Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[cat6man]

Nothing wrong with a little Grateful Dead on a Thursday morning. . .

Steve Z

or on any morning

my listening runs to about 50% live concerts of one sort or another, so while i use audiophile approved recordings for some of my SQ testing of equipment, a bottom line with me is how the hardware presents live recordings, including boots.

can you summarize your thoughts on the Extreme with regard to what you hear on live recordings, particularly those that are not 'audiophile'?

hand me my old guitar............................

 

[EuroDriver]

Since LMS is able to operate on all platforms is there a chance to get versions of TAS outside the Extreme?

Thank you

Matt

This is a subject which we have been thinking about a lot.

A significant part of the TAS magic is due to the tight integration and optimization with the hardware and the OS.

In head to head testing of TAS against other Audio software, TAS shines. However when we are thinking about delivering the largest SQ uplift at other price points, a similar tight integration of hardware and OS works wonders as well.

Don't be surprised when the next computer audio niche to be addressed by Taiko will be TAS bundled with Taiko PC hardware components and OS, delivering a fully sorted Plug and Play solution to audiophiles in the DIY community

 

[oldmustang]

catman6 asked:

"can you summarize your thoughts on the Extreme with regard to what you hear on live recordings, particularly those that are not 'audiophile'?"

Well, I'll try my best.

Listening to music via the Extreme is, in my system, very much on par with listening to vinyl playback in the sense that as I wrote a few days ago, my choice of what to play now comes down to provenance and not a choice between analog and digital where I used to always favor analog, all things being equal. Now I try to listen to the best source material I have for the music I'm in the mood to listen to, and often as not that choice is digital.

Which is not to say that the Extreme sounds like vinyl. They each have their strengths, and I can find examples of LPs that sound terrible, just I as I can with digital files. But using the Extreme, particularly with TAS in place of Roon, the population of those less favored digital recordings has gotten a lot smaller.

The Extreme/TAS makes digital music sound more like music and less artificially reproduced, and accomplishes this not by imposing some pleasant sound signature of its own on everything played, but by being very transparent and by banishing noise to a very, very low level. So recordings played via the Extreme sound more different to each other than I've ever heard. Whatever is best about a particular recording comes out approaching the fullest potential of what was captured by the recording engineer and hopefully not screwed up by the digital mastering engineer. It's easy to hear the effect of microphone placement, and the sense of venue is astonishing.

So, to your point -- a great live recording, like any of Betty Cantor-Jackson's or Owsley's recordings of the Grateful Dead, or The Rolling Stones' Get Your Ya-Ya's Out live album, or well-recorded boots, will sound vibrant, alive and capture much of the venue and the energy flow between the crowd and the artists that we prize when listening to live music. The Extreme won't turn a turnip into a truffle, but it will make the turnip the best turnip it can be, and often extract enough goodness to save it from being pitched back into the root cellar.

I hope this helps,

Steve Z

 

[spiritofmusic]

I'm seeing a great number of combinations here where the Extreme costs many times multiples of price of dacs. A good example being a few €25k Extremes used w €5-7k Chords or Terminators.
In the past it was ALWAYS spend more, or at least the same, on the dac than on the server.
It was suggested that maybe the Extreme acts even more as the tt, the dac more the cart/phono, the USB/switch more the tonearm. As opposed to previously where the dac took on almost the whole role of analog chain.
And now we have Extreme using TAS, where TAS is shaping up to be akin to first pressings/highest provenance vinyl as opposed to the poorer remastered vinyl represented by Roon deterioration in SQ.
Are these analogies ringing true w those who can compare top vinyl/analog front ends w Extreme?
Or am I mixing too many metaphors Lol?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Marc, i think the answer is a couple primary things.

some relatively modestly priced dacs are relatively close in performance to the highest priced level dacs. the spread from the best of those modest priced dacs to the highest or near the highest level dacs is less than it's ever been.

maybe even a bigger issue is that some very serious computer audio enthusiasts who have pursued ultimate digital server performance have connected the dots with what Emile and team have accomplished and taken the plunge as their next logical step. so they found an uber component from another side of the typical audiophile path. would they have got to the same place without that journey with computer audio? i was not in that space so can't say.

will these computer audio guys eventually go higher with dacs? that will be interesting to watch.

