Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[joaovieira]

I would like to share the recent change I made in my path to get the best sound I can afford coming from my stereo system.

Since computer audio started to have different solutions, I was using Caps4 computer connected directly to my dac, years ago. Than I moved to streaming and rendering gear that uses ethernet to minimize noise.

For many years I used that solutions, and since last semester I own the most recent optical network solution. And the best rendering gear one can buy, with special LPS and stuff.

SGM was always a desire, but brazilian taxes double prices if one wants to import this type of gear. And it includes shipping costs to tax calculation .

I finally could afford an used SGM Evo. And it arrived a few days ago.

I am listening to music many hours a day amazed with the quality I am having now in my digital. The body, dinamics, bass and emotion it brings is different from all solutions I tried past years.

Pretty happy that the source achieved the same level of amps and speakers.

 

[Sablon Audio]

Glad to hear you are enjoying my old server so much Joao!

 

[kimurastanley]

I would like to share the recent change I made in my path to get the best sound I can afford coming from my stereo system.

Since computer audio started to have different solutions, I was using Caps4 computer connected directly to my dac, years ago. Than I moved to streaming and rendering gear that uses ethernet to minimize noise.

For many years I used that solutions, and since last semester I own the most recent optical network solution. And the best rendering gear one can buy, with special LPS and stuff.

SGM was always a desire, but brazilian taxes double prices if one wants to import this type of gear. And it includes shipping costs to tax calculation .

I finally could afford an used SGM Evo. And it arrived a few days ago.

I am listening to music many hours a day amazed with the quality I am having now in my digital. The body, dinamics, bass and emotion it brings is different from all solutions I tried past years.

Pretty happy that the source achieved the same level of amps and speakers.

Congrats Joao for the acquisition! I am sure you will be enjoying it very much

 

[matthias]

My first post here, I like this forum. It is a nice place to discuss with other audiophiles but with audio companies as well.

I am an audiophile or should I say music lover located at the south-western part of Germany, near the french and swiss border and listen mainly to Jazz via HR streaming from Qobuz.

During years of listening, system setting-up and changing components I developed a strong preference for the Source First principle. In my view the most important point is the performance of the artist and the more upstream component is more important than the more downstream component.

Since many years I attend High End Munich and XFI Audio Show in the Netherlands.
When evaluating systems at shows or friends I try to focus on purely musical aspects like everybody would do when listening to a live concert.

My first encounter with SGM/Taiko Audio was at High End Munich 2015. I came across my post from another forum:

"At Sunday afternoon it was a real pleasure for me and my spouse Claudia to spend the last hour of the High End 2015 in the Sound Galleries/Audiopax booth. After visiting nearly all rooms in both atriums the day before we experienced being in an oasis after a long walk in the desert. Silvio was the DJ and presented some of the best music playback of the show. And it was very nice to meet Edward in person and to talk about music and systems. Thank you very much."

In 2015 the SGM server was a prototype in a PC case somewhat hidden in the back of the demo room, now at XFI the Extreme was sitting proudly on double Daizas in the center.

After further listening in Munich 2016 and 2017 to the SGM2015 and reading so much about the performance of the Extreme I was more than curious to get impressions about this new server.

I liked the remarks of EuroDriver "Certainly a system with extreme frontend loading of the budget" (Source First) and Rhapsody "My point was that since I received the Extreme a few months ago, I never try to pick a certain DAC to make the sound better........All of the DACs mentioned are <$20K" ( Source First too).

After arriving on Sunday at around 2:30PM in the Taiko room and a hearty welcome by Emile, we got the best seats and his iPad to pick our favorite music via Room/Qobuz/Tidal.

We chose music from the latest three ECM albums of Avishai Cohen(tp), Fink "Trouble's What You're In", Muddy Waters "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", Bob Dylan "Man in the Black Coat" and Miles Davis from "Ascenseur pour l'échafaud".

We did simply sit and enjoy.......

According to my criteria the understanding of music came through in a perfect way, the tension of the interplay of musicians was exemplary. The music was presented in a lifelike fashion as a whole.

