Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Taiko Audio]

Likely a dumb question, but ... if I convert my local flac files (some ripped and some purchased downloads) to wav using Dbpoweramp, should I expect the wav version to sound better?

With XDMS yes today, no in the near future, hence I would suggest to not spend your time on converting. With Roon the difference is minimal due to the additional flac to wav processing being insignificant to the total processing load.

 

[rando]

i'm not sure i agree. lossless conversion should not put noise into the file of bits. decoding and converting in the server most certainly can.

Taiko's public face has proven quite resilient and courteous throughout numerous intrusions into this topic. So I will provide a follow up in the same tone of respect towards discussing only their product range as my first established.


Fear not, this is exactly the type of acting at an utter remove from end user behaviors Taiko is coding into their machines. Keep feeding it data points.

 

[cat6man]

Likely a dumb question, but ... if I convert my local flac files (some ripped and some purchased downloads) to wav using Dbpoweramp, should I expect the wav version to sound better?

Yes. That is exactly the comparison I've done here.

 

[cat6man]

With XDMS yes today, no in the near future, hence I would suggest to not spend your time on converting.

Great news but many years too late for me as I converted everything to WAV back in my hqplayer days

Flac and streaming users have a big surprise coming.

 

[Steve Williams]

With XDMS yes today, no in the near future, hence I would suggest to not spend your time on converting.

I always find that in one of Emile's posts every day there is usually a "pearl" dropped that is short and sweet but states much for the future of XDMS. Emile did promise he has a few more tricks up his sleeve. The sound floor continues to drop and is so low now that I shake my head in amazement as the experience is becoming spooky real.

 

[Steve Williams]

reminds me of a blast from the past....is that live or is that XDMS

 

[microstrip]

(...) If I understand your example, you are positing a much more restricted subset of bit-perfect as an inadvertent change to the file due to damage that has changed the sound quality of the file.

Yes- Bit perfect just means the correct logical "0" and "1" in the correct sequence. It is an expression that applies to the logical value of the bits, not to the physical way they are stored or transmitted.
It is why we assume that CD ripping is "bit -perfect".

I think the issue of sound quality is more complicated that than and in fact bit-perfect-ness is only a minor constituent.

It is a constituent. And sorry, a major one. If, for example, just the more significant bit of a value is changed you can get an horrible "click". Surely we can say all others are majors - audiophiles love to rank things that can't be ranked!

In the world of data transmission that is what error correction is supposed to take care of and in your example of the damaged CD that played perfectly but sound bad, it may well be that lack of being bit-perfect is not the culprit but rather the overhead burden of error-correction caused by such extensive damage was to blame. Admittedly, this is kind of a chicken or egg dilemma. However, my sense is the list of things that damage digitally-transmitted sound quality are much more extensive -- EMI, RFI, latency, compression/decompression to name but a few -- and that minor deviations from bit-perfectness are not a major contributor.

Again an obscure and non quantified subject - what are minor deviations from bit-perfectness?
When we present such concepts we must be able to define them. Types of erroes and acceptable error rates of CDs were defined by the standard.

Certainly, Emile is much more qualified than I to comment and he has much more empirical experience to do so from a position of authority.

Steve Z

Surely.

 

[microstrip]

There are no bits lost or altered. The file contents are identical. Error control is incomparable to CD and is basically fault proof. Depending on your definition of what bits are, they're not the same of course, as they will have been recreated hundreds if not thousands of times by the time they are converted to an analogue signal. The "BIT value" is represented by an analogue voltage in a high or low state, this analogue voltage is guaranteed not identical between identical bit values (at least the chance of that would be VERY low).

From the way you're looking at it, streaming is bit perfect, CD playback OR CD ripping can be, but is absolutely not guaranteed being subject to read errors. Streaming data transfer is fault proof.

Thanks for being so clear. I had this idea from previous posts, but a firm confirmation from an experienced expert was needed. Your post should be a sticker to all debates about streaming, as it eliminates the hypothesis of the intrinsically diabolic characteristic some people associate to streaming.

