XDMI “started” with the Olympus. Taiko will have to comment on whether it will be retro-fitted to the Extreme.
Introducing Olympus & Olympus I/O - A new perspective on modern music playback
- Thread starter Taiko Audio
- Start date
XDMI “started” with the Olympus. Taiko will have to comment on whether it will be retro-fitted to the Extreme.
It’s coming in the future, Q2 or Q3 2025.
It has always been my experience (so far with Extreme) that WAV is better than FLAC (or any other compressed format), audible but perhaps not a night and day difference in most cases. Some FLAC files compress by 2/3 or even 3/4 (that is, the file size is 1/3 or 1/4 of uncompressed WAV file size) and de-compression in playback invariably introduces jitters (especially with highly compressed FLAC files). Streaming from Qobus is presumably via its compressed FLAC database. Despite claims, I continue to doubt streaming from Qobus with its compressed database is as good as local WAV playback in terms of SQ.
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It also has been my experience that format in excess of 24/96 invariably sounds dull (I have many 24/192 albums; none sounds good). I converted 2 albums (of big symphonies) from 24/192 to 24/44.1 via dbpoweramp software and heard an audible improvement (more transparent or less congested). I intend to convert all 24/192 files to 24/44.1 going forward. Also my experience that WAV sounds better than DSD (WAV more vivid, vibrant, sharper) even for a sigma-delta DAC like Horizon. Albums with the best sound are mostly in red book format (even with Extreme). I am amazed that some albums recorded in the mid- or late-1950s sound more vivid or immediate than albums recorded recently in native 24/192 or 24/96 (e.g., Monteux's RCA Tchaikovsky symphonies, otherwise dated, compared to the latest hi-res ones which all sound lumpy, including Honeck's recordings on Reference label).
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I went to Volent Audio in Hong Kong, and was able to compare:
A- Olympus+IO -> USB -> Totaldac Sublime ->
B- Olympus+IO -> XDMI analog ->
In that system/room, for me, Olympus+IO -> USB -> Totaldac Sublime -> preamp sounded better than O+IO -> XDMI analog. However, it was not far.
He did not have the XDMI AES installed in the O+IO, so I could not compare Olympus+IO -> xdmi AES -> Totaldac Sublime -> preamp.
AES is the native connection used in Totaldac, so I suppose this will sound better, because in my system the Olympus with XDMI/AES sounds much better than Olympus USB feeding the Totaldac Sublime. For me, the 24/192 (and DSD64 DoP) limitation of AES is not a problem.
He did not have the Live Clock update to the Totaldac Sublime and did not have the Sublime update to the Totaldac Drivers XLR mk2.
I have not tried the XDMI-analog in my system because I need two digital inputs and don't use a preamp. I use the Totaldac Drivers Sublime XLR and the Totaldac digital volume.
So next step for me is to perform the Live Clock updates to my Totaldac Sublime DAC.
Hopefully, the next version (Oct/2025?) of the XDMI analog will have at least two digital inputs (even if optional), and will be a meaningful upgrade vs. the current version.
A- Olympus+IO -> USB -> Totaldac Sublime ->
B- Olympus+IO -> XDMI analog ->
In that system/room, for me, Olympus+IO -> USB -> Totaldac Sublime -> preamp sounded better than O+IO -> XDMI analog. However, it was not far.
He did not have the XDMI AES installed in the O+IO, so I could not compare Olympus+IO -> xdmi AES -> Totaldac Sublime -> preamp.
AES is the native connection used in Totaldac, so I suppose this will sound better, because in my system the Olympus with XDMI/AES sounds much better than Olympus USB feeding the Totaldac Sublime. For me, the 24/192 (and DSD64 DoP) limitation of AES is not a problem.
He did not have the Live Clock update to the Totaldac Sublime and did not have the Sublime update to the Totaldac Drivers XLR mk2.
I have not tried the XDMI-analog in my system because I need two digital inputs and don't use a preamp. I use the Totaldac Drivers Sublime XLR and the Totaldac digital volume.
So next step for me is to perform the Live Clock updates to my Totaldac Sublime DAC.
Hopefully, the next version (Oct/2025?) of the XDMI analog will have at least two digital inputs (even if optional), and will be a meaningful upgrade vs. the current version.
