Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
Christiaan Punter
Well-Known Member
Hi John, I understand where you're coming from and I'm sure there are many who feel the same even if we don't hear from them on this forum. The most important takeaway is that we at Taiko make sure to dot all the i's and cross all the t's on all levels including those that can be considered nitpicking so that our clients don't have to. That is unless they want to dive deeper and know more or experiment more. For these folks, we're always happy to provide information on a deeper level.
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Christiaan Punter
Well-Known Member
I don't think any of us anal nitpickers mind being called out for what we are...;-)
Just want to second this. I figured out how to use the Taiko website chat function (hint: no ad/popup blockers), and frankly it's way superior to email: I got an answer in minutes. Although I guess a function like that for other companies that would be 'nitpicking' (really, which other audio company has live chat?). Best part is, it's actually pretty advanced- Taiko managed to use it to send a follow-up answer to me one day later about my question on the Taiko DAC. That certainly counts as information on a deeper level for me. Now I'm eagerly awaiting the launch!
Hi Christiaan, this is exactly why I bought it. Taiko has a different/unique philosophy. Albeit a relatively small company I think it has a Herculean approach, and certainly a response to service. I look at XDMS as a huge bonus. I'm envious of some of these members who have the ability to dig so deep, it truly is impressive, and is helping to pave the way for audiophiles like myself. I'm excited about the future and where Taiko will take us.
The (near) future road, to Roon or not to Roon:
Over the past 2 months you have been able to read the "mouthwatering" reports of the XDMS alpha testers on the improvements in sound quality which has been lauded with terminology like mind blowing, game-changing, surreal, startling, largest jump in sound quality to date, etc etc, but you've also been reading about it not being ready for general release yet and about bugs and quirks. To future, and even to some current Extreme owners, this is considered to be off-putting, some even label the Extreme as an "immature" product, even while it's been on the market for 4 years now, having sold in for high-end audio unusual high quantities and being a stable Roon core server. As it evolves, its performance is not fixed in time, rendering comparisons to other products often outdated or irrelevant by other means. The concept of a truly evolving product, where continuous R&D is being performed to improve the same product in stead of starting to design something entirely "new" to launch after the "old" has outlived its prime market momentum, can be confusing. However we deem it essential to retain your investment value on a high priced object, as there's a long road ahead of not only us, but for everyone, where streaming audio can be vastly improved.
I'm now going to write a sentence in bold which you may find surprising given the course this and other forum threads have been taking over the past months, if not years:
Roon is an incredible achievement in music playback software, it unlocked the doors for audio streaming to become the dominating high-end audio source over the past 7 years and it'll keep doing that for the foreseeable future.
Now what's actually "wrong" with Roon? They regularly adjust their code largely to customer feature requests, where inevitably majority rules, especially considering their scale of deployment. They are delivering exactly what they are promising and are doing a fine job at that IMHO. However every code change, even code not even remotely involved with the audio playback "path", comes with a change in sound signature. We have run into that more times then I can count ourselves in the past 2 years of developing our own playback software. Now take a look at where we are today, with multiple people writing code over that 2 year lifespan, with a full focus on sound quality leading to discarding snippets of code over and over again, which can be very frustrating to the coders, and that is on one hardware platform, with one specific OS, it's been one hell of a job to have this alpha release out which people can use now. There is no such path for a company like Roon, it is simply not possible. Suppose they would branch of and do a sound quality tested release branch, it would multiply individual licensing cost several times over. I can tell you TAS and XDMS have already cost us several times more then one Roon lifetime license times each Extreme server sold.
However our ROI is not limited to XDMS as "just" a software playback suite designed for sound quality. In fact its scope expands way beyond just the software application itself. Long time Extreme owners will recall we have by now launched several OS (operating system) updates after specific Roon updates vastly improving sound quality. Although these updates have been an accumulation of updates as part of our regular search for improvements a big part of them have been adjustments, you could also call them "tuning" or "sound sculpting" to adjust to the changes in Roon builds. In fact we could make every Roon build sound nearly identical by retuning the Operating System. There's a catch though, a retune can take up to 2 months of very intense listening as it involves adjusting parameters with hundreds of permutations doing repeated A/B comparisons over an array of tracks. We have done a few, but fact is it's impossible to keep up with the rate at which Roon releases new builds. And let me share another voodoo discovery made over time, network cables sound different with different Roon builds, your preferred network cable can "improve the sound" of one Roon build, but "degrade the sound" of another Roon build (using the same OS configuration). P.S. I'm not going to debate any of this, it's presented as a believe it or not fact, feel free to consider it fiction.
Back to what all of this has to do with XDMS. We have developed a very good understanding of the combined software and hardware interaction with its perceived resulting sound quality. Hence alongside coding the XDMS software platform there's a hardware with associated controller firmware development path where we are working towards immunizing changes in the software playback environment. The network card and "switch" (in fact it's not really a switch) combination will also be supplied with an interconnect to use between the two. Hence you won't need an additional network cable, the "package" plugs in between what you have now plugged into your Extreme, be it fiber or copper RJ45. Surprisingly, or maybe not after what I just wrote above the sound quality coming from Roon far exceeds what the alpha testers are experiencing now coming from XDMS, and it's been 100% consistent over the past months of Roon 1.8 and 2.0 builds.
I'm running out of time for today, but I will write more about another product releasing march 2023 taking this concept even further.
