I know that Euphony buffers 2 songs in advance if you are streaming an album. It doesn’t do the entire album.
Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
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I know that Euphony buffers 2 songs in advance if you are streaming an album. It doesn’t do the entire album.
Correct. That is also my understanding, from discussions with Željko. That is needed for gapless, something that is still pending for TAS.
+1 on the folder view preference. At least make it an option, Roon. But they will not offer such a pedestrian thing, despite quite a number of users requesting this. They like to dictate the "correct" way to navigate one's music.
I have favorite recordings that are annoying to find on Roon, whereas with folder view in Foobar2000 I could fairly quickly navigate to them. I liked being able to sort by genre or what have you, too, in folder view. And Roon is less than optimal for classical, IMO.
I connect my iPad through ethernet with an adapter to lightning. No Wi-Fi needed.
Folder view is nicely implemented in TAS
logical and clear, not unlike Windows Explorer
Hello - I may of missed it, but I recall seeing talk of a Taiko “mini”?
Is anyone familiar with that?
Is anyone familiar with that?
We'd have to look into that, since we are pre-processing the files anyway it may be acceptable to encrypt them or make them inaccessible/unreadable by other means. Pre-processing the next queued track might be easier and would reduce initial delay.
That is low priority right now. We have a considerable amount of projects in progress, some of which are nearing completion. All of these are optimised to be used with the existing Extreme server and most do expand upon the dual CPU architecture advantage. A mini Extreme with a single CPU right now simply does not look like it is going to meet our standards nor be compatible with where our technology is heading. If we do launch a smaller model it would make more sense to have a dressed down dual CPU server to be able to take full advantage of all our existing and upcoming technology, but that would still need a large chassis, hence we would have to get creative to make it substantially cheaper. We are BTW still considering supporting DIY efforts.
i was referring to local music tracks, where i think (?) i remember an option to load the entire playlist into ram
There you go, that's what I do also except I keep the network plugged in but completely shut down Roon. Also, try HQPlayer installed in memory and then load your music into memory (RAM disk) = best sound in my situation.
For some reason WBF stopped sending me updates when new posts are made to my followed threads. So, I'm a little late with my inputs to the TAS party. However, better late than never, so here goes:
Emile installed TAS on my Extreme early Monday afternoon (my local time -- late in the evening Hengelo time, I asked him if he ever sleeps or gets to see his family!). Since my dCS Vivaldi Upsampler and Vivaldi DAC do not support native DSD, he had to come up with a patch on the fly to enable DoP for DSD in my installation. This worked great, until I changed buffer size for DSD in the dCS ASIO, which broke his patch. No worries though -- Wilson came out with an updated alpha of TAS today which incorporates a user-control allowing toggling DoP on or off. So far DoP DSD is working flawlessly.
Since I was missing in action as regards the on-going TAS discussion here, let me say my user experience has been very similar to Steve's and Mike's -- with the PCM buffer set to Adaptive-1 and DSD buffer to 8192, not only is TAS playback the best sound quality I've ever experienced, but Roon playback has improved as well. As Mike mentioned, the absence of grain, the improvement in microdetail and air, the more expansive and immersive musical environment TAS brings to my living room, all add up to a musically relevant improvement that is extremely (or should I say, Extreme-ly?) seductive. I find myself liking TAS sound quality very, very much.
I, too, have noted that playback of streaming music has really improved, as well as playback of music resident on my Extreme. This is really uncanny. One example, I streamed the late Eva Cassidy's "Fields Of Gold" from her Live At Blues Alley album from Qobuz last night. This is a 16/44.1 file and in the past has been a bit hot and a little grainy on the top end. Not so last night -- Eva was in the room with me and it was one of the most beautiful sounding experiences I've had. I got a little misty thinking about the tragedy of her untimely death. . . and I'm far from being an overly sentimental guy.
As noted by others, this is an alpha release and as such has some bugs -- I can't play any tracks which contain superscript special characters, such as apostrophe, accent marks, umlaut, etc; changing iPad orientation from landscape to portrait leaves a gray unpopulated space at the bottom of the portrait display in Browse and Queue views until the little "refresh" icon in the upper right corner is clicked; lack of gapless playback as already noted. But Emile, Ed and Wilson have been very receptive to all bug reports and have been actively working them, and they have been equally receptive to feature requests.
Besides a way of enabling gapless playback by album or queue, at some point I'd like a Search function for My Music that looks for matches to terms such as Artist or Group name, Album name and/or Track (song) title. With over 60,000+ tracks in my music library on my Extreme a search function would be very helpful.
