Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[canigo]

this thread has become unruly, seriously. Love that we have it, but impossible to sift through for details, and now we have all the beta testing details, again, great to see progress, but realistically it would be fantastic to have a Taiko forum, and some seperate threads for all of the great topics... I know it has been brought up many times, maybe even a roadmap thread, with links to all the subtopics. LOL. I don't know?

 

[dminches]

this thread has become unruly, seriously. Love that we have it, but impossible to sift through for details, and now we have all the beta testing details, again, great to see progress, but realistically it would be fantastic to have a Taiko forum, and some seperate threads for all of the great topics... I know it has been brought up many times, maybe even a roadmap thread, with links to all the subtopics. LOL. I don't know?

The vast majority of the posts are about the playback software (XDMS and Roon) which seems appropriate given that there is nothing going on with hardware until parts are available for the ethernet card and switch. Seems appropriate to me.

What else should we be talking about here?

 

[bryans]

this thread has become unruly, seriously. Love that we have it, but impossible to sift through for details, and now we have all the beta testing details, again, great to see progress, but realistically it would be fantastic to have a Taiko forum, and some seperate threads for all of the great topics... I know it has been brought up many times, maybe even a roadmap thread, with links to all the subtopics. LOL. I don't know?

Yes I agree with you on this. I honestly don't know how anyone can shift through this thread as it seems to cover everything from hardware updates, software testing, Roon, any personal issue someone might be having and so on.

 

[bryans]

The vast majority of the posts are about the playback software (XDMS and Roon) which seems appropriate given that there is nothing going on with hardware until parts are available for the ethernet card and switch. Seems appropriate to me.

What else should we be talking about here?

The vast majority as of late have been about playback software. Just seems like it would be easier to follow if the topic of the thread was more specific.

 

[nonesup]

Of note as well I found when I subscribed to Idagio there seem to be bugs that followed. I have no idea whether that is the reason or it is a bug. I found that it became impossible to add Idagio albums or tracks into queue. Further I found an occasional same problem on Quobuz where I couldn’t add an album or track to queue. Two sessions with Ed revealed something very interesting. For reasons yet to be determined my queue became clogged which shouldn’t happen. Here is what he found as a work around to unclog your queue should anyone find similar issues.
Ed clicked on a random album and clicked the “ queue all” button and nothing went into queue. He verified by testing random albums in Tidal and Idagio and Qobuz. Then when he saw nothing in queue. he then went to an album and clicked the add to queue button. Checking showed nothing in queue.

now here’s where it got interesting. I’ve used this little trick ever since …..

Ed took the experiment one step further. He opened a random album and clicked add to queue of sone, many or all tracks of an album. Still nothing in queue. Ed then clicked the “ play all” button at top left and much to our amazement every friggin song played even though there is nothing in queue

I’ve found sometimes if I click “play all”the album will load into queue and play everything.
Usually you have to “queue all” and then play all

so if you have this issue merely add to queue individual tracks and even though they don’t show up in queue they play perfectly.when you click the “play all” button

yes i have that same problem

 

[Christiaan Punter]

Interrupting my "happy dance" after hearing that an android tablet can sound better than an iPad, I wonder if closing out of the app completely, after setting up the music queue, would be best.

While android and iOS may have different background and keep alive communication protocols with the server, does it sound better to have no active XMDS client? Or maybe this is worse if the server is actively searching for clients?

Not necessarily better, just ever so slightly different, and only so long as the tablet is on. In other words, only when browsing. On standby or off, the differences disappear.

Here are my impressions, YMMV, and please note that we're talking about very minute differences. But hey, in audio, everything matters.

• iOS sounds more fluid and more refined than the APK, and arguably slightly friendlier.
• Android APK sounds more direct and “squarer”. Can be perceived as slightly more impactful but does not offer more precision, is mostly just drier and arguably a little rougher than the iOS version.

 

[Christiaan Punter]

this thread has become unruly, seriously. Love that we have it, but impossible to sift through for details, and now we have all the beta testing details, again, great to see progress, but realistically it would be fantastic to have a Taiko forum, and some seperate threads for all of the great topics... I know it has been brought up many times, maybe even a roadmap thread, with links to all the subtopics. LOL. I don't know?

We are working on adding a FAQ section to the Taiko website, but with all the work going on for XDMS, this is low on the priority list. In preparation for this FAQ, I have been going through this entire thread until I reached the current section while taking notes of everything that I deemed relevant for later.

 

[Christiaan Punter]

Does this ever happen with local files, or just with streaming?

