Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Taiko Audio]

For a visual presentation of the difference between current and upcoming:

Current BETA:






Nextgen:

 

[marty]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Roon Sound Quality, the vast majority of our customers are running Roon and are completely satisfied with its performance, especially after our software updates, the new driver and the new USB card. Of our BETA Testers, I estimate around 50% are running Roon most of the time. Yes TAS is unanimously considered to sound better.

A catch-22 for us audiophiles is once you hear something which sounds better, it's hard to go back. I have run 2 experiments to put things in perspective, and I'm pretty sure most would agree:

1) Roon with the new USB card sounds better then TAS without the new USB card.
2) Roon with an Audioquest Wel Signature Interconnect (EURO 8200) from DAC to PREAMP sounds better then TAS with an Audioquest Wind (EURO 2200) Interconnect.

Thanks Emile. 2 comments:

1) "once you hear something which sounds better, it's hard to go back". Unfortunately, the logistics of using TAS vs Roon make it quite easy to go back to Roon, at least for me (with the caveat that I do use the new USB card.) Would I like to enjoy the SQ benefits of TAS all the time? You bet. I'll look forward to that day, which I'm sure will come eventually.

2) There have been several reports that disconnecting the 72V DBS system actually improved the sound for some users of Audioquest "powered" interconnects. I'm curious if you have tired this. (In the "it's all personal" category, I've found that Masterbuilt Ultra RCA's with NextGen WBT terminations, are my ICs of choice for connecting the Extreme to my Lampi GG2. It took me a few months to realize that my MB Ultra/Bocchino silver RCAs were not a good fit in this specific application )

 

[Taiko Audio]

Hi Marty,

Yes I did have that with Audioquest cabling in my solid state system which I left powered on all the time. It started to be really noticable after a few days. I’m using them with a fully tubed system now which I power off every day. No issues then.

 

[dminches]

Hi Marty,

Yes I did have that with Audioquest cabling in my solid state system which I left powered on all the time. It started to be really noticable after a few days. I’m using them with a fully tubed system now which I power off every day. No issues then.

How do you power them off and on?

 

[Taiko Audio]

How do you power them off and on?

With their powerswitches

I don’t power off / disconnect the dbs, I only power off the equipment.

 

[dminches]

With their powerswitches

I don’t power off / disconnect the dbs, I only power off the equipment.

Ahh! I misread the comments. I thought you were talking about the dbs.

 

[alwayslearning]

I forgot to add we are also discussing adding PGGB based real-time and/or offline up/down/resampling/noise shaping and volume control in TAS with the PGGB author. This can have some pretty distinct advantages with various DACs for various reasons,

As a huge fan of PGGB, I applaud these efforts and would be grateful for both real-time and offline PGGB integration with TAS and XDMS.

 

[oldmustang]

As a huge fan of PGGB, I applaud these efforts and would be grateful for both real-time and offline PGGB integration with TAS and XDMS.

Myself as well.

Steve Z

 

[Taiko Audio]

Myself as well.

Steve Z

It can have a myriad of benefits for many DACs. In case of your Vivaldi for example I would most definitely resample DSD to PCM384 to get past the DoP overhead. I have been particularly impressed by some resamples of DSD256 to PCM 705, it is absolutely transparant to the original, zero detectable negatives. For Chord Dave owners, and I guess any internally upsampling DAC there’s no question about its benefits. There is no way DAC internal upsampling can reach PGGB performance levels. There is no FPGA in existence able to even come close to the computational accuracy PGGB can reach.

 

[oldmustang]

It can have a myriad of benefits for many DACs. In case of your Vivaldi for example I would most definitely resample DSD to PCM384 to get past the DoP overhead. I have been particularly impressed by some resamples of DSD256 to PCM 705, it is absolutely transparant to the original, zero detectable negatives. For Chord Dave owners, and I guess any internally upsampling DAC there’s no question about its benefits. There is no way DAC internal upsampling can reach PGGB performance levels. There is no FPGA in existence able to even come close to the computational accuracy PGGB can reach.

