Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Kingsrule]

I have 15,000 + albums in storage on my Extreme. 9.7 " iPad Pro, iPhone X as well as MB Pro used to control Roon.
About every 10 days Roon functions slow to a crawl and I have to restart the Extreme......
I hope its a Roon issue and not a Extreme issue...kind of a PIA to restart so often

 

[Rhapsody]

I have 15,000 + albums in storage on my Extreme. 9.7 " iPad Pro, iPhone X as well as MB Pro used to control Roon.
About every 10 days Roon functions slow to a crawl and I have to restart the Extreme......
I hope its a Roon issue and not a Extreme issue...kind of a PIA to restart so often

Just curious if it has an effect- do you go in and clear the "cache" and "clean up library" in the Roon settings? I don't have a library etc, but when I start running slow, when I clear the cache and clean up the library it always solves the slowness issue.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

just spent 90 minutes laying on the Alpha TAS operating table, with mostly Dr. Emile doing surgery on my Extreme and Select II. mid way Dr. Wilson showed up to assist. it involved over 50 emails back and forth, lots of starting and stopping and selecting different resolutions (i was just listening and commenting). working through various issues and settings.

at the end it was a complete success. and some new toys were applied too. loving what i am hearing. thank you Emile and Wilson for your tireless efforts on the behalf of the Extreme Community. i don't want to cause confusion by messing up any explanations, except that the new Taiko Audio USB Driver was introduced, so i will leave the other details to those guys.

i know other sessions like this have occurred with other Extreme owners too.

Bravo!!!

 

[Mike Lavigne]

it seems that after today's efforts by Emile and Wilson my track loading times are noticeably reduced. i cannot exactly quantify it as i had not previously carefully measured it, but it sure seems quite a bit shortened.

 

[EuroDriver]

can't say, have not tried. i'd guess it's the same story. TAS is not as efficient in dealing with cover art and meta-data. so needs more resources.....for now.

The iPad or Android tablet is doing a lot more in TAS than with Roon, so needs more memory

As a SQ strategy, we try to keep network traffic to a minimum, so the tablet needs more memory for caching artwork

 

[Kingsrule]

Just curious if it has an effect- do you go in and clear the "cache" and "clean up library" in the Roon settings? I don't have a library etc, but when I start running slow, when I clear the cache and clean up the library it always solves the slowness issue.

Appreciate the suggestion but I've been doing these regularly for years...no help to slowness

 

[oldmustang]

A friend with way more smarts about this stuff than I has been following the development of TAS as an alternative to Roon with great interest. Though not an Extreme owner, he is very much a music and audio enthusiast, and he works at the project management level in application development. I was going to attempt to paraphrase the back-channel comments he made, but with his permission, here is a pretty much direct quotation:

"Roon has an API that allows developers to do things like this: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-extension-roon-web-controller-v1-2-0/28412

If their API can retrieve the contents of a playlist with sufficient granularity, they [playlists] might be able to be imported into another application, like TAS.

A playlist is simply an index with references to files. How Roon references the location of files and whether the API provides that reference in a usable way would be the key here."

My own comments -- you guys are way ahead of me in the development of TAS. I understand (mostly) what an API is, but definitely don't have a nuts and bolts level understanding of how to incorporate an API or parts of an API into a functioning application -- that's all black box stuff to me. I am definitely not a programmer or developer. But the question I do have is if Roon actually furnishes an API or APIs that are at all useful and/or if you all have looked at them for things that could be incorporated into TAS without degrading sound quality?

Thanks,

Steve Z

 

[plasmod3]

Thanks Mike, good to know the library works looking forward to exploring the tas universe

Curious doesn't the msb use an xmos usb chip? What issues are you having with the select 2?

 

[Taiko Audio]

I have 15,000 + albums in storage on my Extreme. 9.7 " iPad Pro, iPhone X as well as MB Pro used to control Roon.
About every 10 days Roon functions slow to a crawl and I have to restart the Extreme......
I hope its a Roon issue and not a Extreme issue...kind of a PIA to restart so often

Assuming you already tried Settings > Setup and increase the Memory for Photos/Artwork option on each of your remotes, there have been multiple reports on Wi-Fi affecting remote performance, some people switch from 2.4G to 5G, some people from 5G to 2.4G, might be worth a shot switching Wi-Fi band.

 

[Taiko Audio]

just spent 90 minutes laying on the Alpha TAS operating table, with mostly Dr. Emile doing surgery on my Extreme and Select II. mid way Dr. Wilson showed up to assist. it involved over 50 emails back and forth, lots of starting and stopping and selecting different resolutions (i was just listening and commenting). working through various issues and settings.

at the end it was a complete success. and some new toys were applied too. loving what i am hearing. thank you Emile and Wilson for your tireless efforts on the behalf of the Extreme Community. i don't want to cause confusion by messing up any explanations, except that the new Taiko Audio USB Driver was introduced, so i will leave the other details to those guys.

i know other sessions like this have occurred with other Extreme owners too.

