Taiko Audio with 'Evo spec' meets MSB Select II digital + NVS tt

lately I've had a bit of action around my place, with new amplifiers (ML3 and VAC Statements) and Ron Resnick's visit. then last week Ed Hsu of Taiko Audio/SGM spent 3 days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) at my home. mostly I was gone to work and Ed was there working.

Ed visited to (1) convert the stock TS-150 and TS-140 Herzan's to the Taiko Tana top plates and remove the internal SMPS's, (2) add one more Taiko Tana Linear power supply, (3) to convert the now -3- Taiko Tana Linear Power supplies to the new 'Evo spec', and (4) introduce the new Daiza Panzerholtz plinths. the top plate conversions, and 'Evo spec' upgrades to the Linear Power Supplies was a big job and took most of the 3 days (when I got home from work we listened to that days work product). Ed also brought a suite of special vibration measuring devices and spent some time with those.

when Ed arrived i had 4 active units; a stock TS-140 sitting on my barn kitchen table unused, a stock TS-150 under the SGM server, a Taiko Tana TS-150 (under the dart pre) and TS-140 (under the NVS tt) each with a Taiko Tana LPS. also i had 3 panzerholtz plinths; one each under the TS-140 and TS-150 and one under one of the LPS's. now I'm using 4 active units; all fully Taiko Tana top plated, with 3 now 'Evo spec' LPS units (i switch one when i go from digital to vinyl until the 4th LPS arrives). sorry for all the detail and realize you might need to read it a couple times and look at the pictures to digest it. short answer is that now all my front end electronics and tt except the 2 power supplies of the MSB Select II are on SOTA active devices.

Evo Spec had been developed about 2 months ago with significantly better anti-vibration sonic performance on analog and digital electronics, but how would it perform for the Tana under a NVS turntable?

Wednesday night when i got home, two of the LPS's had been converted to 'Evo spec'. we connected both of those to the already Taiko Tana'd top plated TS-140 and TS-150 and listened to vinyl. i want to be objective here and just say there was a solid noticeable improvement in the performance. specifically more focus, cleaner, noticeably greater dynamic contrasts, more expressive, and greater tonal richness. interestingly since the dynamics were increased it was louder and more lively. i saw higher peak wattage for the same volume points (less smearing...rounding off peaks). i also noticed that on musical peaks things were all the way sorted out and it changed my reference for how some familiar pressings can sound. i used the same recordings i had used with Ron Resnick; specifically the Classic 45 4-disc of Mussorgsky's Pictures, disc 4 'Great Gates', and the Classic 45 disc 2 of Scheherazade. there were others, but these were enough to confirm the step up. these areas of performance were already at reference levels, so to get any improvements was impressive. we listened to a number of vocals, Jazz (Mallitoba Spank), and some rock. but more than the objective areas of clear improvement was the increase in calmness, ease and refinement which translated into a very beguiling and compelling musical experience.

Thursday night when i got home Ed had converted the stock TS-150 to full Taiko Tana top plate, and the 'Evo Spec' to the 3rd LPS. so now we inserted the Taiko Tana top plated TS-150 under the MSB dac box and then listened to this with dart pre also with Taiko Tana + Evo spec LPS. now this was a huge step up, since this was the first time i had had active under the MSB dac of any kind. wow. Ed had told me that dac's showed the biggest result from Taiko Tana treatment and he was right. we both listened to our reference tracks, and there was so much more space and rendering of delicate detail that it was spooky. I'm going to stop there and come back later to this subject.

Friday night when i got home Ed had completed the TS-140 top plate and so we did add that to the mix under the SGM server (needing to switch the third LPS unit from the tt to the SGM) and there was a further boost. and there is lots more details i will get into further in future posts.

on Sunday i did ask Jazdoc to visit just to give me some feedback. i won't speak for him at all.

16 years ago, in 2002, i first heard a Halyconics active device in my room. i had the passive air suspended Rockport Sirius III for 9 years from 2002-2011. then in 2013 i bought my 2 Herzan units. lots of promise from those products.

that promise is now delivered.

 

Do you mean by even off axxis response of a ls, that the measured output stays the same even under an angle?

Yes, within reason ofcourse. We actually varied the amount of wool felt panel coverage used depending on the angle.

