The 1st SGM Server EVO Edition in Hong Kong

[CKKeung]

I was shown by Ben Lau an internal photo of the SGM Evo Edition stored in his smartphone.

The EVO Edition got a totally revamped innard.
Very diff from SGMS2015.

This is why I say the lowish upgrade cost is a STEAL!

 

[Taiko Audio]

Hi Emile

I hope this question hasn't been asked and missed by me, but can you tell the readers the difference(s) between the original and the EVO versions

Hi Steve,

You did not miss that bit, thank you for asking. I hope this doesnt get overly technical, if so let me know.

1) The powersupply has been redesigned, of particular interest here are the chokes which have been custom designed by Per Lundahl to meet our specific needs. This has resulted in a rather unique combination of high current capability, high inductance and low dcr which is a level beyond what other manufacturers were able to do.
2) The (fully passive, no fan's) cpu cooling system has been improved, we "delid" the cpu's which means we remove the stock heat spreader and replace it with a solid copper block, we also use the highest available quality copper heatpipes, the heatsinks were already CNC machined from a solid copper block, so we now have a full copper cooling system all the way from cpu die (cores) to and including external heatsinks.
3) We cherry pick the cpu's we use. They are selected for operating temperature and stability. You'd be surprised how wild the variation is between them, we discard a significant percentage. Combined with 2) we can now run them on full "turbospeed", all cores, 24/7, and still have way (20-40 degrees Celcius !) lower temperatures then before, even at 35 degrees Celcius ambient. You would be surprised how significant operating temperature is for sound quality.
4) We also select memory modules to operate under a specific set of conditions/programming we have developed. Each SGM is subsequently individually tuned to ensure they all operate on the same level of performance.
5) We use a different motherboard, the discard rate on those is very low fortunately.
6) The Operating System now resides on Optane storage. Internal music storage on SSD is now optional.
7) We have taken several vibration control measures.
8) There are now 2 expansion slots available which can be fitted with: AES/EBU in and outputs (up to 16 channels, single, dual or quad wire etc), additional UTP or Fibrechannel networking ports, PCIE Storage, Rednet or anything else you can think of that is available on a PCIE card.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Thanks for your reply. Actually my set up is a bit complex as I am going through a trinnov room optimizer which doesn't have any usb input but with AES and Ethernet input. At the same time I guess I can import convolution filter in the SGM ? (And then skip entirely the trinnov processor )

Yes you can import convolution filters in the SGM. The Trinnov is a highly specialized device though so I cannot guarantee it will provide you with the same result.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Hello Emile,

Hope that the info on the Sound Galleries website can be updated too.

Many Thanks!

Will do asap!

 

[Taiko Audio]

Dear Emile,

I guess you must have tested some spdif output cards and network cards on the SGM EVO Edition.

What are your favorites?
JCAT Net Card Femto? RME or Lynx spdif output cards?

Please share. Many thanks again!

Yes I have. Before sharing my impressions I have to disclose that relative to the total package performance the differences between these options are more down to personal preference then absolute performance level. You will get more pronounced differences in for example a stock computer. With that said:
-JCAT Femto, very high quality product, uses a high end intel chipset normally only found on upper level server boards, crystek femto oscillator (obviously). This provides you with a high precision, clean sound, not deliberately(?) "smoothed" out like some others do. You can highly influence the "sound" by the power supply you use to power it. I really like it.
-Lynx vs RME, Lynx is slightly "warmer" and/or "pleasant" sounding, RME is more neutral, transparent and cleaner. In a stock PC I could see why people would prefer the Lynx for having a less "digital" sound. In the EVO however I feel the RME is better choice as it doesn't sound "digital" at all there, just cleaner, faster and more transparent. Next to that the driver/firmware support of the RME is much better, I think the Lynx drivers are like 3 years old where RME releases updates every few months and they're very easy to apply.

 

[Taiko Audio]

I would like to hear one in my Room. How can this be arraigned?
I think an aurender is a good stable sever but for those who want the most a SGM or CUST is a must

We are in the process of retrieving and updating our Demo machines. If you can contact us by e-mail, or PM me your e-mail and/or phone number we can look into arranging a demonstration in your home.

 

[Taiko Audio]

I guess i'm going to have to get this done. been trying to just listen and not worry about gear.

thanks CK for your feedback. what is interesting is that right now my new renderer for the MSB Select II is on equal performance footing to my SGM with USB (with modestly priced USB cable). this upgrade seemingly will push USB/SGM Evo 'beyond' the renderer performance.

