Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[spiritofmusic]

That wasn't quite my point...more that the record collection takes a major step forward w the TAS.
Would the vinylistas like Mike and Steve who know their LP pressings well, and love TAS, claim that TAS is somewhat like superior first pressings versus Roon mediocre repressings?

 

[howiebrou]

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.

Are you trying to say there is something wrong with my $2 USB cable emanating from my Extreme?

 

[steve williams]

Are you trying to say there is something wrong with my $2 USB cable emanating from my Extreme?

Far from Extreme

 

[MRIguy]

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

Hi Everyone... this is my first post on WBF. The truth be told, I'm feeling a bit humbled and unworthy to be posting this incredible thread. This thread has become my favorite thread in all of audiophile-land. Here's my quick story to tell, as I'm thinking that many others are following this tread in the same way as I am. I've been chasing the audio dream for about 40 years. WIth my progress made in the last couple of years, I'm now knocking on the door of arriving at the sound that I've always dreamed of and knew that I sought. An amazingly (and surprizingly) big, big part of that at was learning that everything matters, especially the digial source (and by extention it's power supply, networking to it and cables). Yep, absolutely everthing matters. I learned this through the so-called "Novel Sound Quality" thread on an alternative forum. I'm sure most of you know what I mean. It was a literal revilation. Thanks to austinpop, nenon, romanz, ray-dude and several others (you all know who you are) for your disciplined experiements, investments, ears and willingess to share what you learned (and even some personal advice). I now am really happy, with my highly-optimized NUC based, Eurphony system with Sean Jacobs PS. Then an interesting thing happend. Several of the famous-players in the other thread, threw in the proverbial towel, bit-the-bullet and joined the Taiko Extreme bandwagon... adding that Emile and company are so far ahead of them that it would be impossible to catch-up and that the Extreme SQ results are oh-so undeniable and oh-so compelling.

So I followed them over to this thread, and got hooked by how great all the contributers are here, and how flat-out amazing Taiko, Emille and company truely are. When it comes to music servers, they are obviously in a higher orbit than anybody else on Earth. Nobody else is even close, and the gap is only widening with TAS and other things in developent. So I started doing my best to justify my way into this club too... try as I might, I can't find a way to afford it. Yet still, I'm drawn to it like a moth to a flame. The sharing, the comroderary, the knowledge, the personabless of Emille and everyone else on this thread is ubelievably amazing and pleasent. Taiko support is obviously exemplary beyond belief. I soooo much want to be part of this.... but the cost is out of my league.

Then Eurodriver posts this post for a possible DIY Taiko, TAS compatible solution. Oh man... could this be anouther dream come true? I sure hope so with all my heart. I bet I'm not alone! Thanks for your time. I believe (and can't wait)! Thanks Taiko making this possible... I hope!!!

 

[treitz3]

Hello, MRIguy. Please allow me to offer you a very warm welcome to the What's Best Forum.

Tom

 

[Ron Resnick]

Welcome to WBF, MRIguy!

We are delighted you are enjoying the thread!

 

[Taiko Audio]

Welcome @MRIguy, contributions like your maiden post do motivate us to pursue that route!

 

[octaviars]

Taiko support is obviously exemplary beyond belief. I soooo much want to be part of this.... but the cost is out of my league.

Then Eurodriver posts this post for a possible DIY Taiko, TAS compatible solution. Oh man... could this be anouther dream come true? I sure hope so with all my heart. I bet I'm not alone! Thanks for your time. I believe (and can't wait)! Thanks Taiko making this possible... I hope!!!

I feel the same like you @MRIguy the cost of a Extrem is a bit to high for me but I still follow this and find it very intresting.

A DIY Taiko would be very tempting

 

[Mike Lavigne]

i know we are only at the Alpha stage of TAS. but i am reflecting on what has changed in my listening over the last week.

big music and TAS/Extreme.

i love large scale music, particularly large scale classical. my system is built with not limiting big music as a main focus. my listening has always included a significant amount of large scale classical digital recordings. so i have been very aware of what large scale vinyl does that digital did not seem to be able to quite pull off.