No way to look for some audiophile terms to describe the experience.

Some systems have a sweet spot at medium volume levels. Not this one. We cranked the volume up as far as the show conditions allowed to do. There was not the slightest hint of distortion or dynamic compression, just pure music and enjoyment.

IMO, the ultra high quality output of the Extreme with drainage of micro distortions into the (double) Daizas let all downstream components perform at their maximum quality level, including the speakers sitting on Daizas as well.

Emile was several times reminded to attenuate the volume.

We could have stayed in the room for hours and listen without end.

Thank you Emile.

Matt

 

[steve williams]

Great first post. Welcome to WBF. Emile is indeed one of the good guys

 

[matthias]

Great first post. Welcome to WBF. Emile is indeed one of the good guys

Thank you for the hearty welcome, much appreciated!

Matt

 

[Taiko Audio]

Welcome to the forum Matthias,

Thank you for reporting on the evolution of the SGM servers over the shows. Was nice meeting you again.

For those who are unaware, the Sound Galleries exhibition at the Munich 2015 show was where the idea to launch a commercial music server from the prototype playing there was born, it was dubbed SGM 2015 for Sound Galleries Munich 2015.

 

[matthias]

Welcome to the forum Matthias,
Thank you for reporting on the evolution of the SGM servers over the shows. Was nice meeting you again.
For those who are unaware, the Sound Galleries exhibition at the Munich 2015 show was where the idea to launch a commercial music server from the prototype playing there was born, it was dubbed SGM 2015 for Sound Galleries Munich 2015.

Thank you, Emile
We arrived at XFI rather late at 12:30PM.
My plan was to listen mainly at Taiko Audio and another manufacturer who makes analog amps.
So in fact we visited two rooms only.
The "sound" at Taiko was so right in my view that I am absolutely sure it was the best digital of the show, but to vote in this way would not be correct after the limited visiting of other rooms.
In Munich 2015 and 2017 we could vote best digital for SGM after listening in all atrium rooms.

Matt

 

[matthias]

As an experiment, I have now fully disassembled my system here, some of it we used at the show, what we didn't I drove around the building on a cart to induce a degree of mechanical transportation stress. Tomorrow I will set it all up again, double Daiza'ed, and track performance delta over time. Very interested in the outcome.

Can you share some results or is it too early?
Thanks

Matt

 

[Taiko Audio]

Can you share some results or is it too early?
Thanks

Matt

It was pretty decent from initial power on with some incremental gains over the next 3 days. Nowhere near the delta we experienced at X-Fi. I’m in the dark on that right now.

 

[Blackmorec]

It was pretty decent from initial power on with some incremental gains over the next 3 days. Nowhere near the delta we experienced at X-Fi. I’m in the dark on that right now.

Hi there, Interesting thread with lots of valuable information. Regarding the radical changes, I’m wondering what the systems were sitting on? What was the flooring material and how are the support platforms connected to the materials of the floor? If the flooring is in any way compressible then that may be an element in the changing sounds. If the flooring is made from fibres for example, and the stands use footers rather than spikes, the fibres would compress over the 3 days of the show, giving you ever firmer contact with the floor beneath and of course the nature of the vibration transmission would change. Just a thought

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Hi there, Interesting thread with lots of valuable information. Regarding the radical changes, I’m wondering what the systems were sitting on? What was the flooring material and how are the support platforms connected to the materials of the floor? If the flooring is in any way compressible then that may be an element in the changing sounds. If the flooring is made from fibres for example, and the stands use footers rather than spikes, the fibres would compress over the 3 days of the show, giving you ever firmer contact with the floor beneath and of course the nature of the vibration transmission would change. Just a thought

i'd say gear (1) settling from transport, and (2) reaching optimal temperature after being on a few days is likely more significant than footers compressing carpet. i do think that the carpet fibres compressing is real though. but one day to three days later not that much.

when i come back after i've been out of town and turn the system on again; it's 24-36+ hours before things are sounding 'right'. and after i move things around, let alone transport it hundreds/thousands of miles, again it takes time for it to sound optimal.

i have 18 of those Daiza's in my system and agree with Ed on how they seem to settle in too.

