Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
USA trip report PART2:
Steve dropped me and Ted off at the John Wayne airport on the 16th of October for our evening flight to Seattle. We arrived at about the same time as Ed (EuroDriver) flying in from a different location and spend the night at an Airport hotel.
We left early in the morning on the 17th to drive to Mike Lavigne. Quite a change of scenery from L.A. with a strong resemblance to Austria we passed through a few weeks before:
As it was Ed's 4th trip to casa de Mike he drove straight up to the Barn where Mike joined us a few minutes later and we went in. Honestly, I felt like a 6 year old on his first trip to Disneyland. Photos do not capture the ambiance of the Barn, the room and all the things to see in there. I spend the first 30 minutes in there just walking around firing a volley of questions at Mike... Disneyland for a guy like me.
On to listening:
I remember somebody once writing something, I think it was Ron Resnick, along the lines of "could Mike be more right then the rest of us". I searched the forums for it but could not find it. This particular question resurfaced from the depths of my memory when listening to Mike's system. There is a very large difference being seated in the sweet spot or in any of the seats behind it. In all the other seats it sounds like a really good, very impressive high-end system. But once you are seated in the sweet spot, listening to music transforms into experiencing music. I lack the vocabulary to properly describe the experience. It is sensational. It places you right into the middle of the musical event, you are just there surrounded by the musicians, it feels like you could reach out and physically touch them. It is unlike anything I have ever heard a system do, multi channel does not even manage to pull this off, let alone approach the fidelity and integrity of the images. Scale and dynamic range appear to be limitless, there is no distortion, not from the room, not from the system, which I'm sure is a big part of the believability of the performance. I guess this is what years and years of experience and meticulous finetuning with unlimited patience sounds like, baby step after baby step with careful evaluation of each change.
Mike has a dedicated movie room too, we watched some 4K blue rays in surround sound, very cool, but Mike's 2 channel beats his movie room for seamless envelopment, by miles, not even ballpark close.
Naturally we did some source comparisons. It's all good, it all transforms listening into experiencing. It becomes somewhat irrelevant what you are actually listening to. It is all amazing. I found the NVS on active isolation and digital to sound most similar. The source material determining what comes out on top, digital or digitally mastered recordings I'd give the edge to digital, natively analogue recorded and transferred I'd say the NVS to be a ahead. The Saskia sounded rather different, with a more colourful presentation. The general consensus we could all 4 agree upon for NVS versus Saskia was NVS doing a better job at large scale orchestral, the Saskia at smaller scale performances. I personally thought the Saskia may have had a just slightly over saturated colour palette, but who cares, it just sounded drop dead gorgeous and beautiful. What a luxury to pick your source depending on your mood and/or performance. But the real gems for me were Mike's special tape cuts. The raw dynamic range and manifestation power of these was just mind blowing. This performance have had a large impact on my line of thinking and I have spend considerable time ever since investigating the phenomena. I have listened to more systems with tape sources since then, but this seems to be unique to Mike's system in my experience so far.
I asked Mike how he managed to get all of this done, Mike is a working man, he has a job, I had some difficulty grasping how he could get all of this done next to his job. You need to see it to understand the sheer amount of work and time that must have gone into this. He just smiled and said "I can be efficient". Hats off Mike. My verdict is a visit to experience Mike's system is a completely worthy "bucket list" item for any person, audiophile or not, for general accomplishment, along side of swimming with dolphins or witnessing a solar eclipse.
Last but not least some views from Mike's porch:
Steve dropped me and Ted off at the John Wayne airport on the 16th of October for our evening flight to Seattle. We arrived at about the same time as Ed (EuroDriver) flying in from a different location and spend the night at an Airport hotel.