Bravo!!!

Thanks Mike, good to know the library works looking forward to exploring the tas universe

Curious doesn't the msb use an xmos usb chip? What issues are you having with the select 2?

We had an issue with the Select where it either played 16/44.1 tracks but then truncated 24 bit recordings into 16 bit, or it played 24 bit just fine but no 16/44.1. Wilson has identified the issue and wrote a patch which solved that.

We also installed our brand new Taiko Audio USB Driver to replace the driver supplied by MSB. We originally initiated our USB driver project to be able to have a single driver supporting all DACs, now that is actually a bit complicated but we're making good progress. Meanwhile it has also turned into an effort to improve sound quality over vendor supplied or generic drivers.

 

[Ackcheng]

Many of us have the cd booklet scanned into pdf file and save with the actual music files. Roon support browsing such pdf buy opening a browser. Will TAS support this function too? I noticed Qobuz also comes with pdf booklet for some albums

 

[Taiko Audio]

A friend with way more smarts about this stuff than I has been following the development of TAS as an alternative to Roon with great interest. Though not an Extreme owner, he is very much a music and audio enthusiast, and he works at the project management level in application development. I was going to attempt to paraphrase the back-channel comments he made, but with his permission, here is a pretty much direct quotation:

"Roon has an API that allows developers to do things like this: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-extension-roon-web-controller-v1-2-0/28412

If their API can retrieve the contents of a playlist with sufficient granularity, they [playlists] might be able to be imported into another application, like TAS.

A playlist is simply an index with references to files. How Roon references the location of files and whether the API provides that reference in a usable way would be the key here."

My own comments -- you guys are way ahead of me in the development of TAS. I understand (mostly) what an API is, but definitely don't have a nuts and bolts level understanding of how to incorporate an API or parts of an API into a functioning application -- that's all black box stuff to me. I am definitely not a programmer or developer. But the question I do have is if Roon actually furnishes an API or APIs that are at all useful and/or if you all have looked at them for things that could be incorporated into TAS without degrading sound quality?

Thanks,

Steve Z

Interesting, we'll look into that, thank you Steve.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Many of us have the cd booklet scanned into pdf file and save with the actual music files. Roon support browsing such pdf buy opening a browser. Will TAS support this function too? I noticed Qobuz also comes with pdf booklet for some albums

That does not look to be very hard to implement, if not already there.

 

[Kingsrule]

Assuming you already tried Settings > Setup and increase the Memory for Photos/Artwork option on each of your remotes, there have been multiple reports on Wi-Fi affecting remote performance, some people switch from 2.4G to 5G, some people from 5G to 2.4G, might be worth a shot switching Wi-Fi band.

Everything here on 5G....I'll give 2.4G a go.....

 

[kswanson27]

Everything here on 5G....I'll give 2.4G a go.....

I have an iPad Pro that's about 3-4 years old. It has 32 GB of memory with about 16 GB available. I have about 12,000 tracks on Roon and stream both Tidal and Qbuz. Is this sufficient for TAS?

 

[EuroDriver]

I have an iPad Pro that's about 3-4 years old. It has 32 GB of memory with about 16 GB available. I have about 12,000 tracks on Roon and stream both Tidal and Qbuz. Is this sufficient for TAS?

iPad Pro should have no problem with sufficient RAM for caching

 

[Mike Lavigne]

it seems that after today's efforts by Emile and Wilson my track loading times are noticeably reduced. i cannot exactly quantify it as i had not previously carefully measured it, but it sure seems quite a bit shortened.

btw; full disclosure; last night i did a Queue with 20 or so cuts and soon realized that as far as i can tell load times had not diminished. i was totally involved just listening so was fully aware. i was not bothered by it really. less time would be good, but could live with this if it did not change.

really enjoyed what i was hearing. a joyful close out to the day.

sorry i talked too soon.

 

[plasmod3]

We had an issue with the Select where it either played 16/44.1 tracks but then truncated 24 bit recordings into 16 bit, or it played 24 bit just fine but no 16/44.1. Wilson has identified the issue and wrote a patch which solved that.

We also installed our brand new Taiko Audio USB Driver to replace the driver supplied by MSB. We originally initiated our USB driver project to be able to have a single driver supporting all DACs, now that is actually a bit complicated but we're making good progress. Meanwhile it has also turned into an effort to improve sound quality over vendor supplied or generic drivers.

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Great to hear Mike the dedication here from the Taiko team is astounding

 

[Taiko Audio]

Confirm compatibility with the Lampizator Pacific with their new XMOS USB board:

 

[EuroDriver]

Great to hear Mike the dedication here from the Taiko team is astounding

Really a case study of how seemingly unrelated initiatives come together to enable an SQ raising integrated implementation !

please excuse the Geek speak. Let me tell you how Chuffed Emile was this weekend when it all came together !