it must be System dependent as well as personal taste Dependent.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Yes, i can’t see a pattern yet and like a Steve said it must be System dependent as well as personal taste Dependent.

Most intriguingly though is this should not have any effect whatsoever on a regular 2 channel single output system

 

[austinpop]

should not have any effect whatsoever

Emile,

If I had a € for every time I've heard that, I could buy 2x Extremes and have change left over for a nice pair of Alsyvox's.

 

[microstrip]

Most intriguingly though is this should not have any effect whatsoever on a regular 2 channel single output system

Can I ask what means "Clock Master Priority " in technical terms? I fail to understand its meaning from the Roon explanation.

 

[Skanda]

I played around with this yesterday. On CIEM's+a laptop the effect was noticeable - but I'm not sure I could determine it blind. I made the changes on the speaker rig and am liking what I'm hearing. Again, it's subtle but noticeable. Is anyone messing with the buffer size?

I played around with it and found 5ms very snappy (my preference) and 500ms a little too heavy. I find that 25ms is giving me a nice balance. using Delacey - My Man as my test track (it was playing when I decided to mess with the settings so I went with it). At 25ms and 7 on the clock I find the bass is tight but something AMAZING is going on with the vocals. The flow from consonant to consonant is injected with bloom and air.

Again, it's subtle and not at all like a component change but, hey, it's free so worst case you got some good psychoacoustic effect from it lol. I'm enjoying whatever it is that I'm hearing thats for sure.

 

[howiebrou]

Emile,

If I had a € for every time I've heard that, I could buy 2x Extremes and have change left over for a nice pair of Alsyvox's.

If you had a € for every time you heard that, you would have exactly 1€. On the other hand, if you a € for each time you heard it, you could buy your Extremes.....

 

[nenon]

@Taiko Audio & @tsaett
I installed the latest BIOS 6102 on my DIY server with Asus SAGE motherboard and a new setting popped up in the Performance Tuning section (I guess it was added in BIOS 5701) - Power Balancer.


It's interesting what it does. Give it a try if you haven't. Obviously the Taiko Extreme is tweaked completely different than my build, so I will not try to suggest what might or might not work on the Extreme. Just pointing it out.

 

[drjimwillie]

Is the area you are configuring the tab in the lower left-hand corner that says “load defaults”?
I am afraid to touch that button for fear that it will reset all my settings back to default.

 

[oldmustang]

So far we have the following distribution of preferences:

7 - 5 votes
between 5 and 7 - 1 vote
5 - 2 votes
3 - 2 votes
Default - 1 vote
no difference - 1 vote

Still exploring, so don’t count a vote from me quite yet.

This evening I’ve gone from 7 back to default and then to 3. I agree with those who report a contiuum trending from incisive, tight, precise, clarity, etc at the default and low number end of the spectrum, moving toward relaxed, loose, mellow and ultimately less precise at the high number end.

I also agree that one’s preference and what seems most natural will depend on system, room, program material, personal taste and mood. So in that respect the setting does somewhat resemble a tone control, though one that works on sonic parameters other than strict frequency response.

For myself, I see zeroing in on what sounds best to me is going to be an iterative process over multiple listening sessions and I suspect that what I end up settling on will be somewhere between 3 and 7 based on what I’ve heard so far.

Fun stuff!

Steve Z