We left early in the morning on the 17th to drive to Mike Lavigne. Quite a change of scenery from L.A. with a strong resemblance to Austria we passed through a few weeks before:
As it was Ed's 4th trip to casa de Mike he drove straight up to the Barn where Mike joined us a few minutes later and we went in. Honestly, I felt like a 6 year old on his first trip to Disneyland. Photos do not capture the ambiance of the Barn, the room and all the things to see in there. I spend the first 30 minutes in there just walking around firing a volley of questions at Mike... Disneyland for a guy like me.
On to listening:
I remember somebody once writing something, I think it was Ron Resnick, along the lines of "could Mike be more right then the rest of us". I searched the forums for it but could not find it. This particular question resurfaced from the depths of my memory when listening to Mike's system. There is a very large difference being seated in the sweet spot or in any of the seats behind it. In all the other seats it sounds like a really good, very impressive high-end system. But once you are seated in the sweet spot, listening to music transforms into experiencing music. I lack the vocabulary to properly describe the experience. It is sensational. It places you right into the middle of the musical event, you are just there surrounded by the musicians, it feels like you could reach out and physically touch them. It is unlike anything I have ever heard a system do, multi channel does not even manage to pull this off, let alone approach the fidelity and integrity of the images. Scale and dynamic range appear to be limitless, there is no distortion, not from the room, not from the system, which I'm sure is a big part of the believability of the performance. I guess this is what years and years of experience and meticulous finetuning with unlimited patience sounds like, baby step after baby step with careful evaluation of each change.
Mike has a dedicated movie room too, we watched some 4K blue rays in surround sound, very cool, but Mike's 2 channel beats his movie room for seamless envelopment, by miles, not even ballpark close.
Naturally we did some source comparisons. It's all good, it all transforms listening into experiencing. It becomes somewhat irrelevant what you are actually listening to. It is all amazing. I found the NVS on active isolation and digital to sound most similar. The source material determining what comes out on top, digital or digitally mastered recordings I'd give the edge to digital, natively analogue recorded and transferred I'd say the NVS to be a ahead. The Saskia sounded rather different, with a more colourful presentation. The general consensus we could all 4 agree upon for NVS versus Saskia was NVS doing a better job at large scale orchestral, the Saskia at smaller scale performances. I personally thought the Saskia may have had a just slightly over saturated colour palette, but who cares, it just sounded drop dead gorgeous and beautiful. What a luxury to pick your source depending on your mood and/or performance. But the real gems for me were Mike's special tape cuts. The raw dynamic range and manifestation power of these was just mind blowing. This performance have had a large impact on my line of thinking and I have spend considerable time ever since investigating the phenomena. I have listened to more systems with tape sources since then, but this seems to be unique to Mike's system in my experience so far.
I asked Mike how he managed to get all of this done, Mike is a working man, he has a job, I had some difficulty grasping how he could get all of this done next to his job. You need to see it to understand the sheer amount of work and time that must have gone into this. He just smiled and said "I can be efficient". Hats off Mike. My verdict is a visit to experience Mike's system is a completely worthy "bucket list" item for any person, audiophile or not, for general accomplishment, along side of swimming with dolphins or witnessing a solar eclipse.
Last but not least some views from Mike's porch:
Magnificent but unfortunate events always take place there. I witnessed that through Grey's Anatomy.
Is that a show on TV...Grey's Anatomy?
His front entrance caved in once, under the weight of the snow, but his place haven't burn down yet. They don't have unmaintained powerlines, and they have a fair amount of rain accumulation; good for the soil, the trees, the forests, the vegetation, the environment.
His front entrance caved in once, under the weight of the snow, but his place haven't burn down yet. They don't have unmaintained powerlines, and they have a fair amount of rain accumulation; good for the soil, the trees, the forests, the vegetation, the environment.
Last edited:
Mike's system has changed considerably over the past 6 weeks, compare to the photo posted elsewhere on the forum today, will need to come up with a good excuse to visit again:
I think, as usual, Emile provides a sane and cautious perspective on the subject of tweaks while as the same time forging ahead in investigating possibilities for improvements.