 

[steve williams]

catman6 asked:

"can you summarize your thoughts on the Extreme with regard to what you hear on live recordings, particularly those that are not 'audiophile'?"

heres the short answer for me .......the Extreme makes everything “audiophile quality”. Add TAS to that and its a “you are there” experience.
DSD 256 played with buffer 8192 in my system has been as been as real as it gets and to me becomes closely indistinguishable from vinyl

And it’s only going to get better

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

 

[cat6man]

Marc, i think the answer is a few primary things.

some relatively modestly priced dacs are relatively close in performance to the highest priced level dacs. the spread from the best of those modest priced dacs to the highest or near the highest level dacs is less than it's ever been.

maybe even a bigger issue is that some very serious computer audio enthusiasts who have pursued ultimate digital server performance have connected the dots with what Emile and team have accomplished and taken the plunge as their next logical step. so they found an uber component from another side of the typical audiophile path. would they have got to the same place without that journey with computer audio? i was not in that space so can't say.

mike,

looking at your sig, i'm wondering if you typically use the memory in the extreme to play your music or if you stream from the 2x NAS.

thanks

 

[spiritofmusic]

Marc, i think the answer is a couple primary things.

some relatively modestly priced dacs are relatively close in performance to the highest priced level dacs. the spread from the best of those modest priced dacs to the highest or near the highest level dacs is less than it's ever been.

maybe even a bigger issue is that some very serious computer audio enthusiasts who have pursued ultimate digital server performance have connected the dots with what Emile and team have accomplished and taken the plunge as their next logical step. so they found an uber component from another side of the typical audiophile path. would they have got to the same place without that journey with computer audio? i was not in that space so can't say.

will these computer audio guys eventually go higher with dacs? that will be interesting to watch.

Sure Mike. Extreme is obviously no glass window to performance.
Is there any mileage in my analogy of TAS-enabled Extreme being more like a tt playing higher provenance/first pressings/hot stampers vinyl, Roon being closer to less stellar repressings/later run original vinyl?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

mike,

looking at your sig, i'm wondering if you typically use the memory in the extreme to play your music or if you stream from the 2x NAS.

thanks

those 2x mirroring NAS's are storage only at this point. my wife uses the one in my house for her Sonus/Tidal music. my son set those up for me a few years ago and i did use the NAS upstairs in my barn prior to my Extreme. but soon after i got the Extreme i added 32tb of internal PCIe memory and transferred the files to that. it did improve the performance.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Sure Mike. Extreme is obviously no glass window to performance.
Is there any mileage in my analogy of TAS-enabled Extreme being more like a tt playing higher provenance/first pressings/hot stampers vinyl, Roon being closer to less stellar repressings/later run original vinyl?

since digital files can mostly be acquired anytime by anyone, and streaming is also open equally to all, that all important acquisition part of vinyl that is so daunting is a non issue with digital. we are approaching the point where digital media is almost taken for granted.

that said; i see transports/networks/streamers/media management/servers as turntables and arms together, and see dacs as cartridges and phono stages together. when i do try to relate the two music delivery systems, that is how it looks to me.

 

[matthias]

i see transports/networks/streamers/media management/servers as turntables and arms together, and see dacs as cartridges and phono stages together. when i do try to relate the two music delivery systems, that is how it looks to me.

+1
From a Source First POV the former is clearly more important than the later.

Matt

 

[spiritofmusic]

But in the analog world, source first is tt-arm-cart-phono cbl-phono/SUT.

