My router just arrived, and I'm happy to report a super-positive set up and first listening experience.
Thanks to the sacrifice of those who've gone before me, I followed the steps of
- switch off Extreme (front panel), switch, and router
- switch them on in reverse of that order with suitable time intervals between.
The only thing I forgot to do in my eagerness was screw on the router wifi Ariel at first... ahem.
The picture I took of the sticker on the bottom of the router was using my phones 48MP camera and I found by zooming in I could distinguish a lowercase i in the SSID password so I got the Taiko Audio password right first time.
I already had my IP Scanner set up on the iPad, so I could discover the Extreme's new IP address, and get in with VNC and then XDMS.
I'm healthily paranoid about EMI and fortunately had a couple of washers handy in the house so the router is grounded, RJ-45 grounding tails applied to unused connections, and tinned copper braid covering each cable (digital and power).
I'm listening to XDMS so far, with switch & router powered via an Uptone JS2, one rail each device, with further regulation supplied by an Uptone Ultracap 1.2 on the Switch, and an ldovr regulator for the Router, both of which claim noise specs of 750 nanovolts.
Very early sound impressions are promising with improvements in:
- 'clarity', easily hearing into details of the performance as never before in every track
- soundstage, music is round me in the room to a significantly greater extent, and in tracks I've never especially noticed that from.
- bass 'focus' & texture
Plus an immediate desire to turn up the volume compared to what I was listening at pre-router - I'm taking that as a good sign of noise floor reduction. I gave in as soon as I was satisfied with first comparison impressions.
My hypothesis was/is that having the Extreme, Switch, & Router combo for Emile and team to distribute their software processing across will be a solid long term investment. And as it turns out I'm really happy with what I've heard so far out of the box, and excited by what will come as burn in progresses.
If this is the sound quality 'direction of travel' to expect with BPS, TACDD, XDMS NSM, etc. I can't wait!