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i may be wrong, but my understanding is that roon core outputs pcm, which does not preclude it streaming via flac (or other compressed lossless)
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Ive heard Marty's .wav files and the compared flac files and they really are a big uptick
something is sticking out in my aging mind. I somehow remember Marty bringing .wav to the attention of the XDMS developers and beta testers on Discord. I seem to remember that at some point there was a backend up date where there was a huge uptick in SQ and rumor had it that XDMS wa converting files to .wav, or is that just a fabric of my aging mind
. It's been a while since I have used XDMS but somehow this sits in my mind
something is sticking out in my aging mind. I somehow remember Marty bringing .wav to the attention of the XDMS developers and beta testers on Discord. I seem to remember that at some point there was a backend up date where there was a huge uptick in SQ and rumor had it that XDMS wa converting files to .wav, or is that just a fabric of my aging mind
. It's been a while since I have used XDMS but somehow this sits in my mindI believe Ed (who heads the XDMS project) consulted with Cat6man (who has spoken often of what he finds to be the superiority of WAV) about an XDMS conversion.Ive heard Marty's .wav files and the compared flac files and they really are a big uptick
something is sticking out in my aging mind. I somehow remember Marty bringing .wav to the attention of the XDMS developers and beta testers on Discord. I seem to remember that at some point there was a backend up date where there was a huge uptick in SQ and rumor had it that XDMS wa converting files to .wav, or is that just a fabric of my aging mind
There was some talk about different flac CODEC engines for XDMS if I recall correctly, but I don't know what was decided.
Someone mentioned a sound quality difference between what XDMS was using and the latest ffmpeg implementation of flac, though my imperfect understanding of ffmpeg is that it is much more than a simple flac algorithm and encompasses video and multimedia as well.
So where is flac decompression/conversion (if any) occuring in the Olympus/Roon ecosystem?
Steve Z
yes, i've been on my hobby horse about wav versus flac for years now, going back to my hqplayer days.
i've gone in to see BobV at Rhapsody a few times this year to listen to the extreme and olympus.
over the past few years, my tests with the extreme had convincingly showed me (plus Ed and assorted friends) that WAV was superior to FLAC or qobuz, using my totaldac rigs. this is not the case for every track but on many, it is very obvious to hear.
setup: extreme--usb to sotm reclock/convert to aes/ebu--totaldac reclocker--totaldac triunity
(no live clock upgrade yet)
my first visit this year we compared: (with his wonderful allsyvox speakers, xdmi analog with about 7-10 days burn in)
1. extreme--usb-esoteric dac (WAV)
2. olympus+io--xdmi analog (qobuz)
in comparing 1 and 2, it was unexpectedly close with 2 having a wider soundstage but not blowing extreme+wav out of the water. i'd give 2 a SQ gain of 20-30%, not at all what i had expected. because now we know the xdmi-analog needs more time to break in, plus qobuz requires flac decoding, i can't really assess how much the olympus+io was limited by burn in time versus flac decoding.
my second visit (same speakers) was olympus+io only, comparing WAV local files and the same music on qobuz, but now there had been over a month of burn in time for the xdmi analog. here the WAV was, as BobV said, "night and day" better. my objective for the visit to rhapsody was to determine if the WAV/FLAC SQ delta still existed in the Olympus and it clearly did. since the olympus is so very low noise, i'm quite surprised the added computation processing to decode flac could be audible. my guess is something else is going on. or is it somehow system dependent?
after this, we all went downstairs to listen to bobV's wonderful SET driven horns, using the xdmi-analog output and only listening to local WAV files. this was alsolutely EXQUISITE, just stunning. we didn't even try streaming and went into pure listening (not analyzing) mode. as steve williams has said, 'you can't unring the bell'. the sound was so good that i found myself wanting an olympus even though it is way out of my price comfort zone. i can't wait for some of that trickle down goodness to come to the extreme.
i've since done a little bit screwing around with various music converter programs but really have not been able to draw useful conclusions and i do not have the requisite skills (or patience?) or tools to dig into the formatting of music files, bit level comparisons, decoding and buffering strategies in software etc. Ed et taiko are aware of this and are looking into it. i trust they will get to the bottom of this. i've been in the background on this for a while and hope that since the cat is now out of the bag, we'll have some patience while taiko digs themselves out from under a pile of silver anodization. i expect 2025 to bring even better SQ, particularly for streaming.
miscellaneous:
--a great track to use is the Weaver's "guantanamera" from their live concert at carnegie hall (Red Book version, i don't like the 24-96 version)
--my default music converter has always been dbpoweramp which, after fixing metadata in a tag editor, i use to convert flac sources to wav.
