Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
First off this not the streaming world. Its the server world
Second, only a few are saying TAS sounds better than Roon. Surpassing Roon is a whole different dynamic. Lets see how things play out with a lot more users
Whats the big thing with a new USB board? You being the mod guy should appreciate efforts to make things better
There have been 8 Alpha installations.
The Beta release will be installed in over 60 Extremes connected to about 18 different DAC’s
It’s going to be interesting
I don't see it this way.
TAS has been in development for a very short time. The progress they have made to date is pretty remarkable. As for Roon, it's been discussed for some time that it's sound quality has serious room for improvement. The TAS development is in answer to that need.
Digital streaming at this time is in fact relatively immature. That's why we're seeing rapid and ongoing advances. We've already heard from at least one alpha tester that TAS on the Extreme already equals their stored playback. That sounds like a good thing to me.
There isn't much that is unanimous in audio, but I would be shocked if anyone who has heard TAS thinks that Roon SQ is even close. The Roon experience still wins by a country mile, but SQ first, then raise the user experience (and hopefully unlike Roon, don't trash your SQ as you do so)
More ears will definitely reveal more (and hopefully help the TAS team move even faster)
Hello ack,
Thank you for chiming in. Why don't I share my personal journey and perspective as a manufacturer as an illustration of the development of the "streaming world". Indeed technology appears to move faster here, which may not be that surprising given it's life-span. A big part of this is undoubtedly market adaptation, people will have to buy products in a market segment to create research & development budgets and fuel innovation. My first steps into this relatively young world took place in 2008 with the purchase of a Linn Majik DS streamer. This was controlled by a, back then, very primitive piece of software, named Linn Kinsky. 2008 was also the year commercial sites like HDTracks.com launched offering downloadable high-res recordings. Much was unknown back then, it was truly in it's infancy stages, there was a lot of discussion about audible differences between files. I myself spend a lot of time building elaborate cd-ripping rigs to get the best quality rips. I must have re-ripped my entire cd collection dozens of times, after for example building a better power supply for my ripping drive, finding a better ripping drive, upgrading the computer controlling the ripping drive, or simply finding a new type of polish to pre-treat my CDs. Even today this remains a controversial subject, after all, bits are bits, there should be no differences in serving bit perfect files. We, as the part of the audiophile community interested in digital file playback, may have spend half, if not more, of the past 13 years discussing just that.
In parallel to commercial streamers releases with very limited development / progress, probably again caused by a very limited market adaptation, there was a movement of people using computers for digital file playback. This truly spawned a wave of innovations, as an "open platform" you had thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of enthusiasts experimenting and sharing their results online. This also spawned the creation of a multitude of companies commercialising discoveries made. Add-on products, like audiophile interface cards, audiophile power supplies, all kinds of software utilities providing either functionality or sound quality enhancements.
This also led to a new type of commercial product, the audiophile computer. Utilizing "off the shelf" computer hardware, either modified or fitted into an environment curbing it's associated noise profiles to be suitable for audiophile grade playback quality. This is a relatively young movement, reaching a some form of maturity and/or arguably acceptable quality only 5-6 years ago. This can be considered as a turning point for the "streaming world" as the availability of associated unrestricted processing power, memory, storage subsystems and networking performance enabled a whole new world enabled by who could be considered the "Godfather" of the "streaming world" today, Enno Vandermeer who founded Roon Labs in 2015. This was, imho, a game changer, providing a smooth and luxury browsing experience, integrating locally stored files with online streaming services and enabling the music exploration and discovery services we've all grown to love, and take for granted, today.
The very first concept Extreme was operational on June 2018. Initially just an experiment, it was showing a surprising potential to go beyond everything else we knew at that time. Being well aware this was a whole new concept on which we were very likely able to improve for years to come, we spend the next months focussing on making sure it would be future proof by designing it to be field upgradeable either by it's future owner or anyone with basic computer knowledge. It started shipping to dealers in December 2018 and to customers early 2019. It's therefor been available for purchase on the market for 2 years now. Indeed since then we have had a few early minor and 2 mayor software upgrade releases, all Extreme servers are currently running up to date software. We have also developed an improved USB add-on, or rather plug-in card, the design on that started April 2019, alas due to the world slowing down because of COVID-19 it has taken almost a year till it can start shipping to our customers. We have our own switch trailing slightly behind the USB card. And, last but not least, we have our own Music Player software coming up you've been reading about the past few months. These new developments are all completely optional and not mandatory to enjoy using one of our Extreme servers.
