Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
and the kicker to this whole thing is that it comes free to every Extreme owner along with the option to still use Roon if you prefer their interface
Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
thank you to Emile, Ed and Wilson this morning for the hand holding to get me kicked off into TAS Alpha. listening now to Quboz through TAS.
got to go to work but the brief listen was thumbs up!
Bravo here we go.......
got to go to work but the brief listen was thumbs up!
Bravo here we go.......
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Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I learned something new this morning. Yesterday I listened to TAS for about 8 hours straight with the buffers moved to the auto position so that I could get a feel for TAS before playing with the buffers.
In my post yesterday I said that I would be hard pressed to accurately in a blind test be able to pick TAS vs Roon
In discussing the buffers with Emile this morning he told me that when the buffers are in the auto position the sound is indeed closest to Roon. Emile gave me some suggestions on using the buffers. So it's early here today and I sense another long and fun listening session
In my post yesterday I said that I would be hard pressed to accurately in a blind test be able to pick TAS vs Roon
In discussing the buffers with Emile this morning he told me that when the buffers are in the auto position the sound is indeed closest to Roon. Emile gave me some suggestions on using the buffers. So it's early here today and I sense another long and fun listening session
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Taiko Audio Server and Taiko Audio Remote-Initial Thoughts- Day 2 -TAS Buffers
Well today was an another 8 hour marathon with TAS and I took Emile's advice and began to play with the buffers . I found interestingly enough I could use almost all but the last 2 DSD buffers before my DSD files wouldn't play but in the PCM buffers I could platy everything from 88.1 and above in some buffers but could not play 16/44.1
Emile told me that this might happen and when it does just turn off XD Player and reset the buffers and play the file again.
For my ears and what seemed (so far) most pleasing was to use buffer 256 for PCM and buffer 8192 for DSD
I found on PCM Adaptive-2 also very good but it wouldn't play 16/44.1
Having said that I also found that if I was playing a track from a redbook album and it didn't play, if I exited the track and went back and loaded it again it would often play so I am not sure if this is because my DAC uses Amanero and the drivers won't work on all buffers and/or it is a bug here in the system.
Putting all of this aside day 2 was giant steps ahead of what I heard last light . The ability to use these buffers and tune the sound to one's likes just lit me up. There is no coloration that I heard at all. It just sounded "more real" and as many of us would say, "more natural"
I played tracks today that were buried in the bowels of my library housed locally in the Extreme and they sounded better than I can ever recall. I always ask myself, "is what I'm hearing, something better or just something different and if better, how so/". Well once again the sense of being there was so much more heightened when I found what I think to be the sweet spot for these buffers in my system. I am certain other users will find something different.
With the buffers in "Auto" the sound is wonderful and comparable to what we hear now with Roon.
When the buffers are utilized however the full sense of TAS and what it does and what it will eventually do only brought a smile to my face
Emile we should talk about the 44.1 issue which we have found yet sometimes seems to solve itself by reloading the track
What I heard today is not just better than what I heard yesterday but "surprisingly" much better than I imagined. Kudos again to Emile, Winston, Ed and the team
Well today was an another 8 hour marathon with TAS and I took Emile's advice and began to play with the buffers . I found interestingly enough I could use almost all but the last 2 DSD buffers before my DSD files wouldn't play but in the PCM buffers I could platy everything from 88.1 and above in some buffers but could not play 16/44.1
Emile told me that this might happen and when it does just turn off XD Player and reset the buffers and play the file again.
For my ears and what seemed (so far) most pleasing was to use buffer 256 for PCM and buffer 8192 for DSD
I found on PCM Adaptive-2 also very good but it wouldn't play 16/44.1
Having said that I also found that if I was playing a track from a redbook album and it didn't play, if I exited the track and went back and loaded it again it would often play so I am not sure if this is because my DAC uses Amanero and the drivers won't work on all buffers and/or it is a bug here in the system.
Putting all of this aside day 2 was giant steps ahead of what I heard last light . The ability to use these buffers and tune the sound to one's likes just lit me up. There is no coloration that I heard at all. It just sounded "more real" and as many of us would say, "more natural"
I played tracks today that were buried in the bowels of my library housed locally in the Extreme and they sounded better than I can ever recall. I always ask myself, "is what I'm hearing, something better or just something different and if better, how so/". Well once again the sense of being there was so much more heightened when I found what I think to be the sweet spot for these buffers in my system. I am certain other users will find something different.
With the buffers in "Auto" the sound is wonderful and comparable to what we hear now with Roon.
When the buffers are utilized however the full sense of TAS and what it does and what it will eventually do only brought a smile to my face
Emile we should talk about the 44.1 issue which we have found yet sometimes seems to solve itself by reloading the track
What I heard today is not just better than what I heard yesterday but "surprisingly" much better than I imagined. Kudos again to Emile, Winston, Ed and the team
You are writing like we all know about TAS and buffers etc......basically most of us have no idea what you are talking about
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I’m trying to help with some data points for other users. As for TAS I would say everyone reading this thread knows about TAS and the remote. As for the buffers this is one of the ways TAS is IMO better than Roon
Back in May when the stability of the sound quality that Extreme owners were experiencing from their systems was extremely troubling to Emile and myself, we made the decision and commitment to develop Taiko’s own music server and music player software. The short name for the suite of software programs is TAS.
I mangaged to get on board Wilson in Toronto Canada sn extremely talented programmer. Wilson has 17 years of experience with debugging software for Satellite communications.
The media server which TAS uses is written in the same programming language as the Sat Comms software that Wilson has debugged for 17 years
Under Emile’s guidance, Wilson has coded TAS and achieved new levels of low RF noise in the Extreme
This reduced level of background noise that comes with TAS has made the sonic effects of varying the ASIO buffer size much more audible. This is what Steve has been describing.