Other wish-list features for inclusion some time in the future:
The ability to import my Roon playlists intact into TAS. I have a lot of Roon playlists I've set up over the years and being able to import them rather than having to recreate them from scratch would be a real time saver and convenience.
A random play feature that starts (when enabled) after the last track in a queue has played, which plays somewhat loosely related (by genre) selections from Qobuz and Tidal and stored music. This is one of the big features from Roon I like for discovering new music or reminding me of music I already have but haven't played for too long.
I am very impressed by TAS and the effort that has gone into bringing this from idea to reality in six short months. As Steve W so eloquently wrote, the very steep investment in an Extreme music server doesn't just buy a piece of excellent audio hardware, more importantly, it buys world-class customer service and the ongoing commitment of Emile and his very skilled team to provide customers with the very best possible musical experience, not just now, but well into the future. It is not just a product, it's entry into a continuing project devoted to pushing the boundaries of music playback. Chapeau to all! I am extremely happy with the results so far.
Steve Z
Emile installed TAS on my Extreme early Monday afternoon (my local time -- late in the evening Hengelo time, I asked him if he ever sleeps or gets to see his family!). Since my dCS Vivaldi Upsampler and Vivaldi DAC do not support native DSD, he had to come up with a patch on the fly to enable DoP for DSD in my installation. This worked great, until I changed buffer size for DSD in the dCS ASIO, which broke his patch. No worries though -- Wilson came out with an updated alpha of TAS today which incorporates a user-control allowing toggling DoP on or off. So far DoP DSD is working flawlessly.
Since I was missing in action as regards the on-going TAS discussion here, let me say my user experience has been very similar to Steve's and Mike's -- with the PCM buffer set to Adaptive-1 and DSD buffer to 8192, not only is TAS playback the best sound quality I've ever experienced, but Roon playback has improved as well. As Mike mentioned, the absence of grain, the improvement in microdetail and air, the more expansive and immersive musical environment TAS brings to my living room, all add up to a musically relevant improvement that is extremely (or should I say, Extreme-ly?) seductive. I find myself liking TAS sound quality very, very much.
I, too, have noted that playback of streaming music has really improved, as well as playback of music resident on my Extreme. This is really uncanny. One example, I streamed the late Eva Cassidy's "Fields Of Gold" from her Live At Blues Alley album from Qobuz last night. This is a 16/44.1 file and in the past has been a bit hot and a little grainy on the top end. Not so last night -- Eva was in the room with me and it was one of the most beautiful sounding experiences I've had. I got a little misty thinking about the tragedy of her untimely death. . . and I'm far from being an overly sentimental guy.
As noted by others, this is an alpha release and as such has some bugs -- I can't play any tracks which contain superscript special characters, such as apostrophe, accent marks, umlaut, etc; changing iPad orientation from landscape to portrait leaves a gray unpopulated space at the bottom of the portrait display in Browse and Queue views until the little "refresh" icon in the upper right corner is clicked; lack of gapless playback as already noted. But Emile, Ed and Wilson have been very receptive to all bug reports and have been actively working them, and they have been equally receptive to feature requests.
Besides a way of enabling gapless playback by album or queue, at some point I'd like a Search function for My Music that looks for matches to terms such as Artist or Group name, Album name and/or Track (song) title. With over 60,000+ tracks in my music library on my Extreme a search function would be very helpful.
Other wish-list features for inclusion some time in the future:
The ability to import my Roon playlists intact into TAS. I have a lot of Roon playlists I've set up over the years and being able to import them rather than having to recreate them from scratch would be a real time saver and convenience.
A random play feature that starts (when enabled) after the last track in a queue has played, which plays somewhat loosely related (by genre) selections from Qobuz and Tidal and stored music. This is one of the big features from Roon I like for discovering new music or reminding me of music I already have but haven't played for too long.
I am very impressed by TAS and the effort that has gone into bringing this from idea to reality in six short months. As Steve W so eloquently wrote, the very steep investment in an Extreme music server doesn't just buy a piece of excellent audio hardware, more importantly, it buys world-class customer service and the ongoing commitment of Emile and his very skilled team to provide customers with the very best possible musical experience, not just now, but well into the future. It is not just a product, it's entry into a continuing project devoted to pushing the boundaries of music playback. Chapeau to all! I am extremely happy with the results so far.
Steve Z
TAS is indeed remarkable and yes 44.1 on adaptive—1 is the best I’ve ever heard.
However the real stunner of TAS is the sound quality from DSD. As good as PCM is, DSD is even better.
