Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

kswanson27 · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
Never, however I am seeing this in a different thread so perhaps the user is not using an Extreme. Having said that I cannot understand why Extreme users continue to use Roon rather than TAS. The future of the Extreme is with TAS and not Roon IMHO.

I believe Emile has promised a new software update as well as a new card that might obviate the need for a switch but wherever Emile takes his TAS direction that's where I plan to go. I haven't used Roon in over a year and just don't miss it but that's just me.

I rarely use Roon as well but the first update took both the TAS and Roon servers down. The last one just affected the Roon server.

marty · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
Never, however I am seeing this in a different thread so perhaps the user is not using an Extreme. Having said that I cannot understand why Extreme users continue to use Roon rather than TAS. The future of the Extreme is with TAS and not Roon IMHO.

I believe Emile has promised a new software update as well as a new card that might obviate the need for a switch but wherever Emile takes his TAS direction that's where I plan to go. I haven't used Roon in over a year and just don't miss it but that's just me.

Steve, my bad. I posted by error on the Extreme thread so I deleted the post. I should have been on the Lampi thread since it is about the JL Audio Board and not about the Extreme.

As far as Roon vs TAS, it's simple: TAS is clunky, unusable and just not worth the machinations to use it regularly although it's good for ooo's and ahh's on occasion. Their software is not compatible with Roon playlists, their metadata or hyperlinks so it's a non-starter for me, however YMMV. I'll welcome the day TAS offers these features but until then.....

dminches · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
Never, however I am seeing this in a different thread so perhaps the user is not using an Extreme. Having said that I cannot understand why Extreme users continue to use Roon rather than TAS. The future of the Extreme is with TAS and not Roon IMHO.

Steve, the lack of gapless play in TAS makes listening to some music unpleasant. The issue doesn’t exist in Roon.

Steve Williams · Oct 3, 2021

dminches said:
Steve, the lack of gapless play in TAS makes listening to some music unpleasant. The issue doesn’t exist in Roon.

David

I understand completely why it is important for you based on the music you play but for me it is just not an issue.

I use XD player almost always

However........

Based on Emile's posts, it seems that all of this talk will be moot as the Taiko upgrades and new board seem close pending parts availability. I'm betting that these could possibly be the final pieces to the TAS puzzle

TAS is clunky, unusable and just not worth the machinations to use it regularly although it's good for ooo's and ahh's on occasion. Their software is not compatible with Roon playlists, their metadata or hyperlinks so it's a non-starter for me, however YMMV.

I understand as well your rationale and have no disagreement . However I just feel you are missing out on some really great sound.Also, I don't depend on playlists to dictate my listening so once again this just doesn't apply to me. Hence I have not opened Roon in over a year and I have a lifetime subscription.

dminches · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
Based on Emile's posts, it seems that all of this talk will be moot as the Taiko upgrades and new board seem close pending parts availability. I'm betting that these could possibly be the final pieces to the TAS puzzle

It is definitely temporary and really hasn’t bothered me since the majority of the time I listen to music via TAS.

bryans · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
Having said that I cannot understand why Extreme users continue to use Roon rather than TAS. The future of the Extreme is with TAS and not Roon IMHO.

Maybe when they improve their software people will switch.

bryans · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
I understand as well your rationale and have no disagreement . However I just feel you are missing out on some really great sound.Also, I don't depend on playlists to dictate my listening so once again this just doesn't apply to me. Hence I have not opened Roon in over a year and I have a lifetime subscription.

One thing I have always notice in this hobby is something is always suppose to be better sounding. Personally most of the time I find that things just sound different.

Steve Williams · Oct 3, 2021

bryans said:
Maybe when they improve their software people will switch.

It was always a given that this is only temporary and I agree about the seductive ease of use with Roon however what drives me is "sound quality". So the shortcomings of the present software hasn't caused me a hiccup as that is not what motivates me. Again, it will all be moot very shortly and I am betting there will be many converts from Roon to TAS when Emile rolls out his new board, software update etc

bryans · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
It was always a given that this is only temporary and I agree about the seductive ease of use with Roon however what drives me is "sound quality". So the shortcomings of the present software hasn't caused me a hiccup as that is not what motivates me. Again, it will all be moot very shortly and I am betting there will be many converts from Roon to TAS when Emile rolls out his new board, software update etc

Oh I'm sure there will be people who will switch. I also bet there will be people who will not. Again "sound quality" is subjective to the person listening to it. I wish I had a dollar everytime someone said product A was the best sound ever...

