Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[wil]

Wil, I'm a massive Genesis and King Crimson fan. Rush too. It was instructive just how "challenging" Extreme was on Red, Discipline, Wind And Wuthering, and Moving Pictures. I'll be revisiting Blue58 to hear these albums anew thru TAS.

I just listened to King Crimson, "Elephant Talk" about 15 times, and you know what they say about silk purses and lipstick on pigs (or something like that). TAS does provide a little more body, depth and transparency, but the recording (or mastering) is what it is. The difference is certainly not night and day-- maybe 6am and 8am? But I'll take what I can get!

 

[spiritofmusic]

Well, I would say get the original pressing or Japanese vinyl, or first issue CD...but that would be cheating.

I listened to the title track Discipline on Barry's previous SGM, and it sounds literally distorted in places.

My Steve Wilson remaster on CD is similarly lacking. The original CD and vinyl are pretty reasonable...

 

[oldmustang]

Gentleman,

After listening to the TAS beta for a few days, going back to Roon sounds like you are listening to cassettes....wow, just WOW!
For once even Steve's penchant to embellish might even be understated

Now about getting the great features of Roon into TAS...........

Thank u Taiko......

A Steve embellish? No way! Steves don't do that, trust me.

Steve Z

 

[Steve Williams]

Gentleman,

After listening to the TAS beta for a few days, going back to Roon sounds like you are listening to cassettes....wow, just WOW!
For once even Steve's penchant to embellish might even be understated

Now about getting the great features of Roon into TAS...........

Thank u Taiko......

Where are your buffers set

 

[wil]

Could someone explain what the different buffers numbers represent and what effect they have? And what are the adaptive settings doing, that is are they changing buffer size according to resolution?

 

[nuway]

I just listened to King Crimson, "Elephant Talk" about 15 times, and you know what they say about silk purses and lipstick on pigs (or something like that). TAS does provide a little more body, depth and transparency, but the recording (or mastering) is what it is. The difference is certainly not night and day-- maybe 6am and 8am? But I'll take what I can get!

Are these recordings from Qobuz or Digital files on the Extreme HDD?

 

[wil]

Are these recordings from Qobuz or Digital files on the Extreme HDD?

Qobuz. I think it will be interesting to hear is users report a larger, or similar, delta of improvement with streamed files or local files. My limited experience so far, through Qobuz only, is that TAS provides more body, dimension and transparency. The music has a better sense of flow and is likely to keep me sitting in a mesmerized state.

For me, these are not gob-smacking differences as other's are reporting.
I wonder what account for that difference? Roon had already been sounding really good, so any improvement is nice!

 

[Taiko Audio]

Could someone explain what the different buffers numbers represent and what effect they have? And what are the adaptive settings doing, that is are they changing buffer size according to resolution?

Hi Wil,

You can access them as outlined on page 14 of the TAS Manual. The buffers allow you a degree of finetuning. Larger is generally more expansive/immersive with more bottom extension, smaller is tighter / more upfront. Somewhat similar to moving from tube amplifiers to class D. There is a limit to these depending on what your driver supports. Some DAC drivers only support 1 value in which case you're best off setting the buffers to Auto which follows your driver defaults. Most XMOS based interfaces allow values between 256 and 2048 for PCM and 8192 to 65536 for DSD. The Taiko USB driver allows PCM values from 32 to 8192 and DSD values from 2048 to 262144. Adaptive employs different values for different sampling rates.

There is a pattern emerging in general preference which is:
-XMOS based interfaces with the Taiko driver PCM:4096, DSD:8192
-XMOS based interfaces with vendor supplied drivers: PCM:Adaptive-1, DSD:8192
-Amanero based interfaces: PCM:2048, DSD:8192 OR PCM:Auto, DSD:Auto (likely depends on the firmware revision)
-Chord DAVE: PCM:256, DSD:8192
-AKdesign and other exotics appear to only work with Auto / Auto

 

[Kingsrule]

Where are your buffers set

4096 & 8192

 

[Taiko Audio]

For those of you running TAS beta, have you compared the sound of internally stored music files versus those stored externally on a NAS? I am wondering which people prefer or if there is no difference.

We have some feedback on that ranging from very close to undetectable. Confirmed seems there are no longer differences in methodology used for ripping CDs.

 

[dminches]

We have some feedback on that ranging from very close to undetectable. Confirmed seems there are no longer differences in methodology used for ripping CDs.

Thanks Emile. I hadn’t heard either way but as I am considering getting an Extreme I am thinking about how much local storage to get. All my music is currently on a NAS. I am fine keeping it that way if I am not compromising sound quality.

 

[matthias]

We have some feedback on that ranging from very close to undetectable. Confirmed seems there are no longer differences in methodology used for ripping CDs.

Is there consensus about SQ of Qobuz vs. stored music with latest TAS?
Thanks

Matt

 

[Taiko Audio]

Is there consensus about SQ of Qobuz vs. stored music with latest TAS?
Thanks

Matt

We are eagerly waiting for more feedback on that, but it should be close too.

 

[matthias]

We are eagerly waiting for more feedback on that, but it should be close too.

It is interesting that with TAS both differences between sources(upstream) and differences between DACs(downstream) seem to be reduced.

Matt

 

[EuroDriver]

We have some feedback on that ranging from very close to undetectable. Confirmed seems there are no longer differences in methodology used for ripping CDs.

For meticulous audiophiles, quite a game changer. We can now retire the Brasso bottle ​

 

[Kris]

Thanks Emile. I hadn’t heard either way but as I am considering getting an Extreme I am thinking about how much local storage to get. All my music is currently on a NAS. I am fine keeping it that way if I am not compromising sound quality.

I tried both more than a year ago and ordered Optane for all. It is much better .
Much less latency on reading files.
Emile was so kind to set a meeting that time to send everything from nas to internal storage.
Nas is not used since.

 

[dminches]

I tried both more than a year ago and ordered Optane for all. It is much better .
Much less latency on reading files.
Emile was so kind to set a meeting that time to send everything from nas to internal storage.
Nas is not used since.

I assume that was long before TAS?

 

[matthias]

I assume that was long before TAS?

Even when there is a tiny difference you will like it to go for internal storage.

Matt

 

[plasmod3]

Curious, is there a way to decrease roon times switching in between players? Still using roon for my non Latin files and the wait between systems is quite long. A roon problem I am sure but am wondering if there are, any tips fron the forum?

 

[Taiko Audio]

Curious, is there a way to decrease roon times switching in between players? Still using roon for my non Latin files and the wait between systems is quite long. A roon problem I am sure but am wondering if there are, any tips fron the forum?

You could delete files from disk you never play and do a “cleanup music library” in Roon.