Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Steve Williams]

Jim Weil makes terrific stuff. Years ago when I lived in the SF Bay Area his business was in oakland. He personally installed many iterations of his Sound Application in my sound room.
IIRC Jim’s wife is the mastermind behind the designs of Sound Application products

 

[dminches]

SGM Extreme - 6 week experience: Power (Part 1)

Have you tried any of the balanced power units like the Equi=tech or Torus?

 

[romaz]

SGM Extreme - 6 week experience: Power (Part 3)

Power cords

Power cords are controversial. Some people don't believe that they make a difference and others are so in love with their power cord that they get offended if someone suggests that a better power cord exists. Obviously, I have not had the opportunity to audition every cord in existence and so once again, YMMV.

For those that believe power cords make a difference, like many of you, I have had the opportunity to try many. Some cords are made for digital components as they incorporate special HF filters, some incorporate liquid or air dielectrics, some are designed to emphasize a specific tonal quality such as the warmth of a human voice, some specialize in treble purity, and some are expressly designed for high power amplifiers or as feeder cords for line conditioners. It is rare that one power cord is best suited for every application and for every taste.

My bias is toward clarity, resolution, and purity of tone. I generally don't seek any emphasis in the bass, mids, or treble but if forced to choose, I will accept a touch of warmth over brightness. I struggle with bright things. I also crave immediacy and liveliness. If a power cord moves me from the balcony to the front row, it has my attention.

Over the years, I have amassed a collection of power cords from High Fidelity Cables.



They are based on Rick Schultz's patented magnetic conduction technology that supposedly concentrates current toward the center of the conductor and away from the periphery eliminating HF smearing caused by the dielectric. As you go up the line from the original entry level CT-1 to the Pro Series, the strength of magnetism goes up resulting in the smoothest, purest, clearest treble I have yet heart. The resolution of this cable is extremely high and transients are slippery fast. The Pro Series easily outclasses a Nordost Odin 2 and these cords excel with source components. If there is a downside to the Pro Series, they are very expensive, very industrial looking, and also very heavy. The biggest downside is that these are 12awg cords and are not ideally suited for power hungry amplifiers although this is no different than other high end cords like a Nordost Odin 2 which is 14awg.

When my Extreme arrived, I had a Pro Series power cord ready and waiting for it. Prior to using the HFC Pro, like I said, I first powered the Extreme with an inexpensive 14awg Transparent power cord before moving to the Pro Series. The improvement in speed and resolution with the Pro was immediately apparent and I thought all was good.

Shortly after receiving my Extreme, I had approached Mark at @Sablon Audio about auditioning his latest USB cable. While I wasn't really interested in auditioning anything else, he offered to also send me one of his power cords (a Sablon Prince with a Bocchino IEC) and I agreed. This cord has been around the block a few times and is showing wear but the cord is well broken in and here is a photo of this giant Bocchino IEC that this 6awg is terminated with:



Along with the Sound Application TT-7 line conditioner, this power cord is the biggest difference maker I have heard with the Extreme. What I thought was already excellent dynamics with the HFC Pro Series was lapped many times over with this Sablon Prince. It was similar to comparing the Extreme against a low power music server, there's no comparison. Not just dynamics but also sheer authority and grip. Thinking this was purely about wire gauge, I then directly compared the Sablon Prince against another 6awg cord, my Shunyata Sigma NR, and the Sablon was still much more dynamic. I'm not sure what's in this Bocchino connector but this cord behaves like a cord much larger than 6awg. But it's not just about dynamics and control. Where the Sigma NR sounds soft and recessed, the Sablon sounds livelier and with greater and more vibrant and natural tonal color. While the Sablon does not have the treble purity and ultimate resolution of the HFC Pro, its treble qualities are excellent with good air. Where the HFC Pro offers liquid smoothness, the Sablon offers natural texture and provides a nice balance with the Pro Series powering my DAC. There is perhaps one cord that is even better for the Extreme than the Sablon Prince and that is the Sablon King which has a Bocchino connector on both ends and 5awg of wire. Because of space constraints on my TT-7, I have purchased a Prince for my Extreme and a King as a feeder cord for my TT-7. Having just auditioned the Sablon with the TT-7 for Jim Weil last week, he now will be insisting to pair his line conditioner with this power cord at shows and the 2 are as suited for each other as the Sablon and the Extreme are. This thing is just otherworldly!