Thanks, Emile. I've slowly been resampling my DSD titles to the max bitrate and sample rate the Vivaldi will handle and I've been very impressed. Having PGGB available for either on- or off-line resampling would be a real positive.

Steve Z

 

[2ndLiner]

I agree. I suggested we have an online user group to help each other so the Taiko team can build new stuff.

Great idea, Dave! Though Emile stated that they are still learning from assisting users it would seem to be time better spent elsewhere for the Taiko Team to continue working on the perfection of TAS…

 

[cat6man]

Neither Roon nor TAS supports .w64 files. We could add support in TAS but there will need to be a SQ advantage and I suspect there isn't. It's on our "to test" list though!

I agree. I had just run across a thread discussing SQ being superior for .w64, but it wasn't clear if the advantage was partly (?) due to eliminating embedded metadata.

The only interest here is if SQ improves.

 

[oldmustang]

If .w64 eliminates metadata then it is a total non-starter as far as I'm concerned.

Steve Z

 

[cat6man]

Dear TAS BETA user group. A lot of time has passed since we launched the TAS BETA program and it appears a refresher of its objectives is in order. The current BETA version of TAS only exists for Sound Quality evaluation purposes. The frontend which you are using right now navigate and select your music is called Logitech Media Server, Logitech Media Server - Wikipedia. Logitech Media Server has web browser based remote control functionality which we have wrapped into an app framework which allows you to switch between Roon and Logitech Media Server. Logitech Media Server normally plays files to a player called Squeezelite. Although this is a lightweight solution, on the Extreme, it currently sounds inferior to Roon. We have developed bridges which act like sqeeuzelite on the input side, and stream to our own developed player, named "Extreme Direct Player", or HQPlayer. Logitech Media Server is open source, you are allowed to use it as long as you give something back to the community. Which is why we will share our bridge code with the world when we are finished with it so Logitech Media Server can be used as a frontend to HQPlayer or other 3rd party players.

I will repost the diagram we published a while ago for those who missed it in this by now humongous thread:

View attachment 81054



All the green pieces are our own code, the red, although it looks more like orange pieces are 3rd party code.

Now, and this is important, we are not going to spend time rewriting parts of Logitech Media Server. The interface you are using right now (Logitech Media Server) is not going to be part of TAS when it comes out of BETA. You are only using Logitech Media Server right now to have a means to route downloaded files, Tidal and Qobuz streams to our Extreme Direct Player and subsequently to our USB driver and firmware for Sound Quality evaluation purposes.

The current progress is slower then we would have liked, the virus has had and is still impacting progress, we have perhaps accepted too many participants in the BETA program (around 200 now), which results in quite excessive support demands, me and Edward spend at least 75% of our time on TAS support (mainly the Logitech part), some participants require no help at all, others need almost daily support, although this significantly slows down development we do not consider it as time wasted as it has given us a very clear view of what the future interface should look and feel like.

On to where we are now:

-We have the Extreme Direct player which has several unique features of which we are pretty sure do not exist in other players, this mainly determines the Sound Quality bit, all ~200 beta testers are unanimous in that it sounds better then Roon.
-We have the Taiko ASIO/USB driver with some other unique features to which we have added support for around 50 different DACs now, with more being added on an almost weekly basis. This is not only benefits the Extreme Direct Player, it also enhances Roon's Sound Quality.
-We have the bridges but as their only purpose is to interface Logitech Media Server to our player, those will be discarded and "given" to the Logitech community as a thank you for all the hard work put in by all the volunteers maintaining the platform, these also "break" server-player communication, which is why you can't currently pause tracks, nor manipulate the track progress bar.
-We have a new server to replace Logitech Media Server, it's called "XDMS" for Extreme Direct Media Server. This includes a filesystem scanner and metadata builder, and yes it supports foreign character sets. We are currently working on the signalling/bidirectional communication between server and player to not affect Sound Quality. This new server can be fully controlled from a web browser or from an app.
-We are working on integrating the following streaming services: Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music, Deezer, Highresaudio, Napster, Soundmachine and a whole range of internet radio stations/services. We are basically looking to integrate any streaming service allowing 3rd party application integration. There are 2 services which don't allow this by policy, being Apple Music and Spotify, those 2 only allow access to their content through their own apps.