 

[alwayslearning]

I have 8 TB of music storage on my Extreme and am just about to run out of space. Like a number of other Extreme users, I have embraced the PGGB "remastering" program and this results in larger files (and, I might add, fantastic sounding music with the right DAC). Eventually, I expect to need 30 or more TB of music storage.

Today, I hooked up a Western Digital 8TB external hard drive ($150 USD on Amazon) to the Extreme and configured both Roon and TAS to include the new drive (“E” on the Extreme) when searching for music. Within minutes I was playing files from the new external drive. The first couple tracks sounded pretty darn good and there were no issues with playback.

Questions for other people here:

1) Have you tried using a conventional external hard drive, attached to one of the Extreme's USB storage ports, to store music?
2) If so, how has that worked for you and have you noticed any negative effects on sonic quality?

If there are no negative effects, the incentive to use a conventional external drive is strong:

-If you want to add NVMe PCIe M.2 internal storage to your Extreme, you will pay roughly $125 to $150 (USD) per TB. If you go the conventional hard drive route, you will pay less than $20 per TB.
-The less internal storage you require inside your Extreme, the more flexibility you should have with your PCIe slots.

A question for @Taiko Audio and others is whether the use of an external drive will degrade sonic quality or present other problems. If music is cached to RAM, are you eliminating any adverse sonic effects? I am not presently using XDMS and still rely pretty heavily on TAS. But with TAS, you can choose Batch mode, which, if I recall correctly, preloads up to 25 tracks in RAM. Wouldn't that eliminate SQ issues with an external drive?

Also, with the advances Taiko is making in eliminating network noise with XDMS, the new Switch, the new Router, and other products we haven't even heard about, will internal storage have any advantage over external storage?

With regard to XDMS, my understanding is that it 1) allows you to cache tracks to RAM; but 2) does NOT currently allow users to designate any library or drive other than the “D” drive on the Extreme, making reliance on an external drive impossible. I and others have requested this feature on Discord and will continue to do so.

I will also continue to listen to music stored on my external drive and compare it to the same music on my internal drive and eventually report back. I like what I've heard so far (very preliminary).

 

[CKKeung]

I have 8 TB of music storage on my Extreme and am just about to run out of space. Like a number of other Extreme users, I have embraced the PGGB "remastering" program and this results in larger files (and, I might add, fantastic sounding music with the right DAC). Eventually, I expect to need 30 or more TB of music storage.

Today, I hooked up a Western Digital 8TB external hard drive ($150 USD on Amazon) to the Extreme and configured both Roon and TAS to include the new drive (“E” on the Extreme) when searching for music. Within minutes I was playing files from the new external drive. The first couple tracks sounded pretty darn good and there were no issues with playback.

Questions for other people here:

1) Have you tried using a conventional external hard drive, attached to one of the Extreme's USB storage ports, to store music?
2) If so, how has that worked for you and have you noticed any negative effects on sonic quality?

If there are no negative effects, the incentive to use a conventional external drive is strong:

-If you want to add NVMe PCIe M.2 internal storage to your Extreme, you will pay roughly $125 to $150 (USD) per TB. If you go the conventional hard drive route, you will pay less than $20 per TB.
-The less internal storage you require inside your Extreme, the more flexibility you should have with your PCIe slots.

A question for @Taiko Audio and others is whether the use of an external drive will degrade sonic quality or present other problems. If music is cached to RAM, are you eliminating any adverse sonic effects? I am not presently using XDMS and still rely pretty heavily on TAS. But with TAS, you can choose Batch mode, which, if I recall correctly, preloads up to 25 tracks in RAM. Wouldn't that eliminate SQ issues with an external drive?

Also, with the advances Taiko is making in eliminating network noise with XDMS, the new Switch, the new Router, and other products we haven't even heard about, will internal storage have any advantage over external storage?

With regard to XDMS, my understanding is that it 1) allows you to cache tracks to RAM; but 2) does NOT currently allow users to designate any library or drive other than the “D” drive on the Extreme, making reliance on an external drive impossible. I and others have requested this feature on Discord and will continue to do so.