 

[romaz]

Have you tried any of the balanced power units like the Equi=tech or Torus?

Yes, I used to own an Equi=Tech Son of Q and it is not in the same league. I have not used the Torus specifically but have tried other isolation transformers.

 

[Sablon Audio]

Glad you’re enjoying my Prince cord Romaz! As I’ve been using Emile’s servers for 4 years now, the synergy you have observed doesn’t come as a surprise though dacs are usually the most responsive pieces of equipment to clean power.

Your comments about gauge size are bang on the money. I have experimented with cords using multiples of the same conductor and there are sonic gains to be had with progressively larger areas. How does this tie in with the Bocchino plug though? Well that particular iec has a silver plating over its pure copper substrate, a combination which gives 100% IACS conductivity and conductivity is also a measure of resistivity / impedance...

The Bocchino iec is also available with a platinum over silver plating and this gives a more transparent, extended and linear presentation than the silver one but it also trades off some of the latter’s analogue density and joie de vivre. It is a less successful pairing imo with the NCF rhodium plug.

For my King model, I do use the platinum Bocch mains plug with the silver iec as they synergise very well together and turn the performance up to 11 over the Prince model. That said, this mains plug only comes in USA format and is humongously large, causing installation issues for many users so I only circulate the Prince model for auditions. You’re right, that particular cord has been through the wars!

 

[BaconBrain]

Just felt like saying thanks for all the contributions to this thread. I find the product, and related subjective topics discussed, (imo) incredibly interesting.

 

[octaviars]

+1 on @BaconBrain input.

I will never own a Extreme but still find this thread really interesting ?

 

[matthias]

I will never own a Extreme but still find this thread really interesting ?

Never say never.......

Matt

 

[onlychild]

Pramit, I have divested my system of all prior grounding tweaks except for the Setchis. This includes the Entreq Poseidon and a full loom of Atlantis cables and the SR Active Ground Block SE with SR's HD Cables that I used to own. I did also demo a friend's Tripoint Troy Sig BLK. In prior systems, which were considerably more complicated and once included a triple stack TotalDac DAC and a spaghetti chain music server and network, ground conditioning was much more impactful. In my 2 current systems, which are considerably simpler, grounding has had less impact and I have found the simpler and less obtrusive Setchis to work very much to my satisfaction.

To answer your question, with the Extreme, I am only signal grounding. Because of a lack of an appropriate connector, I have not tried grounding the Extreme's chassis. Some people "multi-point" ground to try and create a more robust ground plane but generally, my approach has been to "single-point" ground because this has often sounded better to me. However, with the Extreme, I had been applying 3 Setchis to it, one to the Extreme's USB port in the back, a second to the spare USB port on the JCAT USB card, and a third to the spare Ethernet port on the JCAT network card since the JCAT cards are independently powered by outboard PSUs, and to my ears, 3 Setchis sounded better than a single Setchi although the improvement, while easily audible was not large. I was hearing much larger improvement with a single D2 Setchi applied to the USB port on my InnuOS Zenith SE and this may be due to the better anti-vibration enhancements built into the Extreme. As my Extreme is now optically isolated from both my network and DAC, I am hearing no difference with the Setchis on the Extreme.

Here is something I am curious about.



Now that you are using the Stromtank S1000 and are no longer in a noisy environment, your Tripoint NG is still making a huge difference? This would suggest that the ground noise the Tripoint is addressing isn't coming from mains but rather from your components and since your setup is so beautifully simple (the Extreme + dCS Bartok), I am wondering if your Tripoint would still have impact if you optically isolated your Extreme from the Bartok and then connected ONLY the Bartok to the S1000. With the S1000 in battery mode, this would result in TOTAL galvanic isolation between your server and DAC that should render ground conditioning moot. If you decide to perform this experiment, please share your results.

Hello @romaz,

First of all, thank you for all your recent posts and experiments. They are a wealth of information that has helped me a lot and I am a little sad to hear that you will not be posting much more : (

Not sure what you meant by not having the appropriate connector, but the Extreme does have a chassis grounding screw next to the IEC/Fuse on the back. Emile now includes that screw on all the Extremes, so your's should have it too.


The Stromtank was in my system before the Tripoint or the Extreme. Here is a link to impressions of the Tripoint when I first got it and at that time it was only hooked up to the Stromtank (chassis ground) and DCS Bartok (signal ground) and not my Innuos Statement.