 

Do you have An example as i have never come across one ?
M Lavigne s one certainly not either with the ribbon tw, The angle which you describe Will be more then 90 degrees even, so maybe your talking 25 db roll off, there is no Ls with that even behaviour , unless you have an omnidirectional design like the mbl radialstrahler or that new Ls from B en O with multiple angled tweeters

 

Do you have An example as i have never come across one ?
M Lavigne s one certainly not either with the ribbon tw, The angle which you describe Will be more then 90 degrees even, so maybe your talking 25 db roll off, there is no Ls with that even behaviour , unless you have an omnidirectional design like the mbl radialstrahler or that new Ls from B en O with multiple angled tweeters

I’m sorry but I’m not going to entertain a discussion of loudspeaker off axis response in this thread.

You can vary the difference in angles between direct and reflected sound from the first reflection point by varying loudspeaker toe in and distance to the panel on the first (side) reflection point.

I suspect you actually have a 45 degree angle in mind, which would be about the upper limit of what we have tested.

Please note I’m not suggesting this to be some sort of ultimate acoustic treatment as it comes with several requirements, not suitable for small rooms for example. A very interesting experiment however.

 

i'm going to give you my interpretation of what it's doing, then later Ed will chime in when it's morning in Europe.

originally it was simply a solid panzerholtz plinth, which i had three of in my system a few weeks ago when you were here. and they were clearly helpful in my system at reducing resonance. in Hong Kong some audiophiles, particularly one's with solid state gear, were getting high frequency distortion. there was talk about what to do to attenuate more higher frequency resonance. i don't really know exactly what suggestions were from HK. so Emile back in the Netherlands did some experimenting with various things and measured the results. eventually they tried the spiral design which they had used as a graphic design last summer more as a brand. then they tried those round inserts with different materials using their measuring gear to find the most linear result.....the Daiza. basically the routed out channels reduce/attenuate resonance combined with the natural properties of the material and panzerholtz construction. and those round plastic inserts get the last bit of higher resonance. think of it as breaking up the path of the resonance and dissipating it.

panzerholtz already is the best measuring material Taiko has found at organically damping resonance. so it starts in a great place to be tweaked at be optimal.

the proof is in the listening. from last Friday night to Saturday night after i removed the third shelf braces and was able to move things around to get those Daiza's in the right place, the calmness and level of refinement was clearly boosted. it was like now the whole picture was right from the bottom to the top.

wherever i tried the Daiza's I liked what they did; but between the gear and top layer of the Tana TS unit was where it made the most profound difference for me in my system.

and now i'm getting this overwhelming degree of texture from every source including redbook. and zero glare or any sort of high frequency issue at all. smooth and sweet all the way up. no matter how hard i push it.

Very interesting, Mike, thank you!

 

As incredible as it may seem, we have actually observed burn in time for Daiza platforms ! It seems that when you place and load up a Daiza platform, some creep in the material takes place and it takes time to settle and the sound signature changes for the better. The effect is not huge but it is observable and repeatable. (...)

Can we know what are the typical prices of Daiza platforms in Europe? Are they already available?

 

Hello Ron,

Thank you for asking, this is an area I love to chat about, therefore my apologies in advance if this turns into a lengthy reply.

The primary reason for the existence of these cut outs is to reduce the resonances correlated to the physical dimensions of the board. These resonances are not exclusive to Panzerholz but exist in any solid material with fixed dimensions. An easy to understand analogy would be room modes. In fact these resonances are lower (better damped/dissipated) in Panzerholz then any other non-compliant stiff material we know of. This is why Panzerholz is being used to stop bullets, it’s very good in dissipating impact. Another application of Panzerholz is parts for / structural support of very large transformers, as in the size you would find in power plants where it would be exposed to severe, as you can imagine, vibrations.

However addressing these mayor, dominant, resonances is only part of their purpose. They also “spread out” minor resonances. The design goal here was to have a more even frequency response from the platform from a resonance point of view, the ultimate goal being absolutely neutral / no colouration. To divide larger amplitude peaks into multiple smaller ones. As it turns out the audible impact of this is quite significant.