Steve Williams · Oct 3, 2021

bryans said:
One thing I have always notice in this hobby is something is always suppose to be better sounding. Personally most of the time I find that things just sound different.

I can also understand that as my mantra has always been (when auditioning something new in my system) "does it sound better or just sound different, and if better how so"

So it's possible that for you the things that make it sound different are the same 'things' which, for me, make it sound "better"

For me, clarity, tone, timbre, dynamics and pace.

I found a huge uptick when Emile released the Taiko TAS USB Board. Everything for my ears since then has delivered pretty darn good on what I am searching. The software presently is being worked on since day 1 to make TAS the best sonic quality and based on a few screen shots Emile teased us with I am betting the new updates and boards will make a lot of non TAS users reconsider

bryans · Oct 3, 2021

Steve Williams said:
I can also understand that as my mantra has always been (when auditioning something new in my system) "does it sound better or just sound different, and if better how so"

So it's possible that for you the things that make it sound different are the same 'things' which, for me, make it sound "better"

For me, clarity, tone, timbre, dynamics and pace.

I found a huge uptick when Emile released the Taiko TAS USB Board. Everything for my ears since then has delivered pretty darn good on what I am searching. The software presently is being worked on since day 1 to make TAS the best sonic quality and based on a few screen shots Emile teased us with I am betting the new updates and boards will make a lot of non TAS users reconsider

I agree with everything you said. I will just wait until the software is released and I am able to hear it before proclaiming it better.

dminches · Oct 3, 2021

bryans said:
Maybe when they improve their software people will switch.

I don’t know the statistics but I would guess that the majority of people with an Extreme are running TAS and not Roon.

Maybe the Taiko team knows.

bryans · Oct 3, 2021

dminches said:
I don’t know the statistics but I would guess that the majority of people with an Extreme are running TAS and not Roon.

Maybe the Taiko team knows.

73.2% of people with an Extreme use Roon. (Just kidding)

Taiko Audio · Oct 4, 2021

Kris said:
Started some early tests and the differences are very big .
I knew based on my experience that I can get any kind of SQ out of extereme by just tuning my switches and router.
But if I add different routers this becmes much more noticable.
Hardwere is one thing ( type of processor, number of cores, memory size, memory type - ddr2 , 3 or 4,)
But the other very importat thing is softwere and its settings.
To stay consistent in that I need to set them equal or to know what are the key settings.

So I have a few questions to Emile
what are your basic Router settings?
I think the most important is MTU size (69 - 9000) for the ports in router.

firewall is a must but it looks it slowes the internal transfer of the packets very significant.
I turned firewall in one router totally off and is a significant step up.
so if firewall is used more expensive router solutions are going to be favorable.

What are your basic switch settings:
is it L2 or L3 switch ?
Jumbo frame on / of
size of jumbo frame
APD
flow control on /off
IEEE 802.3az on/off
QoS priority type DSCP / CoS/ Ip precedence
QoS mapping priority values
LLDP properties values ( TLV adv interval, hold multiplyer, reinitiazing delay, transmit delay)

flow controll ON is a must in all of them.
APD looks like a important to keep it ON.
Jumbo frame softens and makes the music slower but I found it also adds less clarity and I tend
not to like it as much. Prefer to keep it off.

I have MTU at 9216
Jumboframes disabled
Flowcontrol disabled (both RX & TX)
802.1x disabled
Keepalive disabled on all ports
Spanning tree at RSTP with priority at 32768
Vlan enabled, set to untagged
Switch port modes routing disabled, switching enabled, security disabled
IPv6 disabled
I do have thread detection partially enabled

This may not give you the best results since this is a busy network. However a high rate video stream does not impact SQ.

Taiko Audio · Oct 4, 2021

dminches said:
I don’t know the statistics but I would guess that the majority of people with an Extreme are running TAS and not Roon.

Maybe the Taiko team knows.

The vast majority runs Roon.

Taiko Audio · Oct 4, 2021

bryans said:
I agree with everything you said. I will just wait until the software is released and I am able to hear it before proclaiming it better.

I don't think there's anybody in the ~200 participant BETA test group who does not feel TAS to sound better then Roon. However the limitations imposed by using Logitech Media Server which subsequently is routed through our bridge and player apps makes the user experience uncompetitive to Roon. Hence this BETA is for sound quality evaluation ONLY. TAS is End-Of-Life and will be replaced with XDMS.

