Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[DasguteOhr]

that was a bad example with the Bugatti, they take excellent care of customers. you will only get the 400km / h key if you have had driver training and have been declared fit.
I would never buy a device for my hifi system without trying it out in my system. maybe i don't like it or it doesn't match the other devices

 

[oldmustang]

that was a bad example with the Bugatti, they take excellent care of customers. you will only get the 400km / h key if you have had driver training and have been declared fit.
I would never buy a device for my hifi system without trying it out in my system. maybe i don't like it or it doesn't match the other devices

Actually, it was a great example -- I'd hazard a guess that Emile and company customer service is on par with Bugatti's. It is certainly the class of the audio industry.

I understand not buying before trying when it is possible, but I'm one of the guys who bought my Extreme unheard in my system or any other system. Not disappointed in the least. In fact, ecstatic would be the word.

Steve Z

 

[bryans]

Nothing can touch it if you trust the reviews and look at the components and philosophy that have been employed.

There lines my problem. Trusting someone I don't know isn't something I do. I have heard plenty of people rave about things over the years just to listen to it myself and find it sounds like crap (to me).

Thanks for your input.

 

[bryans]

I understand not buying before trying when it is possible, but I'm one of the guys who bought my Extreme unheard in my system or any other system. Not disappointed in the least. In fact, ecstatic would be the word.

I commend you for making the leap and also glad that you are completely satisfied.

 

[oldmustang]

There lines my problem. Trusting someone I don't know isn't something I do. I have heard plenty of people rave about things over the years just to listen to it myself and find it sounds like crap (to me).

Thanks for your input.

Well, I'm not one of the guru owners, just a regular owner. And I would never try to change your mind, particularly given your experiences.

Besides, who would want to own a guru anyway? Some of them are barely house broken!

Steve Z

 

[bryans]

Do you test drive a Bugatti Chiron?

If I was laying 3 Million on a car I better test drive something! Or they better get me extremely drunk (and I don't drink). LOL

 

[jaxho]

Any of you guru Taiko owners do a home demo of your unit prior to purchase? I'm hearing people are ordering the server without listening to it in their system.

I an certanly not a guru but i did buy the E unheard. i am not sure it even was one in Sweden at that time. A lot of reading and not one negative comment did it for me. Very happy with it!

Greetinga Jaxho

 

[simorag]

I was lucky enough to manage trying the Extreme on my system before buying.

That said, home demos are way overrated

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...I followed the progress of the Taiko Extreme on WBF for several months, and had determined it would work for me. My decision was technical *and* service based.

Quite by luck, I learned from a friend in Chicago that someone in my NY hometown had an Extreme. He connected us and I heard the Extreme at my new friend's place.

I was planning to do it anyway, but hearing is truly believing! I mention this because, perhaps there are other ways to hear and see an Extreme. I recognize it wouldn't be in your room, but I can't solve all the audio problems in the world! Good luck...

 

[K3RMIT]

I was lucky enough to manage trying the Extreme on my system before buying.

That said, home demos are way overrated

How do please explain ?

 

[steve williams]

Yup - I ordered without listening to it anywhere.
Nothing can touch it if you trust the reviews and look at the components and philosophy that have been employed. So there was no need to demo.
Do you test drive a Bugatti Chiron?
(Kidding aside, I can understand why you would want to demo it - it is expensive... but I "get it" and didn't feel the need.) I bought most of my gear this way: tons of research - both in the science and reviews from trusted sources - and then buy and hold for the long term.

Beware of the demo as you cannot unhear the sound of the Extreme it’s truly that good and promises to be better sound wise with the pending release of XDMS

 

[romaz]

Any of you guru Taiko owners do a home demo of your unit prior to purchase? I'm hearing people are ordering the server without listening to it in their system.

I think we would all choose to demo at home, if possible. But not so easy to do with the Extreme and so I did the next best thing I could think of. I flew to Amsterdam and then took a 2 hour train to Hengelo and listened to the Extreme at Emile's place. It wasn't the same environment as my home but I told myself Emile's demo had to at least blow me away for there to be a way forward.