To clear up a potential misconception. There is talk about our upcoming USB card, but there is also talk about a USB interface card which is part of the Lampizator Pacific DAC. These are 2 completely different products. Our upcoming USB card plugs into the Extreme and provides enhanced USB performance, it can be retrofitted to any Extreme without the use of a soldering iron. The Lampizator USB board resides in the Lampizator DACs. The new board utilizes a second generation XMOS chipset, the old board an Amanero chipset. There is subsequent talk about a "TAS driver", which is our own Taiko branded USB driver, which allows (sound quality enhancing) functionality currently only supported by XMOS and U-hear controllers (which spans the majority of DAC interfaces). All new Lampizator DACs ship with this new controller and they have been for several months now. Older Lampizator DACs with an Amanero interface can be "upgraded" to this new interface, but this requires the use of a soldering Iron. The sound enhancing features of our USB driver need to be enabled from software which only our own TAS software player can do for now. Roon does not support this but we are looking, and are closing in, on a way around that.
Actually, no.
Your comment inferred that only a few feel that TAS sounds better than Roon. Ray-dude is saying that he doesn’t think anyone would feel Roon sounds better than TAS. Just the opposite.
Just wanted to ask there were some previous questions about DACs working with the Extreme and that to get some to work they needed drivers uploaded to the Extreme is this also the case for the SGM 2015 or Evo ? Sold my Aqua XHD to pay for an Evo so had been looking at a cheaper Dac maybe the Denafrips Terminator Or the Exogal Comet ? Would these work with the Evo without any need for additional drivers does anyone know ?
The main thing is that the DAC should have a Windows 10 ASIO USB driver
Then the TAS Player will happily pass audio data to it
Thanks for the detailed response. It looks like things are still in flux and improving, and there is apparently ample interest to continue on this streaming path. Will be keeping en eye here on this thread; perhaps in another year or two things will be in a more stable and advanced state.
I was also recently reading up on the Aurender W20 SE in a recent TAS issue, and what caught my eye is that this product just got SSD/NVMe's, while the original version - like other streaming computers I have seen - still used mechanical drives. Very slow progress there.
What I really like about your product is the attention to copper shielding - finally, someone caught onto that. I am personally hoping to see Samsung 980Pro NVMEs drives in your product.
As an aside for the curious ones who aren't already immersed in the particulars, Wikipedia has a good overview of the ATX Power Supply standard, its history, and its evolution here:
ATX - Wikipedia
At the very least it does a good job of detailing the purposes of the different voltages ATX supplies must provide along with their intended uses. For example, the 5Vsb (stand-by) rail is required to energize the power switch so the rest of the supply can be told to wake up.
Some discussion of EPS12V is included, as it is a derivative of ATX.
You're welcome.
The Aurender you mentioned is a different type of product. Although it streams music, and therefor could be considered similar, it's really not "under the hood". This falls in the range of FPGA/ASIC or otherwise programmable controller based products of which there are many, it falls in the same category as the Linn Majik DS I bought 13 years ago as mentioned in my previous reply. This is typically a product which is designed to provide a certain performance level and functionality and has just the desired resources on board to do just that. This does not have the resources required to run Roon core, but some of these can act as a Roon endpoint, you would then need a higher performance other device to run Roon core, like a Roon Nucleus (Intel NUC type of minicomputer). Most of these run their own custom lightweight OS (minimal linux kernel) and player software. They typically would also lack the processing power required for up-sampling or room correction. These are also typically not upgradeable, should something better come out, you would buy a new model and sell or trade in your old. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, and not different from when you used to buy say a CD player. You would buy it if you like how it performs and operate your system at that same performance level till a newer model is released and you start feeling that itch to upgrade.
The audiophile computer type of device has way more resources (in direct comparison almost unlimited) and can run any software you like (only limited to what its manufacturer is willing to support). It can also be modified and/or partially upgraded by exchanging singular components at any point in time if something better comes along at benign costs. It is a flexible platform and can grow and improve over time. For example you could exchange the CPU(s) for higher performing ones (if that need would ever arise as they can be insanely powerful already today), expand it's internal storage (the Extreme can now even fit up to 96TB, the current record holder is using 48TB already), install different interface cards if something better is discovered, install a new software playback system, none of this requires buying a new product and selling your old, neither does it require to be shipped to the factory.
There are DAC manufacturers using a similar modular approach, like MSB for example which a large percentage of our customers use. You can mount different clocks, or improved interface cards (the MSB USB Pro-ISL module being a "recent" example, a very significant product), they also provide software updates with sound quality and/or functionality improvements which you can install yourself, at home.