TAS seems to have altered that equation. large scale digital is still short of the complete package of vinyl in this way. there is more action and nuance in the best large scale vinyl recordings. but a threshold has been crossed by TAS with digital into a humanity, flow, liquidity, and ease with large scale digital (another level of grain-less continuousness) i had not previously experienced. the consequences have to do with the emotional pull of the large scale listening experience. we are in a different place now. it's small......but BIG.

another specific thing i have heard with TAS is bass performance (across all recordings) not previously experienced. it's gone to another level. deeper, more textures, more dimensional, which changes the ambient clues and the realism. it does not take much objective improvement in bass performance to sense a performance gain. it might only be a slight change. i'm guessing that this area has much to do with the large scale music change.

 

[oldmustang]

I’ve been putting Taiko's new USB driver through it’s paces for the past couple of days and thought I should give a preliminary report of what I’ve been hearing.

The new Taiko driver replaces the dCS USB driver in the Extreme operating system. Literally replaces it, as Emile first removed the dCS driver prior to installing the Taiko driver.

My first evening I played with PCM buffer size, alternating between 4096 and 8192. With my dCS Vivaldi Upsampler Plus > Vivaldi DAC I find I preferred 4096 for most content. A buffer size of 8192 sounds a bit less open with a little less sparkle on top relative to 4096. About the only time I liked 8192 was with content that was recorded “hot” or somewhat bright or harsh on top. Otherwise, to my ears in my system, 4096 sounds like the sweet spot. Note: I didn't realize that first evening that Adaptive-1, my prior favorite with the dCS driver and TAS, was still available.

Still, I was kind of saying, “hmmm” to myself that first night — though music still sounded outstanding, I wasn’t hearing the improvement over the dCS USB driver that we've come to expect when Emile and company introduce a new enhancement to their software/operating system.

In fact, I thought what I was hearing might have been a bit of a step back. I thought I was missing some of the expansiveness, impact and vividness I had been enjoying since the introduction of TAS. I was hearing the aural equivalent of someone having let part of the air out of the sonic balloon. It wasn't blatant, but it was something that nagged at me.

Last night that all changed when I got around to turning off “Float” (32-bit) in the TAS control panel. Emile had mentioned to me in passing that some folks preferred Float on, and some preferred it off. What an improvement that simple adjustment made! Now the excitement, clarity, expansive soundstage, dynamics — the breath of life of the music — came back. Maybe more than just back; I think the bar just got raised again.

Though of course I can’t A/B the dCS USB driver against the Taiko USB driver, I now feel more confident in saying that the new driver sounds superior to what I had been hearing using the dCS driver. More clarity, more transparency and low level detail, more vibrancy and emotional involvement.

So far, no problems playing a variety of PCM sample-rates up to and including 24/384 and DSD64 and DSD128 (the lImits of my DAC). I still need to go back and try Adaptive-1 in the PCM buffer settings, both to hear if there are sound quality implications and to test for compatibility with various sample-rates, but I'm not anticipating any trouble.

As Emile has said, the interaction of the USB driver, whether JPlay, dCS or now Taiko, may vary somewhat depending on the specific DAC one is using. So my particular settings may not be the same others will find most pleasing. But at least I can advise after some time spent experimenting that the new Taiko USB driver not only works, but moves sound quality forward again. A very nice accomplishment, and of course comes closer to the goal of Taiko being able to control in-house more of the factors that impact sound quality.

Kudos to Emile, Wilson and Ed!

Steve Z

 

[ray-dude]

Last weekend I compared streaming on the TAS alpha to local files, and was very impressed that the sq was danger close between the two. For all intents and purposes, TAS makes streaming content sound virtually the same as local content.

This weekend, I completed my migration from Tidal to Qobuz (mainly for TAS, but also to be rid of MQA). When playing some old favorites that I had on streaming only, I was BLOWN away how amazing these albums had become. Our ears get used to how incredible the Extreme is, but hearing streaming content as if it were local is truly a game changer. Such a delight to be experiencing the Extreme magic against a virtually unlimited library of musical performances.

Major kudos to the Taiko team for cracking the streaming nut. Major engineering accomplishment, and a complete game changer for streaming digital audio!