After following the AS Uptone EtherRegen development thread for a full year, I was one of the first to order, with an eager and twitching mouse finger, this miracle-switch in the first 2 minutes of them coming online. (They sold the first lot of 150 in 3 min, I think!) Their roll-out was an amazing marketing campaign-- and I mean that with full admiration and respect.
My experience, after some painstaking blind listening, was that we could hear no audible difference between the etherR and my Gigafoil (fiber optic isolator) in my system (which includes the Taiko Extreme). I did not compare with just straight copper sans etherR or Giga. I think, for me, it was important to listen blind, for if I had just hooked up the etherR and left it there, I'm sure I could have talked myself into believing it was an improvement.
The reports on the AS listening forum are almost unanimously positive. In fact, many are of the jaw dropping--knee knocking variety. Given my experience, I can't help but wonder if there could possibly be some mass-delusional expectation bias going on over there? This is not meant to insult anyone or denigrate their subjective experiences. But I do think audiophiles (myself included) can be vulnerable to "hearing things." It's just part of the amorphous nature of audio- listening. And being human. There are also those who challenge the notion that the tech in a tricked-out internet switch, no mater how elaborate, could have any audible effect on the analog sound coming out of the dac. But I'm not even remotely qualified to comment on the science/tech.
I think your comments are accurate.
I think that if one did not have any ethernet filtering or isolation already the EtherREGEN will make a pretty big difference. In my case I did not have either and replaced a standard 4 port unmanaged switch with the EtherREGEN. It has made a nice difference.
I think that if one did not have any ethernet filtering or isolation already the EtherREGEN will make a pretty big difference. In my case I did not have either and replaced a standard 4 port unmanaged switch with the EtherREGEN. It has made a nice difference.
Wil, I'm seriously looking at fibre optic streaming from the get-go, and have been strongly advised that an audiophile switch is thus irrelevant. Your feedback is critical in confirming this, thanks.
Marc, not to butt in but are you saying that because you already have fiber optic isolation or because you don't think fiber needs any additional filtering?
Last edited:
Hi Marc,
Please do take into consideration that this is feedback involves an Extreme, it really is less sensitive to network side changes then other servers. Without going into too much detail, having 2 CPUs and carefully managing network packet handling and its associated noise is one of the reasons why.
I did receive more feedback involving the Gigafoil so I will share it here to add to Wil's experience above, thank you for sharing btw Wil. The big takeaway is differences are not huge and can vary from system to system, this naturally involves usage with an Extreme server aswell :
I wanted to follow up with you regarding the Startech FMC's. I have put them in-line last night and they are up and running. I was somewhat concerned about the DIP switches on these as I have no idea what their setting should be??? I just inserted them in their default mode with all switches on both FMC's in their 'up' position. I do not know if the settings are correct but they are playing music. Is there a best setting for these DIP switches?
The sound quality I am getting is a bit of a trade-off versus using the DJM Gigafoil (and 8M of Supra Ethernet cable). I do believe the Gigafoil (in my system) has a slightly more organic sound, a bit more tonal density. However I hear slightly more transparency, better separation of images and a slightly larger soundstage using the fiber set-up you have recommended. These are not very significant differences however it is noticeable upon critical listening. Overall I believe the strength of my system is tilted more toward the side of the Gigafoil. That is, it has the Gigafoil qualities of being organic sounding with excellent tonal density. Likely due to my choice of ARC tube components and the YG Sonja 2.3's. In total I believe the fiber offers a good balance in my system and I will keep it in my system for a long term listen. I have experimented with fiber roughly a year ago but it was with a TP Link FMC. The Startech is significantly better than the TP Link which I felt was lean and very cool. The Startech does not exhibit these negative sound qualities at all. Like I said previously the Startech creates better balance in my system.
Thank you very much for the recommendation of the Startech fiber set-up!
