Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

nuway

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Jun 26, 2019
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I do remember you reporting on this before, could you describe the difference versus both sides Finisar?
Emile, I took the idea from someone else in this forum. With two finisars, although resolution and soundstage is great, in my systems the sound is a little dense/nervous Replacing one finsiar with a planet tech the sound relaxed a bit maintaining that great resolution and sound-stage.
 

Pinu

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Nov 30, 2019
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Hi, got my Roon patch for the EVO, thanks to Christoph for helping me install it today. Love his patience. Immediate and huge improvement in SQ. Big impact on soundstage and resolution. The bass is tight and well controlled. Love this fix, thanks Emile once again for a great update and excellent support. Was reading about the Jplay update ... is that something I will need ... happy to test it if so. Enjoy everyone.
 

Taiko Audio

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Feb 10, 2017
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Was reading about the Jplay update ... is that something I will need ...

Regarding JPlay, the feedback on it is very mixed. Where a good 75% used to prefer using JPlay over Roon "direct", it is now more like 50/50. I'm trying to get a handle on what causes these mixed results but there appears to be no common ground from a system setup perspective, results are even split between headphone users, so it may very well simply be completely personal. Chris is back from his holiday, the appointment scheduler is live again at https://taiko-audio.appointlet.com/ , feel free to schedule an update to restore JPlay but do evaluate carefully if you consider it an improvement or not. The 2015/EVO did not come with JPlay so those do require a license purchase.
 

dipstef

Well-Known Member
Nov 16, 2019
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Network communication is relatively more harmful then CPU and local disk activity right now. With TAS we have can have zero disk and network activity during playback, it just syncs the track playback progress indicator every 60 seconds or so (configurable).

!

That's awesome, I suspect Roon on the other end keeps an open connection and broadcast that information frequently to all the connected clients.
Chances are little for client and server to go out of sync after an initial buffering, it's great that is configurable as well.

Agree! I'd say Spotify discovery services are very good now, arguably better, but the data it's based on is sampled from a non audiophile user base, then again, Roon's userbase appears to be increasingly non audiophile as well.

!

Interesting, I need to check the new Spotify recommendation system, I remember a few years ago I didn't use to like Spotify Radio, often leading over and over to the same popular songs.
In that aspect Roon is less biased to popular artists and very broad in the spectrum of recommendation, which is great way to discover new music.

Based on this blog article:

https://blog.roonlabs.com/roon-1-7-valence/

I believe it's a system still/also based on "collaborative filtering", the idea is the simple product recommendation that you often see in Amazon or Netflix: users that have listened to this song also listened to this song, etc:

They seem to give an higher weight to the listening trends of "expert listeners"

Perhaps Spotify is exploring other ways such as machine learning models being able to classify music based on the musical spectrum analysis (or clustering given music in order to find sub-genres of closely related music for instance).
I'd be curious here to know wether a machine learning model can actually infer wether a given recording is an Audiophile recording or not :D

In order to have some decent results a lot of "training data" is required, however there's easier ways to tag existing records based on some information that can be collected from different sources.

The ultimate recommendation system for me would be one that (also) provides different bells and whistles that can define an exploration graph of music recommendation (give emphasis on music popularity, quality of recordings, review scores, mentioning on audiophile forums/reviews :D, etc) but I must say I trust Roon autopilot, and I could listen their recommendations for days!
 

nonesup

VIP/Donor
Feb 15, 2017
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I do the same because for some reason my Melco doesn't accept the Finisar.
I don't understand Howi, Melco has no fiber input, only copper network input.
 

nonesup

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Emile, I took the idea from someone else in this forum. With two finisars, although resolution and soundstage is great, in my systems the sound is a little dense/nervous Replacing one finsiar with a planet tech the sound relaxed a bit maintaining that great resolution and sound-stage.
The Finisar model you had a bit of a nervous sound with is the FTLF1324P2BTL?
 

Taiko Audio

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Feb 10, 2017
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In that aspect Roon is less biased to popular artists and very broad in the spectrum of recommendation, which is great way to discover new music.

They seem to give an higher weight to the listening trends of "expert listeners"

That is very nice indeed.

but I must say I trust Roon autopilot, and I could listen their recommendations for days!

Agree!
 

