Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Taiko Audio]

As an experiment, I have now fully disassembled my system here, some of it we used at the show, what we didn't I drove around the building on a cart to induce a degree of mechanical transportation stress. Tomorrow I will set it all up again, double Daiza'ed, and track performance delta over time. Very interested in the outcome.

 

[EuroDriver]

IMHO it is extremely difficult to separate effects due to mains quality from effects due to thermal or mechanical accommodation in such short period evaluation.

I think the mains quality influence is a very poorly studied subject, although it could be done in a systematic way using a battery re-generator similar to the StromTank and polluting the perfect mains signal with distortion and noise in a controlled way. Probably manufacturers of power conditioning devices have developed such devices, but I never read about such studies.

There is also the challenge of correlating what you hear with what you can see on the measuring instruments !

 

[Sablon Audio]

I had some pleasing feedback from a customer who just took delivery of his Extreme earlier this week. Understandably there is plenty more to come once the settings are optimised for his dac (TotalDac12 mk2) and the unit burns in.

Arrived home early and could not wait to begin set-up of the Extreme. I could not go to sleep knowing the Extreme is sitting there and waiting to be installed. I hope I did not do anything wrong but I have it up and running and sounding magnificent. I have been up all night listening, a real adrenaline rush to hear that digital can be reproduced with this kind of depth, height and separation...but most of all the lack of glare/edge that has so defined digital. This is quite an accomplishment!

An update from the same customer after a fortnight of burn in and some optimisation of the settings for his dac.

It is so hard to try to quantify or evaluate the sound of the Extreme as whenever I sit down and want to articulate or communicate what I am hearing...I simply get lost in the sound. It is such a wonderful and euphoric experience I lose any thought of verbal descriptors and just want to listen more. I am spending 4-5 hours everyday going thru my library and hearing music that I know so well that I now appreciate so much more. And in the end I guess that is what this is all about. The Extreme is a emotional making machine!

 

[dminches]

What music software are people using with the Extreme and are people playing things native or are they upsampling/converting?

 

[Esotar]

What music software are people using with the Extreme and are people playing things native or are they upsampling/converting?

Extreme is used by JPLAY Femto with Roon.

Other softwares are available, but upper combination is the best.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

What music software are people using with the Extreme and are people playing things native or are they upsampling/converting?

David,

i play everything native with the MSB Select II with it's hybrid dac which does PCM and dsd both optimally without any conversion. not sure every dac works that way with the Extreme.

i have many files in multiple versions, and to my ears in my system it's quite easy to hear the added ease and refinement when playing the original native format file. not always night and day, but a valuable step up typically.

 

[Sablon Audio]

A couple of people have written to me overnight asking about my customer’s experience. By way of background, he is heavily into both vinyl and reel to reel recordings and also regularly listens to live music. He uses my usb cable in preference to the Gigafilter usb cable that came with his dac.

 

[Taiko Audio]

A report of the X-Fi show from www.hifi-advice.com : XFi 2019 Show Report

All credits go to the speakers which is not unusual But they did award our room with a shared first place:

The Aequo room really surprised me with its airy and transparent sound. The speakers were unknown to me until this point, as were the amplifiers. The rest of the system was comprised of the Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Server, TotalDAC D1-12 mk2 DAC, Vermeer Audio Two preamp, CAAS Audio Elysian 100 mono power amps and the Aequo Audio Stilla loudspeakers.

The above two pictures seem identical but look closer… The top picture was taken by me using a Canon EOS 750D camera with a standard lens. Not high-end but definitely also not entry-level. Below it is the same picture taken by Niels with his Canon EOS-R with a full-frame sensor and a 24-105 f4 L IS lens. Even with these scaled-down images, I’m afraid that the difference is clear. Yup. I should upgrade…
Based in Eindhoven, Aequo Audio is a Dutch brand who develop and produce their loudspeakers in-house. As I understand it, the brand has been received enthusiastically abroad but needs to be picked up more widely in the Netherlands. Well, I for one am impressed and hopefully, I can help bring more attention to this brand with an upcoming review.
So, why am I so impressed? Well, for starters, being small and narrow, these speakers have an unassuming appearance. Further, they are a part active, part passive design which automatically leads to certain presumptions and finally, I never read anything about them and as the Dutch say: “onbekend maakt onbemind” which broadly translates to “what’s unknown remains unloved”.
But never mind all that. Evidently, this room’s acoustics were complimenting the system rather than working against it, and all the components of the system were clearly working well together. These speakers have immense transparency with superb focus and soundstage depth along with a room-filling sound bubble, combined with fast, articulate, deep, and remarkably powerful bass. The latter, of course, is not unexpected from an active woofer section with adjustment controls but in this case, there is something special going on. These speakers deviate from the norm by using purely analog circuitry for the room adjustments. So, there is no DSP and no digitizing of any sort. The makers claim that digitizing the bass part inevitably leads to phase issues that translate to sacrifices in terms of the coherence and soundstaging. If the performance of this system is anything to go by, then there certainly seems to be validity in that statement.