As for your complaints about the Logitech interface look and feel, we do not forward those to the Logitech development community as virtually all of them are being posted on the Logitech forums, we solve most support issues/questions by searching those forums ourselves. Although we had Wilson fixing several Logitech related bugs in the first few months of the BETA, we have now pulled him from those duties so he can spend his time on further developing TAS.

Against better judgment I'll share a few screenshots of a functional server / player we're working on now which does not use and 3rd party code. Most time is spend on functionality so the interface is now "simple" but functional:


Album list view:

View attachment 81057

Album view:

View attachment 81058

Queue view, and yes this plays gapless:

View attachment 81059

Browse selection menu:

View attachment 81055

Single page for settings, in debug mode for our purposes, this will also allow starting Roon etc:

View attachment 81056

Playing from the queue, gapless and you have pause / track control:

View attachment 81060

Gapless has been sighted!
This should have been in bolded large font.

That's all I needed to hear (though you tortured me by making me read through a lot of much less important - to me - other update data).

You buried the lede!!!

 

[cat6man]

Dear TAS BETA user group. A lot of time has passed since we launched the TAS BETA program and it appears a refresher of its objectives is in order. The current BETA version of TAS only exists for Sound Quality evaluation purposes. The frontend which you are using right now navigate and select your music is called Logitech Media Server, Logitech Media Server - Wikipedia. Logitech Media Server has web browser based remote control functionality which we have wrapped into an app framework which allows you to switch between Roon and Logitech Media Server. Logitech Media Server normally plays files to a player called Squeezelite. Although this is a lightweight solution, on the Extreme, it currently sounds inferior to Roon. We have developed bridges which act like sqeeuzelite on the input side, and stream to our own developed player, named "Extreme Direct Player", or HQPlayer. Logitech Media Server is open source, you are allowed to use it as long as you give something back to the community. Which is why we will share our bridge code with the world when we are finished with it so Logitech Media Server can be used as a frontend to HQPlayer or other 3rd party players.

I will repost the diagram we published a while ago for those who missed it in this by now humongous thread:

View attachment 81054



All the green pieces are our own code, the red, although it looks more like orange pieces are 3rd party code.

Now, and this is important, we are not going to spend time rewriting parts of Logitech Media Server. The interface you are using right now (Logitech Media Server) is not going to be part of TAS when it comes out of BETA. You are only using Logitech Media Server right now to have a means to route downloaded files, Tidal and Qobuz streams to our Extreme Direct Player and subsequently to our USB driver and firmware for Sound Quality evaluation purposes.

The current progress is slower then we would have liked, the virus has had and is still impacting progress, we have perhaps accepted too many participants in the BETA program (around 200 now), which results in quite excessive support demands, me and Edward spend at least 75% of our time on TAS support (mainly the Logitech part), some participants require no help at all, others need almost daily support, although this significantly slows down development we do not consider it as time wasted as it has given us a very clear view of what the future interface should look and feel like.

