Emile or Ed.
Will the Extreme delivered in this month of January come with the new XDMS installed?
Will the Extreme delivered in this month of January come with the new XDMS installed?
Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
Christiaan Punter
Well-Known Member
Hi Muni,
thank you so much for sharing! I‘ll definitely wanna give the CMS + Daiza a try and will report. It will take some time though, since I need some funds for the Taiko Network Card + Switch, upgraded XLRs and my DACs power cord first. I wanna make sure this way the fine tuning via the platforms and ultimately potentially CMS footers is done with the system on the level where I want it for the moment.
So my report will be more likely be in the second half / later part of this year. But I‘ll keep you posted in any case.
If you wanna share experiences in-depth feel free to send me a DM any time.
A pleasant weekend and happy listening to all
Sebastian
Ed has great taste in his big room gear
Extreme owners, what would you pick as the single most significant sonic attribute the Taiko has brought to your system?
I’ll jump in. Realism of tone, timbre. This makes a recording sound REAL.
will try to post video of Ella and Joe later that blew me away with its reality last evening.
Cheers
barry
I was going to make it a one word reply, "Realism" but you beat me to it. There are many more instances of music sounding so real and life-like that thoughts about the music being artificially reproduced by an electro-mechanical system just don't enter my mind.
Steve Z
...just seems *fast* to me. I have come to the idea that I appreciate the speed to the Extreme and the Ref dac too. I have a TT7 coming, I am so sold on speed. Speed = real? Maybe so...at least to me.
Yeah, that reminds me of the David Wilson interview where he explains that the brain always catches the illusion between real vs reproduced, if the dynamic contrast of a system is noticeably lower than in live music. That‘s why I figure devices like the Extreme, fast speakers or power distributors like the Everest I‘m enjoying are preferred by many because they are contributing to the proper „speed“ of a system. Of course there is more to the illusion of live-like sound production…, but without it it can never get close to the real thing.
So yes, realism due to speed, but also imaging and detail retrieval are among the things that come to mind about what makes the Extreme great. It just sounds so much more alive.
I guess Emile just knows very well what attributes real music has and designed the Extreme around those traits. So thank you very much, Mr. Bok, for spotting those for all of us!!
For me the most striking improvement it brought was more realistic microdynamic contrast. The Extreme reveals the most subtle shifts in the music making, and that results in a more informative MUSICAL experience, which for me enhances my experience of timing and of timbre. This better microdynamic shading allows the harmonic envelope to develop more naturally in time, and this feels a lot more like hearing a live performance.
One of the key feature for me on Roon is Roon radio, which is the ability to automatically curate and play new similar songs once my own selection of song/album is done playing. Does anyone know if the TAS player and the upcoming XDMS have this feature?
Thanks. I see a lot of people writing tone is important, timbre is important. Rarely do I read it is the microdynamic contrasts/shading that enhances the experience of timing and timbre to bring closer to live. Often, the first note can have a good tone with minimal contrast seen later, and I have seen many choose that over a slightly less tone with more contrast. but it is often a color While there is obviously a threshold below which timbre becomes unacceptable (might sound too plastic, for example), the contrast in the tone, texture, timbre, and dynamics for me is what drives the live experience. The inflections and variations. You wrote that succinctly.
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The radio function in Roon is done very well. So rather than try to beat Roon with an even better radio, we have plans to have XDMS integrate the radio offerings of the streaming platforms which we expect to get better and better over time. We want Extreme Owners to have it all, the best Roon Radio sonic Experience, and good alternative radio offerings out there
Some disappointing news about Amazon Hi Res, it has DRM so XDMS will not be going down that road
Hi - first post from me...
Eagerly awaiting my Extreme with new USB card, due mid January. While waiting I have been reading and digesting this massive thread - big thanks to all for the excellent content, I have learned a lot!
Regarding Roon Radio - it is my favorite feature by a mile. It is a really good application of AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) fuelled by the DATA from all Roon-users -> extremely hard to replicate in XDMS, this would be a boil-the-ocean endeavor.
In my mind - the strategy of integrating the streaming platforms' Radio-function is the only viable one (Radio functions will over time - based on ML - all become better and better scaled by the # Users on each platform) while instead focusing XDMS on VERTICAL SW & HW INTEGRATION with the Extreme to yield superlative SQ.
The USB card is one step on this roadmap, the upcoming network/switch card another. With this strategy - Extreme will become a streaming appliance, as loosely coupled/independent of its environment as possible so that we all can enjoy much the same SQ despite our individual systems.
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Given all the positive feedback I have read about the new Roon version I decided to give it a whirl this morning. This is what I did:
1 - Switched the server over to Roon
2 - Let Roon update my library
3 - Listened to various things while I did a workout in my room for about an hour.
4 - Put together a 5 song playlist of songs I have heard many times and used before in listening comparisons. Simply said, I am very familiar with my playlist contents.
5 - Listened to the playlist in Roon.
6 - Switched the server over to TAS
7 - Put the 5 songs in the queue.
8 - Listened to the queue. I didn’t bother to let TAS finish with its maintenance of scanning, etc. I just started playing Too bad TAS!
My conclusions? Well, I won’t be going back to Roon. The music played via TAS was so much more enjoyable, so much more…musical. Roon sounds like digital music. TAS sounds like music.
There is still a great divide between the sound quality produced by TAS and Roon and I have a feeling that gap will only increase with XDMS.
1 - Switched the server over to Roon
2 - Let Roon update my library
3 - Listened to various things while I did a workout in my room for about an hour.
4 - Put together a 5 song playlist of songs I have heard many times and used before in listening comparisons. Simply said, I am very familiar with my playlist contents.
5 - Listened to the playlist in Roon.
6 - Switched the server over to TAS
7 - Put the 5 songs in the queue.
8 - Listened to the queue. I didn’t bother to let TAS finish with its maintenance of scanning, etc. I just started playing Too bad TAS!
My conclusions? Well, I won’t be going back to Roon. The music played via TAS was so much more enjoyable, so much more…musical. Roon sounds like digital music. TAS sounds like music.
There is still a great divide between the sound quality produced by TAS and Roon and I have a feeling that gap will only increase with XDMS.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I totally agree. I did the same experiment last week and there is no doubt in my mind that even though the SQ improved with the new Roon build it just doesn’t come close to TAS. And with XDMS on the horizon (no pun intended) my bet‘s still on Taiko.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I just feel that if only half of all Extreme users are still using Roon I truly feel you are all missing some fabulous sounding music. I know Roon is a seductive interface but TAS is only beta and XDMS will be a finished product. I’m betting it will make Roon even more insignificant for us early adopters