To clarify I’d like to revert to the Room Acoustics (modes) example referred to above. The origins of the “spiral” design are actually originating from an Acoustic Panel experiment. Actually as Mike correctly referred to earlier in the thread the absolute earliest use of one of the principles was an early graphics logo design for our company, many years ago, but this is not related to our current use.

In this experiment we attempted to create acoustic panels for treating first reflection points. The question here of course being, what would you like the first reflection response to look like? Our focus was on this reflection matching the off axis response of the source, the loudspeaker, as close as possible. It goes without saying for this experiment to have any validity to its theory you need loudspeakers with a good, even off axis response. If it’s uneven why would you bother to reflect this as truthfully as possible… Anyway, we used bamboo boards for this experiment, and while measuring these found out they were altering the frequency response, partially due to board resonances, partially due to uneven absorption (as most, if not all materials would do). This is where we first started using an early version of these spiral cut outs to get an even midrange frequency response from the reflected energy of these boards. Next to this we had to cover a part of the board with thin wool felt to extend the even response into the high frequencies as (any) wood typically absorbs some midrange and reflects most of the high frequency energy. Ofcourse this doesn’t do much, if anything for low frequencies, maybe we’ll try an active platform on the first reflection points someday! ;-) So here the analogy to the Daiza platform ends with a different application but similar sonic end result. Quite interesting imho.

Thank you for taking my question seriously. I appreciate your very interesting answer! As always, the proof is in the listening!

 

Can we know what are the typical prices of Daiza platforms in Europe? Are they already available?

The retail price, not including VAT and shipping for a 400 x 450 x 40 mm size is Euro 500.

For the 500 x 600 x 40 mm size, the retail price, not including VAT and shipping, is Euro 750

VAT in Holland is 21 pct. However if you have a VAT number, then Taiko can ship to you Dutch VAT free

Another standard size is 483 x 400. Let us know what size you are interested in, and Taiko will give you a quote.

There is an order backlog of about 3 weeks now.

FYI, Taiko received a delivery of more than half a ton of panzerholz today !!! So there is no shortage of material for a while ;-)

 

Hello CK,
Ben Lau of Volent Audio deserves a lot of credit, and I suspect you and your group have provided some input too. The Daiza and Tana are prime examples of the results of good manufacturer - client interaction.
As we do CAD engineering and CNC machining in house it’s relatively easy for us to design and supply custom sized platforms with short lead times.

Hello Emile,
Thanks for your kind words on our group.

We do have a lot of interaction with Ben Lau. Another recent Taiko Audio item for which we gave feedbacks to Ben is the Setchi D3.
I got the prototype D3 many weeks ago for home trial, we gave our comments and now the finalized D3 is praised by many HK audiophiles.
http://www.hiendy.com/hififorum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=116164&extra=page=1

Ben is definitely one of the most friendly and helpful hifi dealers in Hong Kong.
And IMO his knowledge in CAS is second to none amongst all hifi dealers/retailers in HK.

 

Ed, one could make an argument to site psus (like Mike’s MSB Powerbases) on Tanas, yes?

If so, then the Evo LPSUs of the Tanas could benefit being on their own Tanas, they’re a psu like any other.

And those Tana Evo psus could benefit from being on their own Tana Evos.

Etc etc, forever and forever, Amen.

 

as far as the Evo spec Tana power supplies (all 4 of them) will each have their own small Daiza to sit upon. and Taiko has engineered their own special footers underneath that is optimal for sitting on the Daiza. those 4 Daiza's will be spiked into my concrete floor through the carpet (Ed measured my floor and found it to be the quietest of the 5 or 6 he has measured). for power, Joe Pittman (who posted earlier in this thread), is putting together a custom 'Hydra' 4 headed power cord for these 4 LPS's. it will be a single plug but 4 separate runs to each LPS. it eliminates plugs and outlets......and should outperform, and be much more cost effective, than any 'uber' added power strip.

as far as the Tripoint and plugs, a question; have you tried the NCF Furutech FI-52m plug? I would assume you have already tried those NCF Furutech's and determined that this Oyaide AP=004 is even better?

right now if I were to change out the stock plug from my Tripoint Troy Sig or Elite it would be to the Furutech NCF.
I use those Furutech plugs everywhere in my system (15 power cords) and they have been wonderful for me. it's too much investment to consider any changes, but if you say that this new Oyaide is even better that is a significant data point to me to keep in mind for the future.
for me fine tuning is the step needed to go beyond the pieces and find that greater experiential whole. but agree it's both fun and some pain too.