Over the past 2 months you have been able to read the "mouthwatering" reports of the XDMS alpha testers on the improvements in sound quality which has been lauded with terminology like mind blowing, game-changing, surreal, startling, largest jump in sound quality to date, etc etc, but you've also been reading about it not being ready for general release yet and about bugs and quirks. To future, and even to some current Extreme owners, this is considered to be off-putting, some even label the Extreme as an "immature" product, even while it's been on the market for 4 years now, having sold in for high-end audio unusual high quantities and being a stable Roon core server. As it evolves, its performance is not fixed in time, rendering comparisons to other products often outdated or irrelevant by other means. The concept of a truly evolving product, where continuous R&D is being performed to improve the same product in stead of starting to design something entirely "new" to launch after the "old" has outlived its prime market momentum, can be confusing. However we deem it essential to retain your investment value on a high priced object, as there's a long road ahead of not only us, but for everyone, where streaming audio can be vastly improved.
I'm now going to write a sentence in bold which you may find surprising given the course this and other forum threads have been taking over the past months, if not years:
Roon is an incredible achievement in music playback software, it unlocked the doors for audio streaming to become the dominating high-end audio source over the past 7 years and it'll keep doing that for the foreseeable future.
Now what's actually "wrong" with Roon? They regularly adjust their code largely to customer feature requests, where inevitably majority rules, especially considering their scale of deployment. They are delivering exactly what they are promising and are doing a fine job at that IMHO. However every code change, even code not even remotely involved with the audio playback "path", comes with a change in sound signature. We have run into that more times then I can count ourselves in the past 2 years of developing our own playback software. Now take a look at where we are today, with multiple people writing code over that 2 year lifespan, with a full focus on sound quality leading to discarding snippets of code over and over again, which can be very frustrating to the coders, and that is on one hardware platform, with one specific OS, it's been one hell of a job to have this alpha release out which people can use now. There is no such path for a company like Roon, it is simply not possible. Suppose they would branch of and do a sound quality tested release branch, it would multiply individual licensing cost several times over. I can tell you TAS and XDMS have already cost us several times more then one Roon lifetime license times each Extreme server sold.
However our ROI is not limited to XDMS as "just" a software playback suite designed for sound quality. In fact its scope expands way beyond just the software application itself. Long time Extreme owners will recall we have by now launched several OS (operating system) updates after specific Roon updates vastly improving sound quality. Although these updates have been an accumulation of updates as part of our regular search for improvements a big part of them have been adjustments, you could also call them "tuning" or "sound sculpting" to adjust to the changes in Roon builds. In fact we could make every Roon build sound nearly identical by retuning the Operating System. There's a catch though, a retune can take up to 2 months of very intense listening as it involves adjusting parameters with hundreds of permutations doing repeated A/B comparisons over an array of tracks. We have done a few, but fact is it's impossible to keep up with the rate at which Roon releases new builds. And let me share another voodoo discovery made over time, network cables sound different with different Roon builds, your preferred network cable can "improve the sound" of one Roon build, but "degrade the sound" of another Roon build (using the same OS configuration). P.S. I'm not going to debate any of this, it's presented as a believe it or not fact, feel free to consider it fiction.
Back to what all of this has to do with XDMS. We have developed a very good understanding of the combined software and hardware interaction with its perceived resulting sound quality. Hence alongside coding the XDMS software platform there's a hardware with associated controller firmware development path where we are working towards immunizing changes in the software playback environment. The network card and "switch" (in fact it's not really a switch) combination will also be supplied with an interconnect to use between the two. Hence you won't need an additional network cable, the "package" plugs in between what you have now plugged into your Extreme, be it fiber or copper RJ45. Surprisingly, or maybe not after what I just wrote above the sound quality coming from Roon far exceeds what the alpha testers are experiencing now coming from XDMS, and it's been 100% consistent over the past months of Roon 1.8 and 2.0 builds.
I'm running out of time for today, but I will write more about another product releasing march 2023 taking this concept even further.
Holy smokes! What a stunning bit of transparency on behalf of team Taiko.
There has to be a bit of frustration internally if the hardware development efforts equal or better the XDMS development efforts. How can there not be a “did we need to do that” question? Knowledge gained notwithstanding. What of the combo — XDMS and the new hardware?
or perhaps I read Emile’s post wrong?
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
What a great first post of the morning to read. You have laid out a wonderful map of Taiko and XDMS future. I love being a part of the alpha testing and watching the platform mature and stabilize with each new build and the builds now seem to be coming more frequently. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love this ride. The music is simply exquisite. I can't wait to hear the improvements with the switch that isn't really a switch and the new ethernet card. Christmas might come late this year but Santa hasn't forgotten us
No frustration at all, the one would not exist without the other!
And don't forget, the DAC that "doesn't really qualify as a Taiko DAC"!
Steve Z
@Taiko Audio I read some of your posts regarding the "switch". I have to admit it's rather intriguing
It's not really a switch. It's not a router. But it does have an appreciable impact on sound.
Wouldn't it be a switch "adorned" with some kind of a packet filter?
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My guess is a single input, single output "switch" with settings jointly optimized for the best sounding flow control with the new networking card, terminating and eliminating/minimizing unneeded network & broadcast (& roon?) activity, plus hardware designed to minimize noise transfer from the network. Just a guess on my part.@Taiko Audio I read some of your posts regarding the "switch". I have to admit it's rather intriguing
It's not really a switch. It's not a router. But it does have an appreciable impact on sound.
Wouldn't it be a switch "adorned" with some kind of a packet filter?
I can't wait!!!!!!!
That, plus squashing the wav/flac gap, holds great promise for streaming.
If you have a programmable burr grinder you need to learn how to roast. XDMS will appreciate your efforts!
Been doing it for over 2 decades, if you ever get serious about it PM me. I would be more than happy to give you a suggestion or two. Once you do it, no going back!
“ (in fact it's not really a switch)”
if i have to make a gues, its a device that completely re-clocks and isolates the network signal.
if i have to make a gues, its a device that completely re-clocks and isolates the network signal.
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