Coming from DIY, I felt I had a good sense of what certain components would bring, especially a high power CPU, an Optane OS drive, carefully curated memory, a finely tuned OS, a no compromise power supply, etc. I brought in many commercial servers/streamers into my home from various manufacturers over the years from the likes of TotalDAC, dCS, SOtM, Sonore, Baetis, Antipodes, InnuOS, Aurender, and others and I found in each instance that I could build a server that I preferred more and my last DIY effort especially had set a very high bar. And so I arrived to Emile's place with unbelievably lofty expectations. To add to the drama, Emile was using Focal speakers with beryllium tweeters which can sound fatiguingly bright in some setups. He was also using Audionet electronics which I demo'd in my home and I found sounded a touch dry for my tastes. I was prepared for an analytical presentation and yes, what I heard was extremely resolving and transparent but was surprised by how balanced and musical it all sounded. It was wickedly fast and explosive with blistering transients but it also had the ability to sound very delicate, fragile, and nuanced. It did not sound bright or analytical at all. While I heard more than just the Extreme that day, perhaps more impressive was how Emile made all of these pieces sound good together and it gave me a solid sense of the sound signature that he is after with the Extreme, probably better than if I had heard the Extreme in my own home. It became an easy decision at that point, I placed an order for my own Extreme.

Ultimately, no one really knows how a component will sound in their room until that component arrives but I'm sure you're aware that the Extreme comes with a satisfaction guarantee. If there is a takeaway from reading the hundreds of pages on this thread, it is the fact that Extreme owners come from all over the globe, some are technophobes while others are computer IT experts, some listen to headphones and others listen to speakers, some are heavily entrenched in tubes while others are more enamored by transistors, many are deeply rooted in analog, and we vary in our belief of what DAC is best but we have all decided that there is nothing else quite like an Extreme.

 

[bryans]

Ultimately, no one really knows how a component will sound in their room until that component arrives but I'm sure you're aware that the Extreme comes with a satisfaction guarantee.

No I didn't know there was/is a satisfaction guarantee. Didn't see that anywhere on their site. I'm sure I just missed it.

If there is a takeaway from reading the hundreds of pages

I must admit a part of my hesitation has been reading some of the posts here. It seems a lot of people are more into changing things to make their Taiko sound "better" than just listening to it. I know that is just some of the things crazy audio people like to do. Please not trying to start a flame war. If you like changing things in your system frequently great. At these prices I'm not looking to do a bunch of "tweaking".

Honestly I feel a Taiko or other high-end servers will sound awesome. But without listening to them I have no way of knowing which one suits my taste better. I went through this when I was looking for a DAC. If I would have listened to others I would have purchased something else.

Thanks for your input. I'm sure the visit to Emile's place was awesome. Heck I was in Amsterdam a few times pre-covid with work.

 

[Steve Vu]

Roon 884 is better than 882 now. Let's try it, guys

 

[oldmustang]

Roon 884 is better than 882 now. Let's try it, guys

Too many bug reports at the Roon Labs forum for my peace of mind. I'll let someone else be Roon's beta tester for a couple more weeks.

I used to jump to be on the leading edge of technology -- until I ended up straddling the bleeding edge one time too many!

Steve Z

 

[romaz]

I must admit a part of my hesitation has been reading some of the posts here. It seems a lot of people are more into changing things to make their Taiko sound "better" than just listening to it.

Yes, I was guilty of this when my Extreme first arrived but that was because historically, I could always build a better mousetrap and I was determined to try. I tried different PCIe USB and Ethernet cards, I experimented with fiber USB, I played with different footers and shelves, damping plates, fuses, USB cables, and power cords. I played around with different software, upsampling, and even tried to tweak the OS. As for the network, don't get me started. Some things worked and some things failed miserably but the exercise scratched some important itches that needed to be scratched and gave me valuable perspective.

First, prior to installing the Extreme on my tall rack (which is a 2 person job), I needed to be sure it wasn't DOA and so straight out of the box with no burn in, with the Extreme sitting on top of my wood floor using its stock footers, using an old $200 TG SLVR power cord (because it was long enough) and a cheap 3m Pangea USB cable (because it was long enough), the Extreme already sounded better than my DIY server. This was my best DIY effort that just weeks before had bested an Aurender W20SE and pretty much everything else I had previously tried and without any optimization, the Extreme was better.

Second, as a DYIer, you realize what a joy it is to be able to tweak or tune a component such as the Extreme in a way you could never do with an Aurender, InnuOS, or a dCS Network Bridge. To have so many tuning levers at your disposal allows the Extreme to scale to different scenarios. When the disastrous Roon upgrade was released in 2020, it was the Extreme's tunability that allowed Emile to overcome it.