 

[Ackcheng]

Just a question to the alpha/beta tester. When you access your huge library via TAS. Do you have problems with the album arts, song name display or even different Parts of a CD album mixed together (many classical CD albums box set have a few CDs, can easily have missing parts after conversions

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Just a question to the alpha/beta tester. When you access your huge library via TAS. Do you have problems with the album arts, song name display or even different Parts of a CD album mixed together (many classical CD albums box set have a few CDs, can easily have missing parts after conversions

all of the above. it's a bit of a TAS cobble right now. but most of that for me is that i have lots of non commercial tracks and albums that show inconsistently. my guess is that someone who has primarily commercial releases would see things more straight forward. and with Roon i had some of those same problems. OTOH i see albums now that seemed to be hidden with Roon, as maybe their interface was too restrictive to show them.

once i figured out the interface i did see the tracks in the right order. i had not understood the various tabs correctly and i had it on 'random' order and could not get tracks to play in order. user error!

i would like to see the bit depth and resolution added to the album heading so i can tell one file from another (made worse by my non commercial albums), or even better if i could sort by bit depth and resolution like Roon. that alone would be maybe the biggest interface step up for me.

another big issue is in cases where i have duplicates of the same file at the same resolution, the two duplicates are combined. so i have 2 track one's, 2 track two's, and so on. but mostly it's classical high resolution where honestly i actually don't mind it. i know i can clean it up (or get someone who knows what they are doing to clean it up).

i could try and set up a play list to fix it if i wanted to.

right now i'm listening to a 24/352 of Beethoven's 7th and 8th Symphony's; with double tracks. lovely to get my Sunday morning started right. once through is not quite enough of Ludwig at the highest rez.

 

[matthias]

.......but also to be rid of MQA

VERY likeable

Matt

 

[steve williams]

i know we are only at the Alpha stage of TAS. but i am reflecting on what has changed in my listening over the last week.

big music and TAS/Extreme.

i love large scale music, particularly large scale classical. my system is built with not limiting big music as a main focus. my listening has always included a significant amount of large scale classical digital recordings. so i have been very aware of what large scale vinyl does that digital did not seem to be able to quite pull off.

TAS seems to have altered that equation. large scale digital is still short of the complete package of vinyl in this way. there is more action and nuance in the best large scale vinyl recordings. but a threshold has been crossed by TAS with digital into a humanity, flow, liquidity, and ease with large scale digital (another level of grain-less continuousness) i had not previously experienced. the consequences have to do with the emotional pull of the large scale listening experience. we are in a different place now. it's small......but BIG.

another specific thing i have heard with TAS is bass performance (across all recordings) not previously experienced. it's gone to another level. deeper, more textures, more dimensional, which changes the ambient clues and the realism. it does not take much objective improvement in bass performance to sense a performance gain. it might only be a slight change. i'm guessing that this area has much to do with the large scale music change.

For my ears and my system , EVERYTHING sounds better from top to bottom. Nothing stands out as the upswing is equal from top to bottom. No coloration. I remain gobsmacked listening to DSD256 with buffer 8182. To me it’s as real as it gets. I agree how close it is to vinyl. On some tracks it becomes difficult for me to discern the difference

 

[steve williams]

right now i'm listening to a 24/352 of Beethoven's 7th and 8th Symphony's; with double tracks

I have the same files and they are some of my favorites. I love the sound I hear from them

 

[oldmustang]

i would like to see the bit depth and resolution added to the album heading so i can tell one file from another (made worse by my non commercial albums), or even better if i could sort by bit depth and resolution like Roon. that alone would be maybe the biggest interface step up for me.

I second that request, Mike. Display of bit depth and resolution would be very nice. Like you, I have a bunch of stuff that is either non-commercial (rips from R2R master tapes, live performances privately taped or recorded to digital, CD rips and high-res downloads of the same title, etc).

Initially, I was tagging the titles with bit-depth/resolution in parenthesis after the album title, using YATE -- until I found that doing so often caused searches in Roon to miss some of the versions. Though a fair number of these problems would be alleviated by more consistent tagging across my entire library, at this point in time with 60K+ tracks that's a task that probably isn't going to get done any time soon.

It is possible to use the Advanced tab in My Library > Search to specify bit depth and resolution, but that is much less convenient than being able to view the albums directly with that information displayed already.