Hello Mike,

Thanks for sharing your plan on the EVO Tana psu with us.
It's very well thought-out.
The 4-headed powercord is a great idea!

I would like to share with you my view on power-plugs - Oyaide Armored Series, Furutech NCF etc
Hong Kong audiophiles are very familiar with most brands of audiophile plugs/connectors. because they are widely available in hifi shops in Hong Kong.
We have done a lot of shootouts and mix&match them with various cables.

All brands/models have their respective strong suites & pitfalls.
The Furutech NCF FI-52M is their best power-plug. IMHO it's very well-built but its rhodium plated pins give a "Rhodium Favour".
This when combines with its quietness (bcos of the NCF material & metal/carbon fiber shielding), if using too many of them in a system may make the sound a bit clinical and uninvolving.

The Oyaide Armored Series models are less well-built and are made of raw materials of lower cost when compared to Furutech NCF ... etc.
But the design of the parts/construction/assembly is clever. And the special metal plating on the plastic enclosure surface has provided better shielding effect than the older models of Oyaide.
Using a few Oyaide AP-004 may in certain systems be preferable to using NCF everywhere.

In fact that Troy Signature friend of mine bought another powerplug too - the Ruthenium plated Audio Replas RCP-1RU which wins an award in Japan and is as expensive as NCF.
Although Ruthenium and Rhodium belong to a same periodic table metal group, they seem to have very diff sonic character.
The Audio Replas Ruthenium plated power-plugs and wallsockets have a much warmer and laid back sound than Oyaide AP-004 & NCF.-
He will try it on Troy Signature soon as well.

Another example :
Furutech GTX-D NCF(R) may overall be the best socket in the market.
Some friends of mine in HK don't use Furutech GTX-D NCF(R) for all their home wallsockets.
They prefer to mix & match it with Synergistic Research BLACK UEF Duplex which has a warmer/fuller character.

 

Hello Ron,

Thank you for asking, this is an area I love to chat about, therefore my apologies in advance if this turns into a lengthy reply.

The primary reason for the existence of these cut outs is to reduce the resonances correlated to the physical dimensions of the board. These resonances are not exclusive to Panzerholz but exist in any solid material with fixed dimensions. An easy to understand analogy would be room modes. In fact these resonances are lower (better damped/dissipated) in Panzerholz then any other non-compliant stiff material we know of. This is why Panzerholz is being used to stop bullets, it’s very good in dissipating impact. Another application of Panzerholz is parts for / structural support of very large transformers, as in the size you would find in power plants where it would be exposed to severe, as you can imagine, vibrations.

However addressing these mayor, dominant, resonances is only part of their purpose. They also “spread out” minor resonances. The design goal here was to have a more even frequency response from the platform from a resonance point of view, the ultimate goal being absolutely neutral / no colouration. To divide larger amplitude peaks into multiple smaller ones. As it turns out the audible impact of this is quite significant.

To clarify I’d like to revert to the Room Acoustics (modes) example referred to above. The origins of the “spiral” design are actually originating from an Acoustic Panel experiment. Actually as Mike correctly referred to earlier in the thread the absolute earliest use of one of the principles was an early graphics logo design for our company, many years ago, but this is not related to our current use.

In this experiment we attempted to create acoustic panels for treating first reflection points. The question here of course being, what would you like the first reflection response to look like? Our focus was on this reflection matching the off axis response of the source, the loudspeaker, as close as possible. It goes without saying for this experiment to have any validity to its theory you need loudspeakers with a good, even off axis response. If it’s uneven why would you bother to reflect this as truthfully as possible… Anyway, we used bamboo boards for this experiment, and while measuring these found out they were altering the frequency response, partially due to board resonances, partially due to uneven absorption (as most, if not all materials would do). This is where we first started using an early version of these spiral cut outs to get an even midrange frequency response from the reflected energy of these boards. Next to this we had to cover a part of the board with thin wool felt to extend the even response into the high frequencies as (any) wood typically absorbs some midrange and reflects most of the high frequency energy. Ofcourse this doesn’t do much, if anything for low frequencies, maybe we’ll try an active platform on the first reflection points someday! ;-) So here the analogy to the Daiza platform ends with a different application but similar sonic end result. Quite interesting imho.