Third, as hard as I tried, I found I couldn't really build a better mousetrap. My efforts to tweak the Extreme are well chronicled on these pages. There are even more efforts that were not chronicled but today, my Extreme is very close to everyone else's Extreme. Emile has thought this thing through better than I can but it's not something I could fully appreciate if I hadn't tried. His USB card is the best I have heard. TAS, to my ears, is still far better than Roon. Despite all of my efforts to improve my network, for now, my preference is to listen to locally stored files (yes, I am in the camp where I still find locally stored files to sound better than streaming) and then disconnect my Extreme from the network. No more fancy switches or cabling. It has been some time since I've posted on this thread because these days, I'm not really trying to make my Extreme sound better, I'm just enjoying it. Like everyone else, I look forward to the release of XDMS and that is what is so great about the Extreme, without any extra effort on our part, it has evolved and improved, but even without it, it's very hard to complain.

 

[romaz]

I've tried the latest Roon. Still sounds bloated and smeared compared to TAS and so not for me.

 

[pk_LA]

The Taiko is a very intriguing product for me. I have read the various posts and it seems to that literally every customer is very happy with their purchase.

But, I am also wary. The machine is a high end, bespoke PC any way you shake it. That also means that it is a rapidly evolving product. With, say an amplifier or speakers, it is probable that they will remain relevant for years. Look at some of the top amplifiers that were designed 10 years ago. But, with the Taiko, it will inevitably be a dated component in 18 months. That is not to say it maybe won't still sound great. But, it will be a technologically outdated component in that time. And, that is part of my conundrum. Am I okay buying a $30,000 component knowing that it has such a short shelf life? This one is challenging. As an enthusiast, I maybe am okay.

 

[simorag]

How do please explain ?

Of course I was writing that tongue-in-cheek.

However, there is a number of things - mostly psychological and psychoacoustical - that can affect the outcome of a home demo. First, confirmation or expectation bias: very often when I get a home demo I have already done a lot of research on the equipment, and these preconceptions are hard to erase when listening to the thing.

Moreover, a typical home demo has the equipment carried to you by the vendor or even directly by the designer / manufacturer, and the demo itself is held in their presence. This makes the demo very interesting because you get the chance of knowing from the horse's mouth a lot about the design intentions, the technical and sometimes non-technical background of the component etc., but it builds on the emotional attachment to the listening experience as well.

Finally, I find that I need several days in order to fully adapt to a sound change in my system. I detect the change immediately, but I truly realize whether it is for good after some time.

So, unless I am offered the rare privilege of keeping the equipment at home for a few weeks (especially tricky in case I want to compare a few alternatives, in which case I should have them at home simultaneously to do a proper comparison), I still find that my decision after a demo is pretty much based on emotional reactions rather than (or as much as to, if you like) objective parameters.

All this said, I always try to buy after a home demo because it remains the best one can realistically do to avoid gross mistakes before buying, it is fun, and it gives some peace of mind compared to buy blind.

In the case of the Extreme, committing to a purchase after having it at home for a single day was a very easy decision not only because the improvement over my present server was dramatic (this was expected), but also because everything I was trying sounded so much 'right' and detached from the typical artefacts of digital audio I am used to. The most striking moment - i.e. the point of no return - was when when listening to a recording of a concert I attended the day before the demo - same ensemble, same program, different location -, I was floored by how real the music felt.

 

[EuroDriver]

The Taiko is a very intriguing product for me. I have read the various posts and it seems to that literally every customer is very happy with their purchase.

But, I am also wary. The machine is a high end, bespoke PC any way you shake it. That also means that it is a rapidly evolving product. With, say an amplifier or speakers, it is probable that they will remain relevant for years. Look at some of the top amplifiers that were designed 10 years ago. But, with the Taiko, it will inevitably be a dated component in 18 months. That is not to say it maybe won't still sound great. But, it will be a technologically outdated component in that time. And, that is part of my conundrum. Am I okay buying a $30,000 component knowing that it has such a short shelf life? This one is challenging. As an enthusiast, I maybe am okay.

At Taiko, we are very well aware of this concern, and prioritize protecting the Extreme Owners investment.

We very much view the Extreme as a platform which functions as a solid foundation to host future developments and improvements in sound quality and realism.

A good example of this is the Taiko USB card, 2 years of engineering, 3rd hardware revision and Bingo, a new level of sonic realism.

There is a lot more to come