Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
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VNC is not a window per se. You are just remoting into another device.
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Great and thanks for the update @Taiko Audio! Since MSB hopefully have most of the required HW available as part of their ProUSB-adapter that many of MSB DAC users (like me) are using today that part of the solution should be relatively 'easy'. But - as always devil is in the details - fingers crossed for a nice ride!
You know we are insatiable right?
This means Taiko roadmap will never run out...
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steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I thought Lukasz us on board. In fact he wants to attend the event I am planning in the 4th quarter this year with a soft launch of the BPS. Emile has suggested his interface will be racy by then. Lukasz has said that if the new interface part for the Horizon is available and it’s an easy fix he would do it. So fingers crossed
He may be on board but I was wondering if Emile has had recent conversations with him.
Yes, the main question is how big the improvement is to warrant mounting a daughter board inside the Lampizator DAC over using its I2S input. The interface basically consists of 2 parts:
1) an entirely new way of converting data from CPU/Memory subsystems to I2S
2) a new interconnect which transports this same datastream to inside the DAC and converts it to I2S there
The new interconnect is completely insensitive to things like jitter, timing and data integrity which is an additional benefit but even just using part 1) is a substantial improvement over what’s currently available to the market.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Hi Emile. I recall with TAS that those whose DAC used Amanero but could not derive full benefit of TAS and switched to JL Audio. So no new daughter board in Lampi this time around ??
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
With the sonic benefit going via i2s be as good as using a connection such as that used by MSB
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Hi Emile,
Have you been in contact with other DAC manufacturers?
I'm obviously thinking of Soulution Audio ;-)
Looking at the documentation of my 760 DAC, it would appear that there is an I2S input.
Unfortunately the documentation is unclear about this I2S input.
I hope all is well in Oldenzaal and that your projects are progressing. This new interface is the one that most tickles my curiosity.
Cheers,
Thomas
It would certainly make everything more applicable for Horizon Owners...
I'm no expert on this but when I spoke with Lukasz he explained the Horizons i2s is PS Audio Standard. All i2s are not the same, hence using a standard...Hope this helps...
TAS led to the discovery that USB interfaces and there accompanying drivers are not always optimally utilised. Where this was considered to be generic, USB=USB, we discovered scope for improvement by controlling the way these drivers operated in an optimal form for the way the DAC side USB interface was configured. However we could not control the Amanero driver, nor drive it in “low latency mode”.
The next step in our evolution was to develop our own USB driver, moving these optimisations to the driver so they could be used by both TAS and Roon. This is what the USB profiles are for as outlined here: https://taikoaudio.com/taiko-2020/w.../Supported-DACs-and-USB-Profile-Guide_v23.pdf which allows you to drive each supported DAC optimally. An additional benefit to this was that Windows requires an unique driver to be installed for each DAC, supplied by its manufacturer. Today we have added around 80 DAC models to our driver, so you don’t need to install the individual DAC manufacturer supplied driver anymore for these. BTW there is a generic USB audio driver which does support every USB DAC, for both windows as Linux. However this generic driver is just not optimal.
Our new interface has been designed from scratch, specifically to perform optimally for servers, to convert streamed data to I2S as direct as possible with the absolute bare minimum necessary processing. It does not use off the shelf intermediates like USB controllers which are not designed for audio purposes. It eliminates multiple data / format conversions. The improvement in clarity, transient speed and the reduction of distortion, grain and grunge is remarkable IMHO.
Dear Emile,
Could you provide an update and estimated timing regarding the AES module to be used with Totaldac DACs?
Thanks.
I’d say MSB has an advantage as PRO ISL is a superior method of transporting I2S with a rather clever approach to clocking.
I2S is not great for traversing lengths of wire. Which is the main reason of the existence of the ancient SPDIF - AES/EBU interfaces. These are also more or less obsolete due to their bandwidth limitations
USB does have an advantage here as I2S is actually generated inside the DAC by the USB receiver/processor.
The same goes for using Ethernet as in interface, but that requires a complete “mini streamer/server” to be placed inside the DAC running an Operating System and endpoint software like Roon RAAT.
However neither USB and Ethernet are designed with Audio Fidelity in mind and a lot of design efforts of both server as DAC manufacturers is about developing bandaids to reduce the negative aspects of these interfaces as much as possible.
Well indeed as we crossed the 10.000 hours of development early this year, and they continue to pile up
This also means that we cannot have everything available immediately and this will need to be a phased path of implementation. It is a huge design effort on both the hardware as software side. So perhaps not a big surprise nobody else, afaik, has taken up the gauntlet to design an entirely new modern interface for High Quality audio playback.
I2S is pretty simply, once we have the framework running well it should be relatively easy to add various I2S output options.
The ultimate solution would eventually be for the second part of the design, the “lossless” interconnect option, to be adopted by manufacturers, but this does require an interface board to be mounted inside the DAC. For example replacing either an Ethernet or USB input board.