On to where we are now:

-We have the Extreme Direct player which has several unique features of which we are pretty sure do not exist in other players, this mainly determines the Sound Quality bit, all ~200 beta testers are unanimous in that it sounds better then Roon.
-We have the Taiko ASIO/USB driver with some other unique features to which we have added support for around 50 different DACs now, with more being added on an almost weekly basis. This is not only benefits the Extreme Direct Player, it also enhances Roon's Sound Quality.
-We have the bridges but as their only purpose is to interface Logitech Media Server to our player, those will be discarded and "given" to the Logitech community as a thank you for all the hard work put in by all the volunteers maintaining the platform, these also "break" server-player communication, which is why you can't currently pause tracks, nor manipulate the track progress bar.
-We have a new server to replace Logitech Media Server, it's called "XDMS" for Extreme Direct Media Server. This includes a filesystem scanner and metadata builder, and yes it supports foreign character sets. We are currently working on the signalling/bidirectional communication between server and player to not affect Sound Quality. This new server can be fully controlled from a web browser or from an app.
-We are working on integrating the following streaming services: Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music, Deezer, Highresaudio, Napster, Soundmachine and a whole range of internet radio stations/services. We are basically looking to integrate any streaming service allowing 3rd party application integration. There are 2 services which don't allow this by policy, being Apple Music and Spotify, those 2 only allow access to their content through their own apps.

As for your complaints about the Logitech interface look and feel, we do not forward those to the Logitech development community as virtually all of them are being posted on the Logitech forums, we solve most support issues/questions by searching those forums ourselves. Although we had Wilson fixing several Logitech related bugs in the first few months of the BETA, we have now pulled him from those duties so he can spend his time on further developing TAS.

Against better judgment I'll share a few screenshots of a functional server / player we're working on now which does not use and 3rd party code. Most time is spend on functionality so the interface is now "simple" but functional:


Album list view:

View attachment 81057

Album view:

View attachment 81058

Queue view, and yes this plays gapless:

View attachment 81059

Browse selection menu:

View attachment 81055

Single page for settings, in debug mode for our purposes, this will also allow starting Roon etc:

View attachment 81056

Playing from the queue, gapless and you have pause / track control:

View attachment 81060

I hope you'll consider releasing the "simple but functional" version as a beta1, perhaps to a smaller group of testers initially (perhaps a group that minimizes the short term support demands on the developers) while you work on prettier graphics, more streaming interfaces, search, etc.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Gapless has been sighted!
This should have been in bolded large font.

That's all I needed to hear (though you tortured me by making me read through a lot of much less important - to me - other update data).

You buried the lede!!!

Gapless is only an issue now because we need to grab files from LMS, feed them to a bridge, then to a player. Establishing a direct server to player feed with build in file treatment eliminates that issue.

I hope you'll consider releasing the "simple but functional" version as a beta1, perhaps to a smaller group of testers initially (perhaps a group that minimizes the short term support demands on the developers) while you work on prettier graphics, more streaming interfaces, search, etc.

Our aim is to make it so intuitive / easy to use that it requires little to no support to operate. A single options page, a single music browse menu, a single queue / playing now screen.

 

[kswanson27]

Gapless is only an issue now because we need to grab files from LMS, feed them to a bridge, then to a player. Establishing a direct server to player feed with build in file treatment eliminates that issue.



Our aim is to make it so intuitive / easy to use that it requires little to no support to operate. A single options page, a single music browse menu, a single queue / playing now screen.

Does TAS not allow downloading duplicate albums with different resolution? Yesterday I downloaded two albums from HDTT in DSD that I had in TAS and Roon in FLAC to compare the two resolutions. They both immediately showed up in Roon but neither have made it to TAS despite several rescans.

 

[dminches]

Does TAS not allow downloading duplicate albums with different resolution? Yesterday I downloaded two albums from HDTT in DSD that I had in TAS and Roon in FLAC to compare the two resolutions. They both immediately showed up in Roon but neither have made it to TAS despite several rescans.

Did you check the contents of the original version of the album that you had? Maybe the new files ended up being organized with the old one.

 

[kswanson27]

Did you check the contents of the original version of the album that you had? Maybe the new files ended up being organized with the old one.

Good thought. I just did but no, nothing additional in the originals.

 

[dminches]

Good thought. I just did but no, nothing additional in the originals.

I definitely have multiple versions of the same album.

You could try changing the album title name to XXX - DSD and rescan to see if it shows up.