I know what 'Evo' spec upgrade did for the LPS's of my Taiko Tana units. so i'm not surprised, just resigned to having better sound. can't help myself. i'll have to get my son to migrate the Roon core to my extra laptop while the SGM takes it's upgrade journey.

That would be an interesting comparison as the performance of your renderer will improve as well, I would love to know which of the 2 interfaces benefits most from these upgrades.

 

[Alrainbow]

We are in the process of retrieving and updating our Demo machines. If you can contact us by e-mail, or PM me your e-mail and/or phone number we can look into arranging a demonstration in your home.

Thanks doing it now

 

[Taiko Audio]

At request a photo (iPhone) and description of our development listening system/room:

Room dimensions are: 3.70x5.65x10.8 meters (12.1x18.5x35.4 feet)
Focal Maestro Utopia EVO loudspeakers
Audionet Stern preamplifier / AudioNet Heisenberg power amplifiers
The DAC on the photo is the Aqua Formula XHD for PCM up to 32/768, for DSD we use the Nagra HD or a modified T+A DAC8 DSD
Source is, of course, the SGM EVO
All equipment is placed on our own developed passive Daiza isolation platforms, normally we'd have some Tana active platforms in there but they're currently situated elsewhere
We have 3 power phases available of which we use just 1 being the least distorted of the 3.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Haven't you guys persevered w your own design Class D amps you were promoting a few years back?

 

[Alrainbow]

At request a photo (iPhone) and description of our development listening system/room:

Room dimensions are: 3.70x5.65x10.8 meters (12.1x18.5x35.4 feet)
Focal Maestro Utopia EVO loudspeakers
Audionet Stern preamplifier / AudioNet Heisenberg power amplifiers
The DAC on the photo is the Aqua Formula XHD for PCM up to 32/768, for DSD we use the Nagra HD or a modified T+A DAC8 DSD
Source is, of course, the SGM EVO
All equipment is placed on our own developed passive Daiza isolation platforms, normally we'd have some Tana active platforms in there but they're currently situated elsewhere
We have 3 power phases available of which we use just 1 being the least distorted of the 3.

May I ask what playback software do you use or Recomend

 

[Taiko Audio]

Haven't you guys persevered w your own design Class D amps you were promoting a few years back?

Discontinued around 2 years ago, didn’t sell well.

 

[Taiko Audio]

May I ask what playback software do you use or Recomend

Roon outputting into HQPlayer. The licenses for both are included in the SGM’s purchasing price and can be deducted if already owned.

 

[Alrainbow]

Great choices best of the best .
The removal of the CPU case I have done its pretty cool how much it allows for a better heat dissipation. Scary when I did it lol. Can you elaborate on psu a bit or trade secrets . How many DC rails ?
I don't up simple but do know your machines are animals when it comes to horse power and clean processes.

 

[Alrainbow]

Sorry one more does it use both roon sever and full gui roon as well.

 

[CKKeung]

I am not in the music or audio industry but only an user/consumer.
When I posted my opinions on EVO on 18th Aug here, I didn't give Ben Lau of Volent Audio, the SGM & MP dealer in Hong Kong any prior notice.

Last night he pinged me and gave me some supplementary info :
- The Memory Player I listened to at his showroom was a 2017 edition. The current model got new features such as graphene-shielded internal wires ; newy trimmed & modded Window OS/other software ; new storage media ; modded Lynx spdif output card ...etc.
- Ben said that The Memory Player performed more allroundedly & optimally with Aqua Formula dac than with the Totaldac Six which I auditioned during the comparison.
- The prices listed on The Memory Player website were list prices, not net prices.

I replied Ben that they should have made their website more accurate and more updated. haha

Anyway I shall go to for a second listen when Ben gets an updated version of The MP, and to pair it with other dac.
Will update you guys in WBF too.

 

[bibo01]

Hi Steve,

You did not miss that bit, thank you for asking. I hope this doesnt get overly technical, if so let me know.