--my dac is limited to 24-192 so higher bit rates are a non-issue here.
--all my SQ evaluations of WAV/FLAC have been red book only, which is the vast majority of the music i listen to.
--if everyone had ordered a black olympus, by now we'd probably have them all shipped AND the wav/flac fix available!!!!
fascinating VPN. thanks for the review. i will get my triunity and reclocker updated to live clock in the next few months. it will be very interesting to hear the xdmi/aes output to totaldac in the future, as i'm sure the aes/ebu will eclipse the usb out of the olympus.
Not surprised that it confirms my experience all these years (even with Extreme). Thanks. All the reports regarding superior streaming SQ (compared to local playback) appeared to be based on FLAC. Qobus streams compressed PCM. That is why I remain skeptical of the claimed streaming SQ superiority in comparison to local WAV playback. How can a FLAC file compressed to 1/3 or even 1/4 (the maximum compression ratio) of WAV size retain the same SQ when heavy-duty de-compression happens in real time? Too good to be true.yes, i've been on my hobby horse about wav versus flac for years now, going back to my hqplayer days.
i've gone in to see BobV at Rhapsody a few times this year to listen to the extreme and olympus.
over the past few years, my tests with the extreme had convincingly showed me (plus Ed and assorted friends) that WAV was superior to FLAC or qobuz, using my totaldac rigs. this is not the case for every track but on many, it is very obvious to hear.
setup: extreme--usb to sotm reclock/convert to aes/ebu--totaldac reclocker--totaldac triunity
(no live clock upgrade yet)
my first visit this year we compared: (with his wonderful allsyvox speakers, xdmi analog with about 7-10 days burn in)
1. extreme--usb-esoteric dac (WAV)
2. olympus+io--xdmi analog (qobuz)
in comparing 1 and 2, it was unexpectedly close with 2 having a wider soundstage but not blowing extreme+wav out of the water. i'd give 2 a SQ gain of 20-30%, not at all what i had expected. because now we know the xdmi-analog needs more time to break in, plus qobuz requires flac decoding, i can't really assess how much the olympus+io was limited by burn in time versus flac decoding.
my second visit (same speakers) was olympus+io only, comparing WAV local files and the same music on qobuz, but now there had been over a month of burn in time for the xdmi analog. here the WAV was, as BobV said, "night and day" better. my objective for the visit to rhapsody was to determine if the WAV/FLAC SQ delta still existed in the Olympus and it clearly did. since the olympus is so very low noise, i'm quite surprised the added computation processing to decode flac could be audible. my guess is something else is going on. or is it somehow system dependent?
after this, we all went downstairs to listen to bobV's wonderful SET driven horns, using the xdmi-analog output and only listening to local WAV files. this was alsolutely EXQUISITE, just stunning. we didn't even try streaming and went into pure listening (not analyzing) mode. as steve williams has said, 'you can't unring the bell'. the sound was so good that i found myself wanting an olympus even though it is way out of my price comfort zone. i can't wait for some of that trickle down goodness to come to the extreme.
i've since done a little bit screwing around with various music converter programs but really have not been able to draw useful conclusions and i do not have the requisite skills (or patience?) or tools to dig into the formatting of music files, bit level comparisons, decoding and buffering strategies in software etc. Ed et taiko are aware of this and are looking into it. i trust they will get to the bottom of this. i've been in the background on this for a while and hope that since the cat is now out of the bag, we'll have some patience while taiko digs themselves out from under a pile of silver anodization. i expect 2025 to bring even better SQ, particularly for streaming.
miscellaneous:
--a great track to use is the Weaver's "guantanamera" from their live concert at carnegie hall (Red Book version, i don't like the 24-96 version)
--my default music converter has always been dbpoweramp which, after fixing metadata in a tag editor, i use to convert flac sources to wav.
--my dac is limited to 24-192 so higher bit rates are a non-issue here.
--all my SQ evaluations of WAV/FLAC have been red book only, which is the vast majority of the music i listen to.
--if everyone had ordered a black olympus, by now we'd probably have them all shipped AND the wav/flac fix available!!!!