Taiko Audio · Oct 4, 2021

marty said:
Steve, my bad. I posted by error on the Extreme thread so I deleted the post. I should have been on the Lampi thread since it is about the JL Audio Board and not about the Extreme.

As far as Roon vs TAS, it's simple: TAS is clunky, unusable and just not worth the machinations to use it regularly although it's good for ooo's and ahh's on occasion. Their software is not compatible with Roon playlists, their metadata or hyperlinks so it's a non-starter for me, however YMMV. I'll welcome the day TAS offers these features but until then.....

Roon playlists, metadata and hyperlinks are stored in a proprietary format. Ideally you'd want to have your playlists stored in a non proprietary industry standard format which means you would be able to use them in any server/playback application.

TAS is about Sound Quality only, it uses Logitech Media Server as its frontend, a deliberate choice made for fast deployment, we will not further develop that.

XDMS is not just about Sound Quality, but also about functionality beyond what Roon provides, like support for more streaming services beyond Tidal/Qobuz. Further to that, the past has proven it's a good thing to not have all your bets placed on one horse.

Now the whole TAS/XDMS software development process has provided us with invaluable insights in what affects Sound Quality in software, which has already led to significant advances in Roon Sound Quality with a lot more to come. I see no immediate roadblocks to just happily keep on using Roon in the near future. However we have no control over their update policy. Malfunctions following their updates is currently pretty benign, mainly database corruptions (do make sure to keep backups) at about a 1% rate for each update. But what if an update breaks something on a larger scale? IMHO an alternative playback application is now mandatory.

seeteeyou · Oct 4, 2021

Taiko Audio said:
I forgot to add we are also discussing adding PGGB based real-time and/or offline up/down/resampling/noise shaping and volume control in TAS with the PGGB author. This can have some pretty distinct advantages with various DACs for various reasons,

Intel® oneAPI Threading Building Blocks
https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/oneapi/components/onetbb.html

Basically PGGB-RT should require the following file

Did anyone compare different versions of tbb12.dll and could there be any differences (in terms of SQ or up/down/resampling performance etc.) since the corresponding sizes should be ranging anywhere from under 150 KB to well over 1 MB?

https://github.com/oneapi-src/oneTBB/releases/download/v2021.3.0/oneapi-tbb-2021.3.0-win.zip

oneapi-tbb-2021.3.0\redist\intel64\vc14\tbb12.dll
407,464 bytes

oneapi-tbb-2021.3.0\redist\intel64\vc14_uwp\tbb12.dll
136,608 bytes

https://globalcdn.nuget.org/packages/inteltbb.redist.win.2021.4.0.622.nupkg

runtimes\win-x64\native\tbb12.dll
999,872 bytes

w_BaseKit_p_2021.4.0.3421_offline.exe as linked below

https://github.com/oneapi-src/oneapi-ci/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml

Extracting both files from w_BaseKit_p_2021.4.0.3421_offline.exe

packages/intel.oneapi.win.tbb.runtime,v=2021.4.0-622/data1.cab
packages/intel.oneapi.win.tbb.runtime,v=2021.4.0-622/oneapi-tbb-for-installer_p_2021.4.0.622.msi

Then extract tbb12.dll from oneapi-tbb-for-installer_p_2021.4.0.622.msi with either lessmsi or Universal Extractor 2

https://github.com/activescott/lessmsi/releases/download/v1.8.2/lessmsi-v1.8.2.zip
https://github.com/Bioruebe/UniExtract2/releases/download/v2.0.0-rc.3/UniExtractRC3.zip

tbb\2021.4.0\redist\intel64\vc_mt\tbb12.dll
999,872 bytes

tbb\2021.4.0\redist\intel64\vc14\tbb12.dll
285,112 bytes

https://audiowise-canada.myshopify.com/products/pggb-it2

tbb12.dll
1,312,112 bytes

Taiko Audio · Oct 4, 2021

seeteeyou said:
Did anyone compare different versions of tbb12.dll and could there be any differences (in terms of SQ or up/down/resampling performance etc.) since the corresponding sizes should be ranging anywhere from under 150 KB to well over 1 MB?

No but will do, thanks for the tip.

Muni · Oct 4, 2021

Addicted to hifi said:
Welcome muni To wbf.

I was just adding another addict - thank you!

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