I will also continue to listen to music stored on my external drive and compare it to the same music on my internal drive and eventually report back. I like what I've heard so far (very preliminary).

May we know if that Western Digital 8TB external hard drive got a switching psu?

 

[alwayslearning]

May we know if that Western Digital 8TB external hard drive got a switching psu?

Just the standard wall wart that comes with the drive.

 

[Steve Williams]

I have 8 TB of music storage on my Extreme and am just about to run out of space. Like a number of other Extreme users, I have embraced the PGGB "remastering" program and this results in larger files (and, I might add, fantastic sounding music with the right DAC). Eventually, I expect to need 30 or more TB of music storage.

Today, I hooked up a Western Digital 8TB external hard drive ($150 USD on Amazon) to the Extreme and configured both Roon and TAS to include the new drive (“E” on the Extreme) when searching for music. Within minutes I was playing files from the new external drive. The first couple tracks sounded pretty darn good and there were no issues with playback.

Questions for other people here:

1) Have you tried using a conventional external hard drive, attached to one of the Extreme's USB storage ports, to store music?
2) If so, how has that worked for you and have you noticed any negative effects on sonic quality?

If there are no negative effects, the incentive to use a conventional external drive is strong:

-If you want to add NVMe PCIe M.2 internal storage to your Extreme, you will pay roughly $125 to $150 (USD) per TB. If you go the conventional hard drive route, you will pay less than $20 per TB.
-The less internal storage you require inside your Extreme, the more flexibility you should have with your PCIe slots.

A question for @Taiko Audio and others is whether the use of an external drive will degrade sonic quality or present other problems. If music is cached to RAM, are you eliminating any adverse sonic effects? I am not presently using XDMS and still rely pretty heavily on TAS. But with TAS, you can choose Batch mode, which, if I recall correctly, preloads up to 25 tracks in RAM. Wouldn't that eliminate SQ issues with an external drive?

Also, with the advances Taiko is making in eliminating network noise with XDMS, the new Switch, the new Router, and other products we haven't even heard about, will internal storage have any advantage over external storage?

With regard to XDMS, my understanding is that it 1) allows you to cache tracks to RAM; but 2) does NOT currently allow users to designate any library or drive other than the “D” drive on the Extreme, making reliance on an external drive impossible. I and others have requested this feature on Discord and will continue to do so.

I will also continue to listen to music stored on my external drive and compare it to the same music on my internal drive and eventually report back. I like what I've heard so far (very preliminary).

I’m in the same boat but worse. I have 16 TB’s with over 15 TB’s filled and concerned with new product release and running out of slots.

 

[CKKeung]

I’m in the same boat but worse. I have 16 TB’s with over 15 TB’s filled and concerned with new product release and running out of slots.

Many Extreme owners have the same concern.

I hope Emile can tell us some plans/stretegies of his on :
1. To increase the internal music file storage of Extreme.
2. Pros and cons of the various external storage and what he recommends.

Dear Emile : Many thanks in advance!

 

[Steve Williams]

Many Extreme owners have the same concern.

I hope Emile can tell us some plans/stretegies of his on :
1. To increase the internal music file storage of Extreme.
2. Pros and cons of the various external storage and what he recommends.

Dear Emile : Many thanks in advance!

I’ve learned never to underestimate Emile‘s mind. I have no inside information but I’m betting he knows and has solutions.

 

[dminches]

One can always replace the 2 TB SSDs with 4 TB SSDs. That doesn't require an additional slot. The only downside is that it is expensive.

 

[Malcng]

I signed up for Qobuz when it first became available in the UK and have enjoyed using it ever since, but it is only recently, especially so since getting the Extreme, that I find it satisfying enough for proper listening and not just discovery and background. Indeed, the difference is now so small that a well recorded and mastered album streamed from Qobuz can sound a lot better than an average album stored locally. With regard to upcoming developments and considering too various recent comments made by Emile on the subject, I am beginning to think that local storage may actually no longer be a requirement and that streaming could potentially end up sounding better than local files. I had been looking at extra storage capacity for my Extreme but will hold off for now because I suspect that I may not need it. Of course File/CD/Vinyl ownership is nice, but I worked out that if I played 6 different albums a day every day for a year, I would still have around 20% of my album files left unplayed. For some people, it would be far higher than that, especially if you include CD, tapes and Vinyl too. Some people own far more than they can ever realistically listen to, including me.

