Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Kris]

I don’t know. It is possible the Intona ultimate tight impedance control is what allows these to improve upon the Extreme in the first place.

Thank you.
I tested the Uptone USPCB A>B Adapter
I was actually shocked that this 35 usd adapter performs better than many hiend cables.

Did you try to connect extreme with totaldac usung soch a short adaper ?
I know it will be very very difficult to put both boxes so close to eachother and back to back.
But I think it is worth to try .

 

[Kris]

Glad you got a boost there Mike and fwiw I have subsequently introduced a decent upgrade on this model should you wish to get in touch for yours to be updated.

I love sablon power cables.
I got one Corona few years ago and moved to top Corona Reserva.
Than I liked it so much I exchanged all my power cables with Sablon.
I keep them all few years now.

 

[Kris]

That is a good question, it is in theory, I have a ran a few tests and it’s promising but I’m not satisfied with it yet. It will take time to get a bulletproof operational and good sounding configuration.

10Gb fiber cards do typically not scale down to 1Gb. You’d need a dedicated 10Gb card.

What to watch out for with big brands like HP and Cisco is they sometimes vendorlock SFP modules. So verify before you buy.

Thank you .In theory 10 gb should be much better .
The question is that you need 10gb card in extreme and best FO cable.
I tested some FO cables and they are all giving little different Effects.
Not sure why is that but even the size of the FO cable metters.
I hope you will be able to run few more tests to see if you can improve the performance of extreme.

Please let us know what are your conclusions

 

[Taiko Audio]

Thank you .In theory 10 gb should be much better .
The question is that you need 10gb card in extreme and best FO cable.
I tested some FO cables and they are all giving little different Effects.
Not sure why is that but even the size of the FO cable metters.
I hope you will be able to run few more tests to see if you can improve the performance of extreme.

Please let us know what are your conclusions

The interesting 10G sfp cards dont support 1G operation. I have 10G to 1G converters, interestingly still seems to come with some benefits, though obviously bottlenecked. The thing with SFP is some solutions suffer from obviously reduced dynamics. Please don’t ask me why.

There are plenty switches with 10G SFP+ ports and 1G rj45 uplinks. So that is useable. Higher quality 10G SFP+ modules are expensive

FO cables do come with loss specs, for Single Mode Fiber OS2 quality is lower loss then OS1. But then again SFP modules have a range in which they operate best and the cable has an effect there.

You can easily spend the equivalent of the Extreme’s retail on a 10G fiber setup if you wanted to.

Anyway I will share my conclusions when ready.

 

[WilsonDaDa]

Thank you.
I tested the Uptone USPCB A>B Adapter
I was actually shocked that this 35 usd adapter performs better than many hiend cables.

Did you try to connect extreme with totaldac usung soch a short adaper ?
I know it will be very very difficult to put both boxes so close to eachother and back to back.
But I think it is worth to try .

Hello Kris,
Share the experience about using the Uptone A to B Adapter. In fact i am the user of Intona Combo (both USB cables and Isolator USB 3.0) with LPS.
My friend also use Intona Isolator USB 3.0. For the source, a flash drive was used and Uptone is used to connect the Isolator to the dac. Without comparison, the sonic performance is acceptable. But when the Isolator is connected by Intona Reference USB, the performance seems to go to another level. We all agreed that Intona USB (in fact we tried both Reference and Ultimate) at least more balanced.
But of course the price of the Adapter and the USB cable also has a large gap in-between them.

Wilson

 

[Kris]

Hello Kris,
Share the experience about using the Uptone A to B Adapter. In fact i am the user of Intona Combo (both USB cables and Isolator USB 3.0) with LPS.
My friend also use Intona Isolator USB 3.0. For the source, a flash drive was used and Uptone is used to connect the Isolator to the dac. Without comparison, the sonic performance is acceptable. But when the Isolator is connected by Intona Reference USB, the performance seems to go to another level. We all agreed that Intona USB (in fact we tried both Reference and Ultimate) at least more balanced.
But of course the price of the Adapter and the USB cable also has a large gap in-between them.

Wilson

Best cable is no cable......
It is always some kind of frequency equalizer.
Please be so kind to explain the „ performance seems to go to another level”
So it looks like you need 2 intona cables Ref or better Ultimate and the intona 3.0 to get a better SQ.
Sounds expensive, but is it worth ? What (how much ) you gain in comparison to uptone ?

 

[Kris]

The interesting 10G sfp cards dont support 1G operation. I have 10G to 1G converters, interestingly still seems to come with some benefits, though obviously bottlenecked. The thing with SFP is some solutions suffer from obviously reduced dynamics. Please don’t ask me why.

There are plenty switches with 10G SFP+ ports and 1G rj45 uplinks. So that is useable. Higher quality 10G SFP+ modules are expensive

FO cables do come with loss specs, for Single Mode Fiber OS2 quality is lower loss then OS1. But then again SFP modules have a range in which they operate best and the cable has an effect there.