Fascinating thanks Taiko, really just fantastic thinking. I have been planning a panzerholz base for my dedicated power inlets and more keen than ever to experiment further. Love your original thinking. Awesome.

 

Hello Mike,

Thanks for sharing your plan on the EVO Tana psu with us.
It's very well thought-out.
The 4-headed powercord is a great idea!

I would like to share with you my view on power-plugs - Oyaide Armored Series, Furutech NCF etc
Hong Kong audiophiles are very familiar with most brands of audiophile plugs/connectors. because they are widely available in hifi shops in Hong Kong.
We have done a lot of shootouts and mix&match them with various cables.

All brands/models have their respective strong suites & pitfalls.
The Furutech NCF FI-52M is their best power-plug. IMHO it's very well-built but its rhodium plated pins give a "Rhodium Favour".
This when combines with its quietness (bcos of the NCF material & metal/carbon fiber shielding), if using too many of them in a system may make the sound a bit clinical and uninvolving.

The Oyaide Armored Series models are less well-built and are made of raw materials of lower cost when compared to Furutech NCF ... etc.
But the design of the parts/construction/assembly is clever. And the special metal plating on the plastic enclosure surface has provided better shielding effect than the older models of Oyaide.
Using a few Oyaide AP-004 may in certain systems be preferable to using NCF everywhere.

In fact that Troy Signature friend of mine bought another powerplug too - the Ruthenium plated Audio Replas RCP-1RU which wins an award in Japan and is as expensive as NCF.
Although Ruthenium and Rhodium belong to a same periodic table metal group, they seem to have very diff sonic character.
The Audio Replas Ruthenium plated power-plugs and wallsockets have a much warmer and laid back sound than Oyaide AP-004 & NCF.-
He will try it on Troy Signature soon as well.

Another example :
Furutech GTX-D NCF(R) may overall be the best socket in the market.
Some friends of mine in HK don't use Furutech GTX-D NCF(R) for all their home wallsockets.
They prefer to mix & match it with Synergistic Research BLACK UEF Duplex which has a warmer/fuller character.

hi CK,

thank you. that explanation is very helpful, and not surprising at all. i don't want to take away from the Taiko focus of this thread, but it's excellent and valuable to get the feedback from HK on the A/C plugs. your post will be a resource for others here i'm sure.

I do view the Furutech NCF plugs and outlets as very open and vivid and they do put demands on everything to be right. I view their use as a consistent open window everywhere I can count on. in that way I don't have to think about trying to balance. yet I respect that 'balancing' might be the right approach for most systems. i prefer the rhodium 'honesty' view in my musical signal path and know that the gear will all be consistent that way and (from my perspective) be true to what they are.......get out of the way of whatever is on the recording. yet others here do also assign 'cold' or 'clinical' to Rhodium plating in the context of their system and taste and i respect that. mixing multiple types of plugs and outlets might be the right compromise for those not all the way to either side.

 

I would like to share with you my view on power-plugs - Oyaide Armored Series, Furutech NCF etc
Hong Kong audiophiles are very familiar with most brands of audiophile plugs/connectors. because they are widely available in hifi shops in Hong Kong.
We have done a lot of shootouts and mix&match them with various cables.

All brands/models have their respective strong suites & pitfalls.
The Furutech NCF FI-52M is their best power-plug. IMHO it's very well-built but its rhodium plated pins give a "Rhodium Favour".
This when combines with its quietness (bcos of the NCF material & metal/carbon fiber shielding), if using too many of them in a system may make the sound a bit clinical and uninvolving.

The Oyaide Armored Series models are less well-built and are made of raw materials of lower cost when compared to Furutech NCF ... etc.
But the design of the parts/construction/assembly is clever. And the special metal plating on the plastic enclosure surface has provided better shielding effect than the older models of Oyaide.
Using a few Oyaide AP-004 may in certain systems be preferable to using NCF everywhere.

