Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[Taiko Audio]

I agree with you. I don't think it's an across the board improvement, particularly in the sub 30Hz region. Extension is good but transient rise and fall is very very slightly inferior to what I experienced with the penultimate build. I might be willing to give it the benefit of doubt in the 3-5KHz range however. Of course I can't do an A/B and audio memory is particularly suspect after 7 seconds as we know, but still, it has me wondering.... I'll continue to listen to additional material to try and refine my impressions. But I'm not convinced its a slam dunk improvement. Finally, this is on an Innuous, not a Taiko so I have no idea if that's relevant to what you have found..

The music discovery functionality is definitely an improvement, it does respond faster which is nice, also Tidal logon functionality is better, but I do have a slight beef with some aspects of the “new” sound. The low bass, though stronger, is a bit less well defined, I also feel there’s a slight loss in “natural flow/fluidity”. It does have some positives here and there, like reduced stridency for example, but naturality feels compromised.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Absolutely, Emile. I'd be happy to try something new. Thanks very much (I thought maybe it was just me).

Steve Z

Great will e-mail you, I do feel I have a fix for that, but also have had quite a bit of feedback from people preferring the sound over the previous builds.

 

[oldmustang]

Great will e-mail you, I do feel I have a fix for that, but also have had quite a bit of feedback from people preferring the sound over the previous builds.

Thanks, Emile. I'll look forward to your e-mail.

Steve Z

 

[oldmustang]

That was fast! I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating -- Emile, your customer service and responsiveness is the absolute best. And as I watch the master at work, I am constantly amazed at how much there is "under the hood" to the Extreme's optimized operating system.

Thanks once again for the superb support. I'll post what I hear when my wife is up from her nap. If I turn on the stereo now while she's sleeping I know exactly what I'll hear -- and it won't be pretty! No sense letting one, "Aw sh-t!" wipe out a thousand, "Atta boys".



Steve Z

 

[Taiko Audio]

That was fast! I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating -- Emile, your customer service and responsiveness is the absolute best. And as I watch the master at work, I am constantly amazed at how much there is "under the hood" to the Extreme's optimized operating system.

Thanks once again for the superb support. I'll post what I hear when my wife is up from her nap. If I turn on the stereo now while she's sleeping I know exactly what I'll hear -- and it won't be pretty! No sense letting one, "Aw sh-t!" wipe out a thousand, "Atta boys".



Steve Z

Thank you Steve, I think we can actually turn this release into a net improvement with some adjustments for those who do not feel it is right now. Build 538 is around the corner though so I’m reluctant to release the OS update in general yet.

 

[oldmustang]

Thank you Steve, I think we can actually turn this release into a net improvement with some adjustments for those who do not feel it is right now. Build 538 is around the corner though so I’m reluctant to release the OS update in general yet.

You're very welcome, Emile. I'm always willing to be a beta tester to help advance the cause.

Steve Z

 

[marty]

The music discovery functionality is definitely an improvement, it does respond faster which is nice, also Tidal logon functionality is better, but I do have a slight beef with some aspects of the “new” sound. The low bass, though stronger, is a bit less well defined, I also feel there’s a slight loss in “natural flow/fluidity”. It does have some positives here and there, like reduced stridency for example, but naturality feels compromised.

I concur re bass definition. 40-60 Hz is not my issue, but rather deep bass in which definition is synonymous with rise and fall times (generally overlooked) of transients. Choral voices and female voices in particular do not seem to have the same naturalness and I see your point re stridency, hence my remark of possible slight improvement at 3-5K. Looks like the only thing to do is await the next build.

 

[Taiko Audio]

Looks like the only thing to do is await the next build.

We have managed to fix it, in fact it may be overall better now then it was before the update. I will allocate some more time to day to polish it up after which we can start rolling it out.

 

[romaz]

We have managed to fix it, in fact it may be overall better now then it was before the update. I will allocate some more time to day to polish it up after which we can start rolling it out.

I have to agree. SQ took a nosedive in my system after the latest Roon update. Transients went soft and gone was the immediacy that I so crave. I couldn't even bear to listen this evening. Emile just instituted his "emergency fix" on my Extreme and WOW, my system is better than it was before the update. Just REALLY good now! Hopefully, the next update doesn't ruin what Emile just created.

 

[spiritofmusic]

As a total streaming dunce, what am I not getting here?
I thought Roon was the labelling/room organiser for æther-derived music.
Like the equivalent of a fastidious vinyl collector sorting his music by genre, label, composer, AtoZ.
But now you're saying Roon also controls SQ?
How does an archiving algorithm have any bearing on the sound?
And for all those streaming customers who don't have an Extreme and thus Emile by their side, are they stuck w this Roon version at a stroke worsening their SQ across their library?

 

[Abyss Man]

I thought it was just me that felt that the Roon update made my setup worse, I wasn’t sure though cause I was playing and with footers arnd the same time the Roon was updated.
I not using Extreme though but I felt the same way too about the FW update.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Melodrama aside (and who are more OCD SQ super-fastidious than the streaming digital crew?) I’d agree the bass quality took a bit of a misshapen sideways step on the latest Roon version. Hope they get it back to being more gooder and more real again.

That said I’d still rather have Roon than all the other options thrown together and know that Roon Labs will get back on track and get it all happening again in the end.

PS congrats Emile on being the great watcher of the East. Your service is always exemplary.

 

[pleroma]

Just a quick update to share on Extreme sound improvement via network upgrade. Sitting here not quite believing the difference in sound I am hearing. My network connection has been a 50 ft generic copper ethernet (cat6) connection direct from my ISP modem/router to the Extreme. It runs through the walls and ceiling so I don't have a realistic option to replace at the moment.