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/tripoint-troy-signature-ng.28706/page-2#post-627609

To answer your question, even with the Stromtank, the Troy NG made a HUGE difference in my system.

It is very hard to find details on how the Tripoint works or what it eliminates and I am sure that has a lot to do with Miguel not wanting his IP stolen by his competitors. This is what I have gathered after a 6 months of scouring all forums about info on it before I made my purchase. The Stromtank cleans up the AC power but it does nothing for radiated RFI/EMI and magnetic fields created by the transformers and capacitors in our equipment. It also addresses mechanical distortions. That is where the Tripoints excel, they act as a vacuum for the radiated RFI/EMI and the magnetic fields (and noise in general) created by our equipment.

You definitely have to use high quality grounding cables that are as fast as the Tripoint otherwise you will degrade the sound (that came from Miguel)

This is something I read that helps me visualize what the Tripoint might be doing. Someone posted, I think it was the AudioExoctics forum, that you should think of RFI/EMI and magnetic fields as ants and your equipment as the ant hill. Now these ants (unwanted noise) are all over the chassis and internals of our equipment creating noise and other unwanted artifacts. The Tripoints act as a vacuums to suck up all the ants (noise).

I am a new owner of the Tripoint and I am hoping other owners will chime in here as I know a few people on this thread have had the Tripoint for years (cough cough Mike L. cough), though I think Mike does not have his hooked up to the Extreme.

I do plan on doing some tests in the next week or two to see what the tripoint is brining to the table for each of my 3 units, one at a time (Stromtank, Extreme, Bartok). I also plan on having the Tripoint hooked up to everything but the Extreme and seeing how much it benefits the Extreme.

Of all the equipment I have tried and tested throughout the years, I have yet to hear one that brought the type of improvement I heard when I connected the Tripoint to my system. I am hoping you take another shot at it with your system, and with proper grounding cables doing chassis grounding and maybe just signal grounding for the DAC. I would really love to hear your thoughts on that.

Also, before I purchased the Tripoint, I was using a Setchi D3 to signal ground the DCS Bartok. I did hear a slight improvement when I first hooked it up, but nowhere near the difference I heard when I hooked up the Tripoint, but again we are talking about a $500 grounding unit vs a five figure one.

 

[Superdad]

Jim Weil makes terrific stuff. Years ago when I lived in the SF Bay Area his business was in oakland. He personally installed many iterations of his Sound Application in my sound room.
IIRC Jim’s wife is the mastermind behind the designs of Sound Application products

I've known Jim for about 20 years (he used to buy Hovland MusiCaps from us to use in his power boxes). He and Connie visited us in Mariposa one year on their way to Yosemite. Jim is always interesting, but he speaks so incredibly rapidly that I often feel he ought to be an auctioneer!

 

[Steve Williams]

That’s correct. He speaks as if you’re listening to 33 1/3 at 45 rpm

 

[Mike Lavigne]

.............I am a new owner of the Tripoint and I am hoping other owners will chime in here as I know a few people on this thread have had the Tripoint for years (cough cough Mike L. cough), though I think Mike does not have his hooked up to the Extreme...............

take care with that cough.

my Extreme does not have that ground post.

however; Emile did send me a picture showing the screw i should use to attach a ground to the Extreme, just not got around to trying it yet as i ran out of Tripoint ground cables with all my recent analog acquisitions.....exhausting my supply.

my Tripoint Elite sits about 6 inches from the Extreme, so i will figure it out and report.

congrats on the Tripoint. i love what they do in my system.

btw; i do use 5 Setchi Ground boxes in my system; all connected to my Tana active isolation systems.

 

[scottrogers]

@romaz - keep up the good work! We all have learned so much from you and your experiments. One of my concerns when I heard you purchased an Extreme was that you would be done (end game) and your amazing experiments and reports would stop (and you will finally start listening to music ). But it turned out I was wrong. You are actually providing even more valuable information now. All the experiments you are doing in the context of the Extreme with network equipment, vibration isolation, grounding, USB cables, PCIe cards in the Extreme, etc. give us a really good perspective and a lot of new ideas came up from those experiments. As I am writing this, I am plugging in a Monoprice SlimRun HDMI cable (HDMI, not USB) to see what effects it would have on the I2S connection between my DAC and custom server. Your server / endpoint comparison was extremely helpful on many different levels!

