I’ve been putting Taiko's new USB driver through it’s paces for the past couple of days and thought I should give a preliminary report of what I’ve been hearing.
The new Taiko driver replaces the dCS USB driver in the Extreme operating system. Literally replaces it, as Emile first removed the dCS driver prior to installing the Taiko driver.
My first evening I played with PCM buffer size, alternating between 4096 and 8192. With my dCS Vivaldi Upsampler Plus > Vivaldi DAC I find I preferred 4096 for most content. A buffer size of 8192 sounds a bit less open with a little less sparkle on top relative to 4096. About the only time I liked 8192 was with content that was recorded “hot” or somewhat bright or harsh on top. Otherwise, to my ears in my system, 4096 sounds like the sweet spot. Note: I didn't realize that first evening that Adaptive-1, my prior favorite with the dCS driver and TAS, was still available.
Still, I was kind of saying, “hmmm” to myself that first night — though music still sounded outstanding, I wasn’t hearing the improvement over the dCS USB driver that we've come to expect when Emile and company introduce a new enhancement to their software/operating system.
In fact, I thought what I was hearing might have been a bit of a step back. I thought I was missing some of the expansiveness, impact and vividness I had been enjoying since the introduction of TAS. I was hearing the aural equivalent of someone having let part of the air out of the sonic balloon. It wasn't blatant, but it was something that nagged at me.
Last night that all changed when I got around to turning off “Float” (32-bit) in the TAS control panel. Emile had mentioned to me in passing that some folks preferred Float on, and some preferred it off. What an improvement that simple adjustment made! Now the excitement, clarity, expansive soundstage, dynamics — the breath of life of the music — came back. Maybe more than just back; I think the bar just got raised again.
Though of course I can’t A/B the dCS USB driver against the Taiko USB driver, I now feel more confident in saying that the new driver sounds superior to what I had been hearing using the dCS driver. More clarity, more transparency and low level detail, more vibrancy and emotional involvement.
So far, no problems playing a variety of PCM sample-rates up to and including 24/384 and DSD64 and DSD128 (the lImits of my DAC). I still need to go back and try Adaptive-1 in the PCM buffer settings, both to hear if there are sound quality implications and to test for compatibility with various sample-rates, but I'm not anticipating any trouble.
As Emile has said, the interaction of the USB driver, whether JPlay, dCS or now Taiko, may vary somewhat depending on the specific DAC one is using. So my particular settings may not be the same others will find most pleasing. But at least I can advise after some time spent experimenting that the new Taiko USB driver not only works, but moves sound quality forward again. A very nice accomplishment, and of course comes closer to the goal of Taiko being able to control in-house more of the factors that impact sound quality.
Kudos to Emile, Wilson and Ed!
Steve Z