1) The powersupply has been redesigned, of particular interest here are the chokes which have been custom designed by Per Lundahl to meet our specific needs. This has resulted in a rather unique combination of high current capability, high inductance and low dcr which is a level beyond what other manufacturers were able to do.
2) The (fully passive, no fan's) cpu cooling system has been improved, we "delid" the cpu's which means we remove the stock heat spreader and replace it with a solid copper block, we also use the highest available quality copper heatpipes, the heatsinks were already CNC machined from a solid copper block, so we now have a full copper cooling system all the way from cpu die (cores) to and including external heatsinks.
3) We cherry pick the cpu's we use. They are selected for operating temperature and stability. You'd be surprised how wild the variation is between them, we discard a significant percentage. Combined with 2) we can now run them on full "turbospeed", all cores, 24/7, and still have way (20-40 degrees Celcius !) lower temperatures then before, even at 35 degrees Celcius ambient. You would be surprised how significant operating temperature is for sound quality.
4) We also select memory modules to operate under a specific set of conditions/programming we have developed. Each SGM is subsequently individually tuned to ensure they all operate on the same level of performance.
5) We use a different motherboard, the discard rate on those is very low fortunately.
6) The Operating System now resides on Optane storage. Internal music storage on SSD is now optional.
7) We have taken several vibration control measures.
8) There are now 2 expansion slots available which can be fitted with: AES/EBU in and outputs (up to 16 channels, single, dual or quad wire etc), additional UTP or Fibrechannel networking ports, PCIE Storage, Rednet or anything else you can think of that is available on a PCIE card.

This is something I had already decided doing for my next PC system and totally agree with.

If it's allowed to know, which fibrechannel PCI do you go for?
Which Intel cpu are you mounting?

 

[Taiko Audio]

Great choices best of the best .
The removal of the CPU case I have done its pretty cool how much it allows for a better heat dissipation. Scary when I did it lol. Can you elaborate on psu a bit or trade secrets . How many DC rails ?
I don't up simple but do know your machines are animals when it comes to horse power and clean processes.

The details we are willing to disclose will be published on the Sound Galleries website shortly.

Sorry one more does it use both roon sever and full gui roon as well.

We normally use Roon Server only and recommend using an ipad to run Roon Remote (headless operation). It's no problem to run the full Gui though should you wish to connect a monitor / mouse / keyboard and operate it that way.

 

[Taiko Audio]

This is something I had already decided doing for my next PC system and totally agree with.

If it's allowed to know, which fibrechannel PCI do you go for?
Which Intel cpu are you mounting?

There's a bit more to fibre channel then meets the eye, the more recent (better) cards all operate at a 10Gb speed which requires your switch to run at 10Gb as well. If you need to interface to a 1Gb network this can get expensive fast.

We are mounting the Kaby Lake i7-7700K. This may strike you as a bit of an odd choice so I'll elaborate on why we chose to go with this model. We have been running this model in one of our prototype servers for probably close to 18 months. We were never planning to actually use it though and were holding for newer cpu releases hunting single pass xtr (polysinc extreme) DSD512 up sampling capability. Alas all newer releases turned out to come with a net negative sound quality, even compared to the Sky Lake i7-6700K we were using in the original SGM2015. Everything capable of doing single pass DSD512 sounded (significantly) worse then dual pass DSD512 on the 7700K, or even single pass DSD256, Intel X series, Intel i9, AMD threadripper (by far the worst but they are doing a great job driving down Intel pricing). At this point I should probably mention we do have a solution that can do this and sound good at the same time but this would almost double the SGM's retail and significantly increase its size and weight.

The reality is:
-A significant percentage of our users use PCM dacs, therefor maximum quality PCM playback, be it bit perfect or up sampling, is a priority
-The better (higher pricerange) DSD dac's only support DSD128 and/or DSD256, providing these customers with maximum sound quality is a priority
-The few owning DSD512 capable dacs, these are usually lower pricerange dacs and a level below the dac's mentioned above, have a choice of running single pass xtr-DSD256 or dual pass xtr-DSD512, this group of clients usually have the best value/performance equation, however better sound while using single pass xtr-DSD512 undermines this value/performance equation, so they're better off with our current choice aswell.

I hope this clarifies our CPU choice, being relatively affordable also allows us to cherry pick the best performing ones which again makes a larger difference then you would expect.

 

[Alrainbow]

Have you guys tried any Xeon chips ? It’s truly amazing how the CPU chips each have a sound. No one would believe it and the same for main boards too.
I like the sound thus far of a Xeon E3-1275 v3 3.5 ghz
It’s used in two of the three pcs and of course the main board is also older and love that sound
I have the previous SGM running on my NAS it when used as a single pc had a wonderful sound too.
The fact you have considered the sound of chips and the likes is why your product is at the level it is after design and implementation
Pretty amazing posts and thanks for the replies.