@Steve Williams - if not for people like romaz, I would not spend a minute of my time here. I am a fairly new member, but my observations about your posts here so far have been that you like your CenterStage footers and your uber expensive power cord, and you don't want to try anything else, because you don't think there would be any improvement. I am exaggerating of course but I hope you get my point! And that's okay, but let people like romaz push the limits and post freely. He has said YMMV more than he should have. Those network tweaks for example have a pretty significant impact on any resolving system, especially for those people that have "cable" Internet rather the "fiber optic" one. We can't change you, but please don't kill that discussion - I find it very useful and it's perfectly inline with the "Taiko Extreme" topic and the "What's Best" forum.

Sorry about the offtopic message, but when people spend so much time and energy to describe their experiments - they should receive a big "thank you" and appreciation, not unnecessary criticisms.

Well said! I totally agree. Romaz is an amazing contributor here and a great person!

 

[luisma]

This is if not my 1st then my 2nd post here on WBF

I don't own an SGM Extreme however I would like to understand when using the optical connection vs the wired (copper) connection and mentioning the term RF what is it exactly? Radio Frequency? or Conducted / Radiated RFI?
The reason I asked is I am very interested on finding or at least imagining how this could affect audio systems for specific frequencies

 

[EuroDriver]

This is if not my 1st then my 2nd post here on WBF

I don't own an SGM Extreme however I would like to understand when using the optical connection vs the wired (copper) connection and mentioning the term RF what is it exactly? Radio Frequency? or Conducted / Radiated RFI?
The reason I asked is I am very interested on finding or at least imagining how this could affect audio systems for specific frequencies

Hi Luisma,

The radio frequency emissions from our digital gear have the the following transmission paths
- via the AC cable in and out into the AC power network
- via a network copper cable connection
- via a USB copper connection
- via internal cabling with can be acting as both a receiving antenna and a transmitting antenna

4 years ago, we bought a lot of very sensitive RF detection gear with spectrum analysis and stuck the probes anywhere and every where. What became clear was that that galvanic isolation was limited to low frequencies and optical isolation whilst measurably helpful to reduce the RF emission environment, often came with a sonic negative which we could not measure.

So despite optical isolation, when you shape the RF emission environment, the effects can be heard in a resolving / transparent system

 

[Jpowell]

Kudos to Emile on a fantastic review!

https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/taiko/

 

[EuroDriver]

Kudos to Emile on a fantastic review!

https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/taiko/

A great review by Marja and Henk, although I must confess that I was not on pins and needles the way I was when they reviewed the original SGM 2015

One small correction, the heat sink which is connected to the CPU’s is machined from copper billet. The fins on the other side are machined from aluminum alloy

 

[Armsan]

Have you tried any of the balanced power units like the Equi=tech or Torus?

Not with SGM Extrem, but with Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra, I power it from a Torus AVR 8, so as all my sources. Also use 2 Torus AVR 16 one for each Accuphase A-250 amps with excellent results, even more dynamic than right from the wall. Plus, their lower the AC voltage, which in my case is always very high.
Regards.

 

[dminches]

Not with SGM Extrem, but with Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra, I power it from a Torus AVR 8, so as all my sources. Also use 2 Torus AVR 16 one for each Accuphase A-250 amps with excellent results, even more dynamic than right from the wall. Plus, their lower the AC voltage, which in my case is always very high.
Regards.

I was referring to the full sub-panels like the Equi=tech 10WQ but that is good to know for rooms what aren’t powered by the 10WQ.

 

[luisma]

Hi Luisma,

The radio frequency emissions from our digital gear have the the following transmission paths
- via the AC cable in and out into the AC power network
- via a network copper cable connection
- via a USB copper connection
- via internal cabling with can be acting as both a receiving antenna and a transmitting antenna

4 years ago, we bought a lot of very sensitive RF detection gear with spectrum analysis and stuck the probes anywhere and every where. What became clear was that that galvanic isolation was limited to low frequencies and optical isolation whilst measurably helpful to reduce the RF emission environment, often came with a sonic negative which we could not measure.

So despite optical isolation, when you shape the RF emission environment, the effects can be heard in a resolving / transparent system

Thank you for the answer, That is very interesting what you are reporting. The spectrum analysis you performed was it limited from 0 to 1 Ghz for example, or you went all the way up to 4 - 10 GHz? Again I am asking because around 3 years ago we discovered higher emissions of RF on specific bands when optical transmission was used