I have the same problem that some albums with super scripts don’t load at all. I understand Winston is working on a fix for that now.
However the real stunner of TAS is the sound quality from DSD. As good as PCM is, DSD is even better.
I have the same problem that some albums with super scripts don’t load at all. I understand Winston is working on a fix for that now.
The beauty of alpha testers is using a multitude of different DACS as this gives valuable data points. For me I am still at 8192 for DSD but now 2048 for PCM as I can only play 44.1 with the adaptive-1 buffer. Using the 2048 buffer I am able to play to DSD512 and PCM 352.8
I agree, Steve.
For example, I am using DoP, so the DSD buffer slidebar disappears, but I am successfully using Adaptive-1 in PCM and able to play 16/44.1 and 24/96 AIFF files; however 16/96 and some 24/96 ALC VBR files don't play.
Report and screenshots sent via TestFlight to Wilson, of course!
Steve Z
Last night I spent a few hours running TAS through it's paces trying all the various formats and sample rates in my music library, as well as all the high resolution sample rates I could find on Qobuz. I agree with the person who noted that being able to see the sample rate/word size in Browse mode *before* actually playing the track would be a very good feature to add to TAS!
My task was made longer not just because I couldn't see sample rates beforehand, but also because music sounded so absorbing and involving that many tracks just pulled me in and there was no way I wasn't going to listen to them all the way to the last note. Not a bad "problem" to have, I must say.
I'll also echo in passing Steve W's comment that a functioning progress bar in Play view would be nice. One that shows buffering occurring, and then transitions to a progress bar when play commences would very helpful. More than once I wasn't sure if a track was actually buffering preparatory to playing, or if the track was just sitting there not playing due to some glitch.
I found with the dCS Vivaldi Upsampler > dCS Vivaldi DAC, DoP set to ON, using the dCS ASIO driver, PCM buffer to Adaptive-1, I am able to play all sample rates from 44.1/16, 44.1/24 through 384/24 AIFF and WAV, as well as DSD64 and DSD128. I haven't yet explored other buffer settings other than briefly comparing sound quality of "null", Adaptive-1 and Adaptive-2 with 44.1 files, all of which played fine. So far, Adaptive-1 is my clear favorite in terms of sound quality.
The only tracks that wouldn't play for me were oddball 96/16 files in ALC format from an early recording experiment with a Korg MR2000 and a couple of 96/24 ALC tracks. Though strangely, some 96/24 ALC tracks from the same album played OK -- I guess I should go back and double-check that there wasn't an apostrophe somewhere in the track name, album name, or path folders (another thing I discovered by using TAS' "View track info" > "More. . ." to see the album location -- an apostrophe or other superscript special character anywhere in the folder path, album title, or track name keeps the track or any tracks in the album from playing)
I'm not sure I can confirm Steve W's observation that DSD tracks sound best with TAS -- to my ears they absolutely do sound superb, but I found that high resolution PCM, particularly 176.4/24, 192/24, 352.8/24 and 384/24 were equally captivating and thrilling to listen to. I also have the impression that using TAS, the improvement from 44.1 to each successive step up the sample-rate ladder is more pronounced and obvious. Which is not to denigrate 44.1 playback -- I also listened to some Redbook standard tracks, both stored and streamed that sounded superb.
I'm still learning my way around all the TAS functions. I haven't figured out if there is a way to set up, name, and save a variety of permanent playlists right now in TAS (that would be a "must-have" feature to consider if there isn't, IMHO), and I'm not sure what the "check box" feature in TAS is supposed to facilitate. (Hint, hint -- in all the spare time you guys have, a more extensive quick start guide to TAS would be helpful). Still, I would say that anyone familiar with a basic digital player app will find TAS very intuitive to use. There are some pretty sophisticated features just below the surface, and clicking on all the buttons in each screen is very instructive.
The more I use TAS the more impressed I am. I'm having lots of fun with the alpha, and I can't wait to see what the Taiko team comes up with for a beta player, down the line.
Steve Z
My task was made longer not just because I couldn't see sample rates beforehand, but also because music sounded so absorbing and involving that many tracks just pulled me in and there was no way I wasn't going to listen to them all the way to the last note. Not a bad "problem" to have, I must say.
I'll also echo in passing Steve W's comment that a functioning progress bar in Play view would be nice. One that shows buffering occurring, and then transitions to a progress bar when play commences would very helpful. More than once I wasn't sure if a track was actually buffering preparatory to playing, or if the track was just sitting there not playing due to some glitch.