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Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Co-Owner, Administrator
So here’s my next fun question of the day. My wife told me that my NAS which was in the downstairs bedroom had to go. It was functioning perfectly wired into my home router. My original goal was to have my NAS in my sound room powered via the Taiko DCD but my LPS did not have enough power to drive the DCD Taiko router and switch and now my 4 bay Qnap TS-464 with 4 x 4 TB HDD I reached out to Alex Crespi from Uptone Audio to inquire about doing all of the above with his JS-2 LPS. He said there were no doubts in his mind it would be up to the task and suggested either powering the NAS via the DCD or via the 2nd rail on the JS-2. I was interested in using the DCD for no other reason than seeing what sonic change if any would be imparted using different outputs on the DCD.
So here’s my question. Who is powering their NAS via the DCD and which out put are you using and have you tried different outlets with their different filters. If so what difference if any are you hearing
Presently I am using DEFAULT 2 and things sound terrific. Has anyone tried different other than DEFAULT. If so which ones and what was the difference.
As an aside Alex was dead on re the JS-2. He said I might see some flickering red lights on the rear of the unit which would mean I’m close to maxing out on power. If I ss a solid red light it means the JS-2 could not power all of the above. I’m happy to report that I don’t even see any flickering red light as the JS-2 is up to the task. What a neat little unit for the price. I also purchased two of his DC cables and am very happy either sound.
So who’s done the experiment and what output are you using.
So here’s my question. Who is powering their NAS via the DCD and which out put are you using and have you tried different outlets with their different filters. If so what difference if any are you hearing
Presently I am using DEFAULT 2 and things sound terrific. Has anyone tried different other than DEFAULT. If so which ones and what was the difference.
As an aside Alex was dead on re the JS-2. He said I might see some flickering red lights on the rear of the unit which would mean I’m close to maxing out on power. If I ss a solid red light it means the JS-2 could not power all of the above. I’m happy to report that I don’t even see any flickering red light as the JS-2 is up to the task. What a neat little unit for the price. I also purchased two of his DC cables and am very happy either sound.
So who’s done the experiment and what output are you using.
i personally have no problem imagining that flac could sound as good as wav. emile-et-al have all shown the ability to lower various noise sources and since flac is lossless, that should be the case here as well. we're just not there yet but i see no fundamental reason that we can't get there.
FLAC is lossless, but de-compression or de-coding in real time invariably introduces jitters. I suspect that Olympus with its lower noise floor and higher transparency makes the FLAC-WAV difference clearer than Extreme. It has been reported that hi-res files in excess of 24/96 sound worse via Olympus because of the higher computing processing demand (also why on earth we need to have such high-density files well in excess of human hearing). I will do an experiment when I get mine. But, as I reported above, I heard an improvement in clarity via Extreme when I converted two 24/192 albums to 24/44.1 a few days ago. WAV always sounds better to my ears. If a remastered album in 24/96 or 24/192 (many classic analog recordings have been remastered several times) sounds better than the earlier remastered album in redbook format, it is because of the more careful re-remastering process (going thru the original tapes). Think of Solti's classic Wagner Ring cycle (first redbook, then 24/96, now 24/192 with the belated revelation that the earlier 24/96 was not based on the original tapes). I just converted the new 24/192 to 24/88.2 (and wait for Olympus to confirm the superiority over 24/192; I could convert to 24/44.1 and probably it sounds better or no different than 24/88.2). When I use dbpowseramp to decomprss a highly compressed FLAC album, I can see that the computer takes a significantly longer time in decompression. Extreme/Olympus is a computer doing such decompression in real time if fed with FLAC. The extra processing and resulting time-domain difference (no matter how slight if I use the term correctly) would introduce jitters.
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Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Hmmm. I haven’t read that but I’m not hearing what you’re saying when I play 24/192 in my system. How about 24 /352 files. They sound darn good in my system.
That would have been my report when listening to XDMI Analog Steve. I took various test tracks and down/upsampled them from 1fs to 16fs and compared them. SQ for me seemed to peak between 96k and 192k tracks (qualitative assessment)
Your system is obviously different with the XDMI digital link to your Horizon 360
Your system is obviously different with the XDMI digital link to your Horizon 360
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Co-Owner, Administrator
my personal thoughts , and Ive said it here before that listening to my O/IO with XDMI digital, all files to my ears sound fantastic, I really just play the music now and have stopped listening to the format in which they were recorded. The one thing I can also say for certain is the apparent volume on a DSD file when compared to a PCM file hi Rez file of the same song at the same gain, is lower and my gain has to be adjusted upwards accordingly
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