But as several have suggested, I purchased the Edge Router X-SFP to try between the modem/router and the Extreme. I failed to get the tricky little box to work over the first few days and gave up. After another a week, and with the tireless help of @Rhapsody and a few suggestions from @Kris, I gave it another shot. The handshake was made yesterday (thank you both!) and now as I listen I can't believe the improvement in overall immersiveness, dimensionality, and coherence (individual instruments/vocals a bit less smeared). Increase in naturalness overall. The noise floor has dropped a noticeable amount. Listening louder somehow more pleasurable. Now this is not a massive/revolutionary improvement, but for $99 it is up there for improvement/$ spent in my system. I just cannot stop drinking in the sounds and this relatively minor change is well worth the incremental improvement, in my system at least.

I need to read the whitepapers out there but I am baffled how the Edge in 'switch' mode can improve the sound that much and versus, say a normal switch. Or maybe the improvement is simply now that I have a higher end 2m ethernet cable between the Edge and the Extreme. Perhaps that is 'all' it is or the combination. Either way, thanks to all for the suggestions on the networking side and for giving me an initial glimpse of what may be possible on the network front end. Obviously, it now makes me intrigued to try an LPS on the Edge and consider the M12....
Take good care everyone

Thanks for this input. I'm trying to understand if the type of network traffic makes a difference. I too have a cheap AT&T U-Verse gateway/router (which they insist has to stay) and builder grade Cat 5e wire from the gateway/router downstairs to my media room upstairs. Since I'm using the Extreme's internal drive for music, the only network traffic, to my understanding, would be Roon control (excepting occasional server access via VNC). I'm currently running a short Blue Jeans Cat 6a patch from the wall jack behind my system to a Sonore OM, and from there a 2m fiber run to the Extreme (recommended Planet SFPs). So, wondering how this compares to what others are doing.

 

[nuway]

I believe it would be better disable auto update feature in the future until we can hear feedback from Emile

 

[Cellindo]

I have two PC server sources:
* one advanced DiY (i5 w/ 6-cores) with JCAT Ethernet card, Windows Server 2016 and Roon (plus MinorityClean and Process Lasso 'enhancers' software)
* another one is a simple NUC (i3 w/ 2-cores) with Windows 10, Audirvana (plus MinorityClean & Process Lasso as well).
Receiver is a dCS Network Bridge in all cases.

Actually the small NUC with Audirvana sounds Better to my ears in my specific set-up ! Roon SQ is now surpassed. And this latest release (build 537) seems indeed a step 'aside' or 'behind', but not an improvement to me ...

 

[marty]

We have managed to fix it, in fact it may be overall better now then it was before the update. I will allocate some more time to day to polish it up after which we can start rolling it out.

I hope you might be kind enough to inform Roon of your fix so those of us without an Extreme my also soon benefit.

 

[Kingsrule]

It’s painful on 100Mbit speeds!

I'm not using the MSB Renderer.....

 

[Steve Williams]

All I can say is how lucky we are to have such a mind and creativity of Emile

I haven't been listening much since the new Roon update until last night before I caught up with this thread until last night.I have several demo tracks that I use to check updates. Last night something just didn't sound right to me. I was emotionally unattached to what I was hearing and didn't think much about it until I read the above posts.

Emile did my update in all of 5 minutes and I have been listening for the past 20 minutes and this is indeed a more pleasurable sound to my ears. Too soon to make definitive comments other than to say the music sounds so much more natural.For me there was more involvement as well as a feeling of presence.

I am planning on a long listening session now as this sounds so much better

Kudos to Emile

 

[romaz]

I have two PC server sources:
* one advanced DiY (i5 w/ 6-cores) with JCAT Ethernet card, Windows Server 2016 and Roon (plus MinorityClean and Process Lasso 'enhancers' software)
* another one is a simple NUC (i3 w/ 2-cores) with Windows 10, Audirvana (plus MinorityClean & Process Lasso as well).
Receiver is a dCS Network Bridge in all cases.

Actually the small NUC with Audirvana sounds Better to my ears in my specific set-up ! Roon SQ is now surpassed. And this latest release (build 537) seems indeed a step 'aside' or 'behind', but not an improvement to me ...

I completely agree. The people at Roon have done a great job as far as user experience and feature set but Roon has become so bloated with code that it has also become its own worst enemy. If you look on the Roon forum, people over there seem hung up on features. No one talks about SQ as if Roon has no role to play here. Some people still believe that with bit-perfect playback, it's just a bunch of 1s and 0s and that playback software could not possibly impact SQ.

For some time now, in my DIY builds, I have been incapable of getting Roon to sound as good as other players. In fact, with regards to SQ, it is probably at the bottom of the pile. Not just Audirvana but also Stylus, JRiver, LMS/Squeezebox, Foobar, etc., have the potential to sound better than Roon. In comparison to Euphony's Stylus, which was my previous reference player, Roon sounded bloated and lacked control and precision leading to considerable overhang. For orchestral music with complex instrument lines, Roon can sound atrocious and no matter what OS I chose or what fiddling I did, I could never get it to sound as good as Stylus. That is until the Extreme. Somehow, Emile figured out how to tame Roon and so it has been a pleasure to enjoy Roon's superior user interface while also enjoying even better SQ than I was getting from Stylus and others.

 

[Steve Williams]

I’m listening now and am shaking my head as to how good this sounds

Emile should be a beta tester of all proposed Roon updates if he isn’t already