I found with the dCS Vivaldi Upsampler > dCS Vivaldi DAC, DoP set to ON, using the dCS ASIO driver, PCM buffer to Adaptive-1, I am able to play all sample rates from 44.1/16, 44.1/24 through 384/24 AIFF and WAV, as well as DSD64 and DSD128. I haven't yet explored other buffer settings other than briefly comparing sound quality of "null", Adaptive-1 and Adaptive-2 with 44.1 files, all of which played fine. So far, Adaptive-1 is my clear favorite in terms of sound quality.
The only tracks that wouldn't play for me were oddball 96/16 files in ALC format from an early recording experiment with a Korg MR2000 and a couple of 96/24 ALC tracks. Though strangely, some 96/24 ALC tracks from the same album played OK -- I guess I should go back and double-check that there wasn't an apostrophe somewhere in the track name, album name, or path folders (another thing I discovered by using TAS' "View track info" > "More. . ." to see the album location -- an apostrophe or other superscript special character anywhere in the folder path, album title, or track name keeps the track or any tracks in the album from playing)
I'm not sure I can confirm Steve W's observation that DSD tracks sound best with TAS -- to my ears they absolutely do sound superb, but I found that high resolution PCM, particularly 176.4/24, 192/24, 352.8/24 and 384/24 were equally captivating and thrilling to listen to. I also have the impression that using TAS, the improvement from 44.1 to each successive step up the sample-rate ladder is more pronounced and obvious. Which is not to denigrate 44.1 playback -- I also listened to some Redbook standard tracks, both stored and streamed that sounded superb.
I'm still learning my way around all the TAS functions. I haven't figured out if there is a way to set up, name, and save a variety of permanent playlists right now in TAS (that would be a "must-have" feature to consider if there isn't, IMHO), and I'm not sure what the "check box" feature in TAS is supposed to facilitate. (Hint, hint -- in all the spare time you guys have, a more extensive quick start guide to TAS would be helpful). Still, I would say that anyone familiar with a basic digital player app will find TAS very intuitive to use. There are some pretty sophisticated features just below the surface, and clicking on all the buttons in each screen is very instructive.
The more I use TAS the more impressed I am. I'm having lots of fun with the alpha, and I can't wait to see what the Taiko team comes up with for a beta player, down the line.
Steve Z
Like you I prefer adaptive-1 but am limited to only 44.1 so for now my PCM is at 2048 and very very good whereas 8192 for DSD is beyond the beyond. For me so far the rewards from TAS start with native DSD at the top of the list
A question for Emile and Ed regarding bug reports and other communications. Last night I used the screenshot function of my iPad to take pictures of various TAS screens and attached them to e-mail with comments using the TestFlight app. This I believe sends the report/screenshot to Wilson, but I'm not sure anyone else on your team sees these e-mails.
What is your preferred method of receiving specific bug reports? I'm not sure posting them to WBF is the best way to forward detailed information about what I find is not working, but I'm happy to submit reports in the format and via the method that is most useful to you and your development team.
Steve Z
What is your preferred method of receiving specific bug reports? I'm not sure posting them to WBF is the best way to forward detailed information about what I find is not working, but I'm happy to submit reports in the format and via the method that is most useful to you and your development team.
Steve Z
Egged on by Emile last night, I purchased and downloaded a Louis Armstrong and a Sarah Vaughn DSD 256 album from High Definition TapeTtransfers, and Wow, I understand what you are talking about
Reviewing the sonic data points we have collected, it would seem that TAS has unleashed DSD and Hi Res to a new level. It’s good for us to know that Qobuz now sounds pretty much the same in the USA as it does in Europe at this new higher level.
With the feedback that we have received we are now drawing up the road map for the Beta release
- an implementation of Gapless playback which can be selected from the XD settings screen
- larger buffer size choices for 16/44
- Play list pause actually works already
- time elapsed display ( we are not sure about a play progress bar)
- display of bit depth and sample rate in Album display and on playing screen
- more integrated / less complicated installation
-Button in App to call for customer service button which will send an email with logs to Taiko
The target time of arrival of the Beta is the end of the year. In 2 weeks time, I will ask for Extreme Owners who are interested in receiving the Beta to send us an email with their Extreme Serial number
A big thank you to all of the Alpha testers for listening and then writing at length, no way we could have made this progress without your time and support
Emile has turned off the lights in Hengelo for the last time this evening, and all the gear is now in Oldenzaal.
I hope the move was uneventful. The new digs look awesome
Ed do I assume alpha users become beta users or do we also need to reply by email
Ed do I assume alpha users become beta users or do we also need to reply by email
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