In my experience, local music playback is super robust, save for some issues with very large files (on which we are working). Currently, it's streaming content that can be problematic. But more so for some locations than others. For me in Amsterdam, Europe, streaming is pretty robust. This geo-dependent instability is also being worked on.

 

[Christiaan Punter]

I agree. I was not a fan of the buckets. I’m sure there was some method to their madness

Sorry to say, but for now, we will stick with the buckets (which we will call Bins) to manage large libraries while more sophisticated methods are being considered/thought out in the background.

We're in the process of also adding an alphabetical index. and we found a fix for the irregularities where the first and last albums were not corresponding with the bucket's contents.

 

[Christiaan Punter]

Thought I would suggest a few:

1) assembled
2) Muster - throwback to my military days

We've decided on "Bins".

 

[EuroDriver]

In my experience, local music playback is super robust, save for some issues with very large files (on which we are working). Currently, it's streaming content that can be problematic. But more so for some locations than others. For me in Amsterdam, Europe, streaming is pretty robust. This geo-dependent instability is also being worked on.

We have succesfully got streaming to work in Australia, and we expect it to work pretty much everywhere now

 

[Christiaan Punter]

Were the buckets removed for now? I don't see them.

They're not permanently removed.

 

[Christiaan Punter]

I had this problem as well. Rebooting the Extreme (and hence Roon Core) fixed the problem for me.

I suspect this issue arises when the tablet is updated prior to the server. In lieu of a proper solution, perhaps it is an idea to use a different phone or tablet that still runs 1.8 and use that to connect and update the server.

Try going into the APP Store where it should say an upgrade is waiting on you.

So far, the solution is to delete the old app on the tablet/phone and install new ones, and restarting the server, sometimes multiple times.

 

[simorag]

We've decided on "Bins".

"Section" was my preferred, also "Volume" or "Shelf" would do, I don't particularily like "Bin", but whatever.

Rather, I am genuinely curious why this is considered necessary or useful in the first place in 2022, and why only 200 albums?

Also, for us in the line for the XDMS alpha install, could you please post a screenshot of the GUI so that we can see how the Bins show up?

 

[Christiaan Punter]

"Section" was my preferred, also "Volume" or "Shelf" would do, I don't particularily like "Bin", but whatever.

Rather, I am genuinely curious why this is considered necessary or useful in the first place in 2022, and why only 200 albums?

Also, for us in the line for the XDMS alpha install, could you please post a screenshot of the GUI so that we can see how the Bins show up?

Bin seems to be widespread. It is also used by Avid (a post-pro non-linear video editing system)

An alphabetical index is also in the works.

200 albums is chosen as the ideal number to still be user-manageable (a constrained section that is easy to oversee and navigate) and not compromise on browsing speed. Loading the entire library to the browsing screen causes the tablet to slow down as more and more data is cached. But we are also investigating more elegant solutions to implement later.

Preliminary look of the Bins (still called Buckets in this older screenshot):




Disclaimer: the look and functionality of the bins are still being tweaked. This may not be how it ends up looking.

 

[cat6man]

We have succesfully got streaming to work in Australia, and we expect it to work pretty much everywhere now

Excellent. You never know when or how strange stuff will manifest.

In a earlier life, we were testing new base station software for cellular base stations and found it was impossible to set up a phone call within an annular ring at distance X from the antenna. Closer was fine, further away was fine, but at distance X the call never went through. It was eventually tracked to a specific latency that triggered a race condition in the call setup software. Nothing surprises me about software anymore.

 

[EuroDriver]

Excellent. You never know when or how strange stuff will manifest.

In a earlier life, we were testing new base station software for cellular base stations and found it was impossible to set up a phone call within an annular ring at distance X from the antenna. Closer was fine, further away was fine, but at distance X the call never went through. It was eventually tracked to a specific latency that triggered a race condition in the call setup software. Nothing surprises me about software anymore.

Real time transactions are tricky, I don't want to temp providence, but I think we have it nailed

 

[Kingsrule]

So when I make the jump to XDMS I'll have 77.5 Bins (15,500 albums) to deal with?
That seems totally unmanageable.....

 

[Cyrus]

We've decided on "Bins".

Bins work. Much better than 'buckets.'

Though I was holding out hope for "Biervat" Beer and kegs are also universal.

 

[Blue58]

We've decided on "Bins".

So when I make the jump to XDMS I'll have 77.5 Bins (15,500 albums) to deal with?
That seems totally unmanageable.....

I suspect bins will go down the pan before an official release in 2023?