Hi CK,

Very interesting. I do overall prefer the Oyaide 004 "character/balance" but cannot deny the Furutech NCF series being ahead on some aspects. Therefore I have been experimenting with replacing the Oyaide shells, I will attach a photo, unsurprisingly the shells make a huge difference in performance but the general platinum vs rhodium character remains. I will order the new AP series at some point but we have bigger fish to fry right now. Out of general interest, did you get any reports from the "NCF effect" wearing off over time?

[

 

Fascinating thanks Taiko, really just fantastic thinking. I have been planning a panzerholz base for my dedicated power inlets and more keen than ever to experiment further. Love your original thinking. Awesome.

Thank you! If you have trouble sourcing Panzerholz let me know, we can supply you with a piece.

I found a few photo's of our acoustic panel experiments:

 

I know this should go in some music thread, but i'm listening to this 2x-dsd download of this 1961 recording of Shostakovitch Cello/Piano Sonata and it's blowing my mind with all the textures and overtones not previously resolved prior to the addition of the Taiko Tana Evo, Daiza upgrades. the emotional involvement is intoxicating. wow!!!

on some music these things make profound differences.

btw; on that link it does show 'Audio Society Free Download'.....whatever that might mean. I've had this for a while and don't know how I acquired it exactly.

 

I like Daniel Shafran too.

 

Hi CK,
Very interesting. I do overall prefer the Oyaide 004 "character/balance" but cannot deny the Furutech NCF series being ahead on some aspects. Therefore I have been experimenting with replacing the Oyaide shells, I will attach a photo, unsurprisingly the shells make a huge difference in performance but the general platinum vs rhodium character remains. I will order the new AP series at some point but we have bigger fish to fry right now. Out of general interest, did you get any reports from the "NCF effect" wearing off over time?

Hello Emile,
If the Oyaide 004 is of your taste, you must buy and listen to the new Oyaide AP-004.

You CNC that metallic shell? Very nice & sturdy!
Yes, the plastic shell of many a/c plugs encourages adverse vibration & is the portal of EMF/RFI pollution entry.

Audio Replas of Japan makes several accessories to tackle this weakness :
https://www.thecableco.com/cpc-iec43sz-se-iec-collar.html
https://www.thecableco.com/cpc-35sz.html
https://www.thecableco.com/cpc-2sz-hg-ac-receptacle-housing-hg.html

 

so what is the consequence of elimination of smearing?

i'm now 2 weeks into having most of my source gear covered with the 'Evo spec' Tana + Daiza'a. this weekend I listened to all digital, and it's becoming clear this is a new paradigm of digital enjoyment. there is a consistent clear window to musical textures and greater degrees of ambient vividness and reduction in distortion. tonality and timbre are more true and real.......the natural textures communicate the expressiveness of the music and connect to me better, the music has more inner light and energy. like a slight layer of opaque plastic has been removed.

which ever resolution or format, I continue to notice what is missing......and that would be any sort of glassiness, congealing, confusion, hardness, or really any sort of overlay of grain or roughness. it's only when it's really gone, that you realize what that is was distortion, and not part of the format or something inherent in the reproduction chain......just the gear being effected by the environment. my system does not cover anything up or pretty them up......it's an open window.

i'm not making any claims of digital verses vinyl or analog, I don't want to confuse what i'm saying. only that this reduction (elimination?) of smearing is a huge step and something important to consider when assessing cause and effect of system building.

and it really affects the music's effect physically on me in my listening.

 

Mike, with such a dramatic improvement in SQ from digital using the new platforms, surely there’s mileage in putting the Powerbases on their own platforms too?

 

Mike, with such a dramatic improvement in SQ from digital using the new platforms, surely there’s mileage in putting the Powerbases on their own platforms too?

whenever I talk about a performance advancements your first reaction is pushing me further. I suppose if you didn't I might feel neglected.

there is a reason why I don't see adding more Evo Tana platforms for the MSB power supplies, beside the obvious one of cost.

first off, they should be on separate platforms as analog and digital power supplies. they each need their own vibe. I had considered stacking the two power supplies on the Evo Tana TS-140 the SGM sits on and moving the SGM to Hardpoint Trinia's. Taiko recommended against it.

second is just space, not only for the platforms, but also for more Tana LPS's plus Dazia's to set them on. 4 of those is already a lot. in fact 4 is already crazy.