I wanted to follow up with you regarding the Startech FMC's. I have put them in-line last night and they are up and running. I was somewhat concerned about the DIP switches on these as I have no idea what their setting should be??? I just inserted them in their default mode with all switches on both FMC's in their 'up' position. I do not know if the settings are correct but they are playing music. Is there a best setting for these DIP switches?
The sound quality I am getting is a bit of a trade-off versus using the DJM Gigafoil (and 8M of Supra Ethernet cable). I do believe the Gigafoil (in my system) has a slightly more organic sound, a bit more tonal density. However I hear slightly more transparency, better separation of images and a slightly larger soundstage using the fiber set-up you have recommended. These are not very significant differences however it is noticeable upon critical listening. Overall I believe the strength of my system is tilted more toward the side of the Gigafoil. That is, it has the Gigafoil qualities of being organic sounding with excellent tonal density. Likely due to my choice of ARC tube components and the YG Sonja 2.3's. In total I believe the fiber offers a good balance in my system and I will keep it in my system for a long term listen. I have experimented with fiber roughly a year ago but it was with a TP Link FMC. The Startech is significantly better than the TP Link which I felt was lean and very cool. The Startech does not exhibit these negative sound qualities at all. Like I said previously the Startech creates better balance in my system.
Thank you very much for the recommendation of the Startech fiber set-up!
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
sometimes called "expectation bias"
I continue to be negative on the use of a switch in my system
The results are most definitely inconsistent across varying systems and can therefor be considered optional "fine tuning".
Wil, if you would like to let it go I would be interested in buying your ER from you so I can test it too as it looks like mine won't arrive for quite some time.
The adamant advice I've had is that an expensive switch is surplus to requirements if one runs fibre optic. The latter in a well implemented system does 100% of the noise/gremlins management, rendering pricey switch redundant. Wil's comments seem to confirm that. Caveat Emile's comments re Extreme additional engineering advantages.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
And only surpassed by "negative bias" ...
Have at it Francisco , "is the pot half full or is it half empty"
I truly am happy with the route I have gone
As far as I can figure out, switches and specifically the EtherRegen are devices to solve a specific problem. If your system has significant amounts of ethernet cable, poor quality oscillators and/or poor quality power supplies as you would find in typical consumer networking products, then you can be almost certain that you have EMI and jitter that will benefit greatly from cleaning up and reclocking, so a good quality switch will, in all likelihood give you significant improvements.
If on the other hand you have done a great job in isolating your system from EMI by things like high quality fibre optic and use high quality oscillators and power supplies, the need for a switch is greatly diminished.
Given the prevalence of low cost commercial networking products, I would expect the vast majority of audiophiles will achieve very positive results from an EtherRegen or SoTM switch, but for a few the benefits may be absent simply because there’s no problem for them to solve. Given that the levels of EMI and jitter are going to vary greatly between different systems, you would also expect the degree of SQ improvement from implementing a switch to vary considerably.
Last year I obtained a USB reclocking device on 30 day trial. At the end of that period I returned it as it consistently gave inferior results vs a high quality USB cable. I took that to mean that my server’s USB output did not have the EMI and jitter that the reclocking device required be present in order for it to create improved sound quality.
If on the other hand you have done a great job in isolating your system from EMI by things like high quality fibre optic and use high quality oscillators and power supplies, the need for a switch is greatly diminished.
Given the prevalence of low cost commercial networking products, I would expect the vast majority of audiophiles will achieve very positive results from an EtherRegen or SoTM switch, but for a few the benefits may be absent simply because there’s no problem for them to solve. Given that the levels of EMI and jitter are going to vary greatly between different systems, you would also expect the degree of SQ improvement from implementing a switch to vary considerably.
Last year I obtained a USB reclocking device on 30 day trial. At the end of that period I returned it as it consistently gave inferior results vs a high quality USB cable. I took that to mean that my server’s USB output did not have the EMI and jitter that the reclocking device required be present in order for it to create improved sound quality.