Jpowell

Well-Known Member
Dec 23, 2011
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Regarding JPlay, the feedback on it is very mixed. Where a good 75% used to prefer using JPlay over Roon "direct", it is now more like 50/50. I'm trying to get a handle on what causes these mixed results but there appears to be no common ground from a system setup perspective, results are even split between headphone users, so it may very well simply be completely personal. Chris is back from his holiday, the appointment scheduler is live again at https://taiko-audio.appointlet.com/ , feel free to schedule an update to restore JPlay but do evaluate carefully if you consider it an improvement or not. The 2015/EVO did not come with JPlay so those do require a license purchase.
I've just had a short time with JPlay back in my system, but I have to say that I'm not hearing any significant difference so far between the JPlay driver and my normal Aqua Acoustic Formula xHD driver. But I thought I'd mention one anomaly: in my system at least, and this was true as well back when I first used the JPlay driver, it doesn't seem to like having other "enable" drivers active in Roon simultaneously. If I enable and start a radio in Roon with JPlay, it often ends up with one of those "start a track, then on to the next track, etc." without actually playing them. Whereas I can have both JPlay and the xHD enables and start a radio on the xHD and it runs fine forever.

Just an observation. I haven't thoroughly tested it this time yet, but in the past I could disable the xHD driver in Roon and then the JPlay would perform without a hitch.
 
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wil

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Jul 22, 2015
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Agree! I'd say Spotify discovery services are very good now, arguably better, but the data it's based on is sampled from a non audiophile user base, then again, Roon's userbase appears to be increasingly non audiophile as well.
!

I've been highly impressed by the Roon music discovery. It makes sense most of the time, but also can lead to surprising corners of the music universe. It does seem to favor finding higher res releases. I don't know if that's based on the whole Roon user base, or based on my individual history.

I guess when you say "audiophile" or "non-audiophile" you're referring to higher-res recordings or not? I'm not sure if higher-res is a very good indicator of recording quality anyway, as other factors in the recording's provenance (which I'm guessing no algorithm could adequately decipher) are far more important.
 

nonesup

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Oh! Excuse me, I thought you were referring to a Melco server that only has an RJ45 input
 

wil

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Jul 22, 2015
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Regarding JPlay, the feedback on it is very mixed. Where a good 75% used to prefer using JPlay over Roon "direct", it is now more like 50/50. I'm trying to get a handle on what causes these mixed results but there appears to be no common ground from a system setup perspective, results are even split between headphone users, so it may very well simply be completely personal. Chris is back from his holiday, the appointment scheduler is live again at https://taiko-audio.appointlet.com/ , feel free to schedule an update to restore JPlay but do evaluate carefully if you consider it an improvement or not. The 2015/EVO did not come with JPlay so those do require a license purchase.

Once Chris restores JPlay is it possible for the user to easily go back and forth between Roon Direct and Roon JPlay for comparison? For anything in the range of "subtle," I don't trust my audio memory, so would need to back and forth between the two to make a reliable comparison.
 

Jpowell

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Dec 23, 2011
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Once Chris restores JPlay is it possible for the user to easily go back and forth between Roon Direct and Roon JPlay for comparison? For anything in the range of "subtle," I don't trust my audio memory, so would need to back and forth between the two to make a reliable comparison.
Wil, my case may be unusual--I'm not sure--because I have this issue with JPlay not playing we well with other Enabled drivers (although it likely would work fine just switching back and forth on the same track, for example, which is how I tested it). In that case it was just a matter of selecting the other Enabled driver--very easy. But for longer term comparisons, in my case, I would have to disable one driver and enable the other each time I wanted to switch back and forth. Not a big deal certainly, but an inconvenience. YMMV
 

nonesup

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This one: FTLF1324P2BTL-MC
When I started my fiber experience with the purchase of a Sonore OM to put between my Modem-Router and my EtherREGEN, I acquired two SFP models that were popular with guys who already had experience: the Planet Tech MGB-TLX Mini GBIC and the Finish FTLF1324 P2BTL. I preferred the latter, until I read a recommendation in another forum from the user Auricgoldfinger, he recommended the Finisar FTLF1318P3BTL. I would recommend you give it a try, I think it is the best of the three. On the other hand, the length of the cable is a very important factor. I have purchased 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m and 10m. The sound changes with each length. In my system I have preferred 5m.
The good thing about fiber is that it is quite cheap to do different tests.
 
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Taiko Audio

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Once Chris restores JPlay is it possible for the user to easily go back and forth between Roon Direct and Roon JPlay for comparison? For anything in the range of "subtle," I don't trust my audio memory, so would need to back and forth between the two to make a reliable comparison.

You switch between JPlay and "Roon direct" from the Roon audio settings menu. @Jpowell , indeed you should only enable 1 output to the same device, especially with Jplay which uses kernel streaming you will run into unexpected behaviour.
 

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