The other thing that I’m interested in seeing is what effect all of these developments will have upon perceived DAC performance. I wonder whether, below a certain point, all DAC’s will end up sounding good and more alike than different, whilst those at the very high end may end up sound more different from each other than they currently do.

 

[dminches]

I signed up for Qobuz when it first became available in the UK and have enjoyed using it ever since, but it is only recently, especially so since getting the Extreme, that I find it satisfying enough for proper listening and not just discovery and background. Indeed, the difference is now so small that a well recorded and mastered album streamed from Qobuz can sound a lot better than an average album stored locally. With regard to upcoming developments and considering too various recent comments made by Emile on the subject, I am beginning to think that local storage may actually no longer be a requirement and, indeed, streaming could potentially even end up sounding better than local files. I had been looking at extra storage capacity for my Extreme but will hold off for now because I suspect that I may not need it. Of course File/CD/Vinyl ownership is nice, but I worked out that if I played 6 different albums a day every day for a year, I would still have around 20% of my album files left unplayed. For some people, it would be far higher than that, especially if you include CD, tapes and Vinyl too. Some people own far more than they can ever realistically listen to, including me.

The other thing that I’m interested in seeing is what effect all of these developments will have upon perceived DAC performance. I wonder whether, below a certain point, all DAC’s will end up sounding good and more alike than different, whilst those at the very high end may end up sound more different from each other than they currently do.

I can't tell if you are just referring to your own system when you say local storage may actually no longer be a requirement, but for me, 75% of what I have stored locally isn't available for streaming anywhere. It is a critical for my collection to have my own files.

 

[Malcng]

I can't tell if you are just referring to your own system when you say local storage may actually no longer be a requirement, but for me, 75% of what I have stored locally isn't available for streaming anywhere. It is a critical for my collection to have my own files.

Yes, I did mean for me personally. Good point, though it was implied by the comment about extra storage but right to clarify.

 

[Steve Williams]

One can always replace the 2 TB SSDs with 4 TB SSDs. That doesn't require an additional slot. The only downside is that it is expensive.

Very expensive

 

[Taiko Audio]

Many Extreme owners have the same concern.

I hope Emile can tell us some plans/stretegies of his on :
1. To increase the internal music file storage of Extreme.
2. Pros and cons of the various external storage and what he recommends.

Dear Emile : Many thanks in advance!

Our current recommendation is to stick to a maximum of 8 internal drives, you can fit more drives but this does come with an impact on sonics. Each can be sized up to 8TB for a maximum of 64TB internal storage, but yes this not cheap, 2TB drives are far more economical then 4 or 8TB drives. You can also add more U.2 internal drives which are available up to 16TB each, but this is very impractical and we do not recommend it.

External USB drives can of course be used, if powered externally the power supply would definitely impact things, significantly.

We have the upcoming Router which is equipped with 2 M.2 slots which could hold 2 8TB drives for 16TB, it can also be used to connect multiple USB drives.

With XDMS we're working towards eliminating storage location sensitivity, and I am very confident we will accomplish that. Looking into the future I'm envisioning a more modular system with both Router and Storage being location insensitive appliances with some firmware/hardware solutions to eliminate Roon's sensitivity while XDMS can solve a significant part in software and will ultimately be cheaper to run at the same performance level, but perform better at a similar expense.

In the end it will matter what we have all spend, a lot will change in the next 1-2 years, and we are progressing on a path where we are trying to "waste" an absolute minimum of our customers investments. Hence I should disclose that purchasing 8TB M.2 drives is risking a significant write off and therefor I do not really recommend taking that route.