 

[matthias]

It was pretty decent from initial power on with some incremental gains over the next 3 days. Nowhere near the delta we experienced at X-Fi. I’m in the dark on that right now.

I suppose the frontend with Extreme and DAC was the same as you use in Hengelo.
What about the d1-driver and the amp? Maybe not burnt in before XFI show?
Or the mains power was much superior on Sunday afternoon?

Matt

 

[EuroDriver]

The SQ improvement Delta at X Fi over 36 hours was a lot bigger than we have experienced before.

I have some possible / plausible thoughts about possible explanations

There are things like the 3 day Setchi effect that we have observed but have not yet found a robust explanation. There were no Setchi’s in the XFi system, but the SQ behavior over over time does have similarities

I will continue to explore, but the real benefits are the additional data points for Emile, which drives his relentless experimentation.

 

[paul79]

I think this will be tough to point at one thing. I would put it in the category of warm up and settling time personally. The degree of settling time could be influenced by a number of things I think. Static electricity due to movement in packaging/transit? How far, where to and from, and how things traveled? Cables could also be drastically affected? Just throwing out ideas...

My Totaldac takes a day to sound good, then about 3 days later, it is sublime. The Totaldac must be warm, of this I am sure. My preamp also must be warm. My preamp is the most drastically changing component I have with regards to warm up. It actually sounds bad cold, then transforms into amazing after 2-3 days. I really hate thunderstorms!

 

[Taiko Audio]

Thank you everybody for your contributions.

However the delta here was significantly beyond expected behaviour.

It’s magnitude compares to the time it takes for my own system to settle after complete disassembly which is about 3 days for decent to 7 days for near maximum, but it did that in just 1 hour, and then every subsequent hour, all the way up to the end of the show when we had to unfortunately dissassemble. Had it been possible I would’ve rented that room for the subsequent week just to see what would’ve happened next.

I have not witnessed behaviour this extreme before. There was definately something abnormal going on here.

 

[matthias]

Thank you everybody for your contributions.
However the delta here was significantly beyond expected behaviour.
It’s magnitude compares to the time it takes for my own system to settle after complete disassembly which is about 3 days for decent to 7 days for near maximum, but it did that in just 1 hour, and then every subsequent hour, all the way up to the end of the show when we had to unfortunately dissassemble. Had it been possible I would’ve rented that room for the subsequent week just to see what would’ve happened next.
I have not witnessed behaviour this extreme before. There was definately something abnormal going on here.

I am just curious:
With this extreme delta you describe how did the SQ of the Taiko system at the end of the X-Fi show compare to the Taiko system in Hengelo?
Thanks

Matt

 

[EuroDriver]

I am just curious:
With this extreme delta you describe how did the SQ of the Taiko system at the end of the X-Fi show compare to the Taiko system in Hengelo?
Thanks

Matt

The SQ at Hengelo was on another planet before X-Fi

After X-Fi, with the deployment of double Daiza through out the system the SQ took another leap

Of particular note was sibilance became extremely hard to find on any tracks

Clarity and resolution at new highs !

 

[Kris]

Can I ask ALL of You how do You connect the Extreme to your DAC ?
What do you prefer ?
USB
AES
Spidf
Please be so kind to let all of us know why you prefer one over the other?

I see the results on the top of the page that majority uses USB
but in that results there is 0 for the AES .
Is that useless ?

Thank you

 

[Sablon Audio]

Kris, a customer of mine with a Berkeley Ref dac uses usb into their Alpha usb converter and then aes into the dac. He believes this to be a better solution than an aes output card in his Extreme however this appears to be a theoretical view rather than an empirically observed one.

Emile and Esotar will doubtless have plenty of other examples for you however usb appears to be the default option, not least of all since it comes as stock without any extra charge but also because that is the main input format for most dacs.