Yes we all know TAS is coming
But OK to be clearer.....most of us don't know about the features of TAS, like where did XD Player come from? What are the buffer settings?
You write like we all have the alpha of TAS and direct insight from Emile, which is not the case........
But OK to be clearer.....most of us don't know about the features of TAS, like where did XD Player come from? What are the buffer settings?
You write like we all have the alpha of TAS and direct insight from Emile, which is not the case........
Keep the questions coming, its very helpful
XD Player is a program that has been written from scratch by Wilson which receives files from a media server and also get’s streaming files from Qobuz and delivers this data to the USB driver data input buffer
What makes XD different from most of its competitors, it does minimal to no transcoding ( changing from one sample to another) and goes through laborious preparation of the processing environment, RAM and file properties.
In all music data transfer applications there is buffering going on, and signaling when a buffer is about to be empty and needs to be refilled. There are RF signature advantages and disadvantages to small and large buffers. What XD does is to set the lower and upper limits of what reliably works, and the Extreme-naut can either choose auto selection or find his own buffer size sweet spots for PCM and DSD
Thanks for the further explanation of what XD is doing with the buffers.
Is the XD auto a static buffer size or is it variable depending on the file format and sample rate that's playing?
And for users who choose specific buffers for PCM or DSD at various sample rates, can those choices be programmed in to automatically switch back and forth depending on what's playing?
Have you found that buffer choices vary by DAC used?
That is a good idea, we should do that, however maybe better suited for the beta once we have ironed out the worst initial bugs, we could roll that out to a much larger group of willing "Guinea pigs".
TAS basically employs a similar strategy as Roon where there's a Core or Server component handling library management / track selection and a renderer or player. This can be either HQPlayer for upsampling or our own player called "XDPlayer" for bitperfect playback. We have a third component sitting in between Core and renderer, a "bridge", which is our attempt to reduce differences between streamed and locally stored files (and differences between cd rips).
Hi Emile
Not sure about waiting on a Beta to start explaining what is coming but it would be a good idea to have the Alpha testers not post anything publicly about it for the reasons stated above....
for myself; i found that my 'old' (5-6 years old?) i-pad was short of RAM memory to properly execute TAS Alpha scrolling of my files. there was a mode where it did work, but another where it did not load effectively. to be fair, likely this i-pad was on it's last legs as the battery was needing re-charge sooner and sooner.
so last night i went out and bought a new i-pad. once i got it set up clear sailing with the interface for me now. unfortunately the process did take my time for listening; but the brief time was impressive sounding. this new i-pad (the newest Air 4 was sold out, so got an Air 3/256----$650) has a larger screen than my old one which i like.
tonight will be my first real full dive into TAS Alpha.
so last night i went out and bought a new i-pad. once i got it set up clear sailing with the interface for me now. unfortunately the process did take my time for listening; but the brief time was impressive sounding. this new i-pad (the newest Air 4 was sold out, so got an Air 3/256----$650) has a larger screen than my old one which i like.
tonight will be my first real full dive into TAS Alpha.
Hi Kingsrule,
the feedback from the Alpha testers here on this forum is actually a key part of the development process for us.
I will give you an example, Romaz’s and Ray Dude’s very comprehensive reports. We re-read those reports many times and also received feedback from other WBF members who had read the reports. These data points paint for us a well populated landscape of what Audiophiles are hearing, and what are important/ key drivers for their musical enjoyment.
Hardware and Software development in a bubble / echo chamber is not productive in our experience.
This forum is key resource for us and we thank all posters and question askers for the time they take to do this
just to clarify, i assume this is the time to start a new playlist from a cold stop?
playback otherwise is gapless, correct?
It's exciting to read these TAS updates. And congratulations to Emile, Winston, Ed and the team! Now I'll be visiting this thread multiple times per day...
Hi Steve,
Thank you for sharing your evolving experience using the alpha TAS. The buffer adjustments sound intriguing, a bit like tube rolling, to make a crude analogy. It is valuable to have elements for system tuning, as the sum of all parts are different for each of us.
Regarding the overall improvements in sound quality, could you please elaborate more on what makes the music "more real", "more natural"? Is it more informative? Better microdynamics? Better delineation of the harmonic envelope timing? Etc. I'm curious to understand what it is that is fleshing out better than the Roon experience. Thanks!
The way TAS works is definitely not gapless. There is just so much important preparation going on before a track starts to play which makes a very audible difference to the sound quality.
A vinyl playback analogy would be washing or carefully cleaning the disk before playing. A brush mounted on the cartridge shell is very definitely audible, a similar story for digital with processing environment preparation activity during playback.
However, we hear you and understand how some live concerts which have been split into tracks need to be played gapeless. We have some possible solutions in mind where tracks in a playlist can be gapless.
what we are not inclined to do is fade out and fade in, that does not increase realism. ;-)
My Extreme ships this week, it seems - - very exciting! I would like to add one feature request for TAS that means a lot to me: can you have an easy way to select Pausing play after a track finishes? I got so used to this feature when using Foobar2000 a while back, and Roon stubbornly refused to implement this rather simple feature, which I have missed dearly.
I love listening down a playlist with a friend, and we like to pause between tracks at times to talk about the music. This feature makes it a snap, and I as the host can simply relax into the music, enjoying the full track to completion. With Roon, I have to be alert to hit Pause, which is just flat out disruptive to the enjoyment.
Nice if it can be selected with an Alt key sequence or something, establishing it for the track currently playing. Thanks!