 

[matthias]

But in the analog world, source first is tt-arm-cart-phono cbl-phono/SUT.

tt-arm is more important than cart-phono

Matt

 

[spiritofmusic]

Well, you need it all to play LPs. I should know, I tried to play an album once with a bent cantilever Lol.

 

[matthias]

Well, you need it all to play LPs. I should know, I tried to play an album once with a bent cantilever Lol.

Indeed, but there is a ranking or hierarchy in analog and digital.

Matt

 

[spiritofmusic]

I guess my point is that prior to the Extreme, no server promised to be so stellar let alone deliver on that promise, and thus the whole digital chain fell upon the dac. Now with Extreme doing way more heavy lifting, it's possible for the first time to say the server at this level is indeed the tt/arm, and the dac is the cart/phono. Maybe the USB cbl/switch is the phono cbl.

The nearest equivalent I can think to the market breakthru of Extreme is how Linn wrenched the tt to the front of priorities back in the early 70s, when it was commonly accepted that the loudspeaker, or even cart, was preeminent.

If you had £5k to spend four decades in the UK, Linn insisted you put the vast majority into the Sondek LP12 tt, and whatever left over on the Basik arm/cart/phono. And then spend more on those as upgrade funds permitted.

To put €25k into the Extreme and €5-10k into the dac/USB cbl/switch, seems analogous.

As opposed to the situation just 5 years ago where the balance would be €25k dac and €5k server/USB cbl.

 

[matthias]

I guess my point is that prior to the Extreme, no server promised to be so stellar let alone deliver on that promise, and thus the whole digital chain fell upon the dac. Now with Extreme doing way more heavy lifting, it's possible for the first time to say the server at this level is indeed the tt/arm, and the dac is the cart/phono. Maybe the USB cbl/switch is the phono cbl.

The nearest equivalent I can think to the market breakthru of Extreme is how Linn wrenched the tt to the front of priorities back in the early 70s, when it was commonly accepted that the loudspeaker, or even cart, was preeminent.

If you had £5k to spend four decades in the UK, Linn insisted you put the vast majority into the Sondek LP12 tt, and whatever left over on the Basik arm/cart/phono. And then spend more on those as upgrade funds permitted.

To put €25k into the Extreme and €5-10k into the dac/USB cbl/switch, seems analogous.

As opposed to the situation just 5 years ago where the balance would be €25k dac and €5k server/USB cbl.

Agree in all points but IIRC we had the same discussion on this thread around Christmas 2019

Matt

 

[oldmustang]

Sure Mike. Extreme is obviously no glass window to performance.
Is there any mileage in my analogy of TAS-enabled Extreme being more like a tt playing higher provenance/first pressings/hot stampers vinyl, Roon being closer to less stellar repressings/later run original vinyl?

Marc, I'd say that is a good analogy to perhaps explain the degree of improvement between Extreme/TAS and Extreme/Roon.

Of course, in your analogy you are comparing best and not-best pressings (analog source material) to best and not-best software players. If you actually consider high resolution digital files compared to Redbook (digital source material) I think the analogy would break down -- not that you did that at all -- as in my experience I've heard some Redbook files that were superb, and heard some high resolution transfers that were meh.

Steve Z

 

[spiritofmusic]

Agree in all points but IIRC we had the same discussion on this thread around Christmas 2019

Matt

I'm repeating myself? Wouldn't be the first time.
Actually I know I'm sounding like a scratched record Lol, but I thought TAS exemplifies the point even more. Maybe even more reason to swing the balance of spending on a moderate budget to the Extreme.

 

[matthias]

I'm repeating myself? Wouldn't be the first time.
Actually I know I'm sounding like a scratched record Lol, but I thought TAS exemplifies the point even more. Maybe even more reason to swing the balance of spending on a moderate budget to the Extreme.

Marc,
yes with TAS the Extreme is an even better source like the LP12 with a super bearing or super motor drive.
So it makes even more sense to go for an Extreme even with a less expensive DAC.

Matt