You can easily spend the equivalent of the Extreme’s retail on a 10G fiber setup if you wanted to.

Anyway I will share my conclusions when ready.

Thank you. This is very valuable information.
If you need 10g on both ends you need to exchange the pciexpress card in extreme to 10 g to avoid the 1/10 G adapter .
Yes you are right , this could be expensive, sometimes very expensive.
I am looking for around 1000 - 1500 usd Cisco with 2 or 4 Sfp+ ports to support everything.
It would be great to get in contact with smaller network or IT company or store that carries that kind of stuff and keep borrowing the different swiches from them .
Or just keep buying the swiches via internet stores and returning them after a week or two.
I dont know what is better.

 

[Taiko Audio]

It would be great to get in contact with smaller network or IT company or store that carries that kind of stuff and keep borrowing the different swiches from them .
Or just keep buying the swiches via internet stores and returning them after a week or two.
I dont know what is better.

The more interesting gear is used in the financial trading world, where every nanosecond counts. Not easy to "borrow".

 

[Kris]

Latency is our key word.
We got it in latest RAM chips
We got it in optane
We have it in newest multicore processors
We got it better with 1G versus slower network swiches
Now is time to get it 10g and see if would pay back the effort in better SQ

 

[WilsonDaDa]

Best cable is no cable......
It is always some kind of frequency equalizer.
Please be so kind to explain the „ performance seems to go to another level”
So it looks like you need 2 intona cables Ref or better Ultimate and the intona 3.0 to get a better SQ.
Sounds expensive, but is it worth ? What (how much ) you gain in comparison to uptone ?

1.There is a thread for discussion of Intona Isolator:
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/intona-usb-2-0-3-0-isolators-2019versions.28439/

2. At first, already used one Ultimate to connect Transport and Dac in order to understand the character of Intona. In fact, this Intona combo and the LPS really sounds not cheap. So before going into the combo, it is better to get an initial understanding of the product.

3. about the performance of Intona USB, pls refer to the following thread. There is a good description of Intona USB:
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/thre...-intona-ultimate-usb-cable.26248/#post-566335

4. Using the A to B adapter is also a good alternative to connect the Isolator. The difference between Intona USB and Adapter is that Intona can give a more balanced sonic performance, more quite and dense and clear on the image.

 

[microstrip]

(...) the thing with SFP is some solutions suffer from obviously reduced dynamics. Please don’t ask me why. (...)

Because you do not know why or do not want to tell?

It is one the key points of digital performance - why secondary aspects that do not affect minimally audio band measurements affect so much dynamics. Most tweaks on digital center their action on perceived dynamics.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Because you do not know why or do not want to tell?

I don’t know.

 

[Kris]

I know few had a great experience with gaming routers with swich build in.
Netgear XR700 NightHawk
This is the best model that offers shortest possible latency .
It has 4 core 1,7 mhz processor and very good Ram chips.
Also it has 10G SFP + port that could be used for direct Extreme feed .
Not sure what is your opinion about it ?

Is there anything else ?

 

[Taiko Audio]

Not sure what is your opinion about it ?

It looks interesting. I’ll order one to try.

 

[Kris]

It looks interesting. I’ll order one to try.

Please make sure to check the port latency.
You can give each port different levels of priority and latency.
I think by defult port with SFP+ has highest priority but you can check that in the DumaOS
QoS function gives you flexibility of addressing latency and priority to each port.
Please let us know how this works ?

If we need so much cores and memory chips to get most of the SQ from the server
Than we might need the same from the swich / router.
It should be critical especially for the streeming servieces or when using NAS via swich.

I cant wait to see your report of how the extreme works with this......

 

[Kris]

It looks interesting. I’ll order one to try.

Also please be so kind to check how the swich part of that super router compares to cisco 2960 that many of us use ?

It is fascinating that professional Gaming might have simmilar needs to audiophiles in computer hardwere.

 

[Kris]

For the Extreme side of the connection there is nice 10 gbps double spf+ With Intel chip
You can consider
It uses pci express x8

PEX20000SFPI Startech
2-Port 10G Fiber Network Card
with Open SFP+
- PCIe, Intel Chip.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Hi Kris,

Thanks, I have that one.

 

[Kris]

Hi Kris,

Thanks, I have that one.

Great. Half way there !
I hope you will report the experience with Nighthawk XR700 once you try it.
Thanks

 

[Esotar]

SGM Extreme users~!

Which fuse do you use with Extreme???

I tested HI FI Tuning [Supreme], SR [Black] & [Blue], Audio Magic [Beeswax Super] & [Beeswax Ultimate]

My result is [Beeswax Ultimate] is the best fuse with Extreme.

But I think there is better fuse than [Beeswax Ultimate].

If you know better fuse than [Beeswax Ultimate], please introduce it~!