Steve Z

 

[alwayslearning]

i love large scale music, particularly large scale classical. my system is built with not limiting big music as a main focus. my listening has always included a significant amount of large scale classical digital recordings. so i have been very aware of what large scale vinyl does that digital did not seem to be able to quite pull off.

Your post on how the Extreme helps bridge the digital/analog gap with large scale classical got me to thinking. I also love large scale classical and play it a fair amount. I guess you could say that, as a former French horn player, it's in my DNA.

I've always thought that the high end, whether digital or analog, struggles with really large scale orchestral music. I regularly attend live classical performances (Seattle Symphony subscriber) and have heard great orchestras in great halls (e.g., RCO in the Concertgebouw, LA in Disney, Cleveland in Severance, Chicago in Orchestra Hall, etc.). I don't for a minute believe that high end stereo will ever re-create, in true fidelity, the ambience and sound of a big orchestra in a great hall. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy listening to it on a high end system.

Mike, I have heard your system a couple times at Pacific NW Audio Society get-togethers (thank you for hosting these!) and, while it's been a few years now, your system is the best I've heard and does large scale music exceptionally well. So I trust you when you say that the Extreme has made real strides towards making this experience even better.

For me, I still get the greatest fidelity with large scale music when I listen with headphones. If if really want to hear all the inner voices and all the nuance, that is the way to go for me. Speakers will give you more of the macro dynamics and that whole body feeling when a room is energized, but I always lose some of the subtlety and don't get as complete an understanding of the composer's intention or the performer's interpretation. That remains true with the Extreme.

A few nights ago I listened to Mahler 1 (Christoph von Dohnanyi, Cleveland, Decca 1990) and switched back and forth a few times with headphones and speakers. I am a Chord DAVE user so this was using DAVE's headphone out and playing this local file exclusively through HQP in the upscaling mode tailored to the DAVE. In other words, this is the best sonic quality I can get at the moment. It was easily the best I've heard this particular recording, whether through speakers or headphones. But the differences I've noted above were consistent. Of course, neither headphones nor speakers could come close to re-creating the experience of hearing Mahler 1 live in September 2019 with Thomas Dausgaard conducting the Seattle Symphony in Benaroya Hall.

​

 

[oldmustang]

Just a question to the alpha/beta tester. When you access your huge library via TAS. Do you have problems with the album arts, song name display or even different Parts of a CD album mixed together (many classical CD albums box set have a few CDs, can easily have missing parts after conversions

I have some problems like you mention. Not so much missing parts of box sets, though in my case I can't yet seem to find two very large box sets of Messiaen works that I know I ripped and loaded into my library. Even searching using common misspellings of "Messiaen" haven't turned them up yet.

One thing that has kept most problems to a minimum for me is that some time ago I made it a practice before adding any music to my library to check all the metadata tags in YATE, filling in blank fields and correcting tags for ARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST (or anything else) that were not consistent or didn't contain information the way I want it displayed, and adding ALBUM ARTWORK where none was found. I'm no longer surprised at the lack of information, or lack of consistent information that commercial releases come tagged with during their mastering process at the label. And of course, private recordings, or rips from R2R don't have any information and so all that must be supplied by the user.

However, I have missed some and many of the earliest albums and tracks were added before I started this editing. So I still see inconsistencies in display and sorting and searches.

All of this is to say that all any program can do is read the metadata tags and if the meta information is missing, wrong, or not what we would wish, there is little the program can do with it.

However, I've discovered other things that can interfere with album display, sometimes to the extent of making it invisible even though it definitely exists in the library. One such is hidden characters in the album name, another is characters that aren't recognized by the program. These can throw a monkey wrench into the works when it comes to consistently and accurately displaying what is in our music libraries.

Steve Z

 

[wil]

Is anyone using a Balanced Iso Transformer before the Extreme? I was thinking of trying a set up of: PS Audio Power Regen > Plixir BAC feeding my sources (Extreme and Aqua DAC). Both the Extreme and Aqua use about 60 watts continuous.

I idea would be that the BAC would filter some of the RFI/EMI noise generated by the Power Regen amp.