*The mentioned Vermeer Audio preamp was not used, we used the Totaldac D1 driver instead.

 

[totaldac]

Thank you Taiko Audio for having used the d1-twelve-mk2 DAC and d1-driver preamp.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Thank you Taiko Audio for having used the d1-twelve-mk2 DAC and d1-driver preamp.

The transparancy and purity from using the d1-12 unbuffered / direct outputs into the d1-driver was very evident over the pre-amplifier we intended to use.

 

[microstrip]

A report of the X-Fi show from www.hifi-advice.com : XFi 2019 Show Report

All credits go to the speakers which is not unusual But they did award our room with a shared first place:

View attachment 57423



*The mentioned Vermeer Audio preamp was not used, we used the Totaldac D1 driver instead.

Extreme and DCS in the shared first place rooms! I am really looking forward to listen to the Extreme in the DCS Vivaldi ...

 

[LeBlanc]

A report of the X-Fi show from www.hifi-advice.com : XFi 2019 Show Report

All credits go to the speakers which is not unusual But they did award our room with a shared first place.

Would be interesting to know at what day and time Christiaan heard your system, given your earlier comments regarding the SQ improvement throughout the weekend.

 

[EuroDriver]

Would be interesting to know at what day and time Christiaan heard your system, given your earlier comments regarding the SQ improvement throughout the weekend.

we were visited by two web reviewers at about 2 pm on Sunday

So system was good but got quite a bit better during the following 3 hours

 

[diegodgo]

Hello, I have some questions about the illustrious Extreme, honestly I have no financial conditions to buy, but if you can answer I will be grateful.
As far as I know, the linear source after the filtering step is directed to a DC / ATX source, how does this last step done in Extreme? Many manufacturers use multiple leads (various voltages) on the transformer or even multiple transformers on their music servers, because at SGM they use an unconventional approach? From what I saw in Extreme's double rectification, I suppose it's just two lines (V + 0, V + 0)?
On EVO, did you use Optane M.2 on Extreme Optane PCIe NVM and I suppose you already tested this on EVO, did you get a significant gain?
Sorry for the translation errors.

Thanks

 

[Taiko Audio]

Hello diegodgo,

Welcome to the forum!

We do not disclose further information on our power supply configuration beyond what we have shared already.

In the EVO we use M.2 Optane, in the Extreme we use PCIe Optane. It is a significant gain over regular SSD.

 

[justubes]

Then if Roon allows or can be configured to stream Tidal through the Optane, this would mean a big performance jump listening through streaming services i am sure!

 

[diegodgo]

Hello diegodgo,

Welcome to the forum!

We do not disclose further information on our power supply configuration beyond what we have shared already.

In the EVO we use M.2 Optane, in the Extreme we use PCIe Optane. It is a significant gain over regular SSD.

Thank you very much.
I understand the source and one of the secrets of Extreme would not be wise to provide more details than the specs.

Grateful for the answer.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Another show report: Hifi Pig XFi premium audio show 2019 show report part 4

This room was very, very good with a wide and open soundstage, controlled and accurate bass and a lovely mid-band presentation that just drew me into the recording and the recording space. One of my top rooms, easily and one I could have spent much longer sat listening to tunes in.

 

[LeBlanc]

You also got their shout out for the “If this is the future of High End then I’m very happy” room. Congrats!
https://hifipig.com/birds-eye-view-of-the-xfi-premium-audio-show-2019/

 

[Taiko Audio]

You also got their shout out for the “If this is the future of High End then I’m very happy” room. Congrats!
https://hifipig.com/birds-eye-view-of-the-xfi-premium-audio-show-2019/

Missed that, thanks!