Having wrote this and reading it back it reads like a sales pitch, but the intention here is to highlight a mayor difference between the 2 approaches to streaming audio. I am not claiming sound quality superiority for either approach!
As to the 980pro drive, the PCIE 4 interface does support double data rates. However let me highlight the significance of that assuming application in the Extreme. In the extreme the music drive active time is defined by access latency + read time + power down time (as it powers down after a file read). The time it takes these drives to read a redbook music file is ~0.016 seconds. A full redbook album (or a single high res file) takes about 0.1 seconds. This is 1/3rd of the drive active time as in total the whole operation, drive on to drive off, will take about 0.3 seconds. If we double the read performance this will be reduced to about 0.25 seconds (assuming the same power on time / access latency). In exchange for that the PCIE4 interface and connected devices draw significant more power. For the drive where the operating system and music playback software resides, transfer speed is rather unimportant, the transfers to/from this drive are generally very small in size, the access latency dominates the drive active time and the transfer speed is almost negligible. There is currently no lower access latency drive then the Intel Optane AFAIK.
Hope this is helpful
curious ..will mu metal shielding be an upgrade over copper shielding? asking from an academic pov.You're welcome.
The Aurender you mentioned is a different type of product. Although it streams music, and therefor could be considered similar, it's really not "under the hood". This falls in the range of FPGA/ASIC or otherwise programmable controller based products of which there are many, it falls in the same category as the Linn Majik DS I bought 13 years ago as mentioned in my previous reply. This is typically a product which is designed to provide a certain performance level and functionality and has just the desired resources on board to do just that. This does not have the resources required to run Roon core, but some of these can act as a Roon endpoint, you would then need a higher performance other device to run Roon core, like a Roon Nucleus (Intel NUC type of minicomputer). Most of these run their own custom lightweight OS (minimal linux kernel) and player software. They typically would also lack the processing power required for up-sampling or room correction. These are also typically not upgradeable, should something better come out, you would buy a new model and sell or trade in your old. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, and not different from when you used to buy say a CD player. You would buy it if you like how it performs and operate your system at that same performance level till a newer model is released and you start feeling that itch to upgrade.
The audiophile computer type of device has way more resources (in direct comparison almost unlimited) and can run any software you like (only limited to what its manufacturer is willing to support). It can also be modified and/or partially upgraded by exchanging singular components at any point in time if something better comes along at benign costs. It is a flexible platform and can grow and improve over time. For example you could exchange the CPU(s) for higher performing ones (if that need would ever arise as they can be insanely powerful already today), expand it's internal storage (the Extreme can now even fit up to 96TB, the current record holder is using 48TB already), install different interface cards if something better is discovered, install a new software playback system, none of this requires buying a new product and selling your old, neither does it require to be shipped to the factory.
There are DAC manufacturers using a similar modular approach, like MSB for example which a large percentage of our customers use. You can mount different clocks, or improved interface cards (the MSB USB Pro-ISL module being a "recent" example, a very significant product), they also provide software updates with sound quality and/or functionality improvements which you can install yourself, at home.
Having wrote this and reading it back it reads like a sales pitch, but the intention here is to highlight a mayor difference between the 2 approaches to streaming audio. I am not claiming sound quality superiority for either approach!
As to the 980pro drive, the PCIE 4 interface does support double data rates. However let me highlight the significance of that assuming application in the Extreme. In the extreme the music drive active time is defined by access latency + read time + power down time (as it powers down after a file read). The time it takes these drives to read a redbook music file is ~0.016 seconds. A full redbook album (or a single high res file) takes about 0.1 seconds. This is 1/3rd of the drive active time as in total the whole operation, drive on to drive off, will take about 0.3 seconds. If we double the read performance this will be reduced to about 0.25 seconds (assuming the same power on time / access latency). In exchange for that the PCIE4 interface and connected devices draw significant more power. For the drive where the operating system and music playback software resides, transfer speed is rather unimportant, the transfers to/from this drive are generally very small in size, the access latency dominates the drive active time and the transfer speed is almost negligible. There is currently no lower access latency drive then the Intel Optane AFAIK.
Hope this is helpful
Folks, for those that are interested in bringing out the best for their Extreme, you may be interested in the impact of the Sound Application PGI TT-7:
audiophilestyle.com
This is the first component upstream of the Extreme that I've tried that actually made the Extreme better (notably better) vs slowing/dragging it down. More evidence that if you feed Extreme the best power and signal and mechanical environment you can, you will be handsomely rewarded
Reality Quest: Power and Digital Audio with the Sean Jacobs DC4 and Sound Application PGI TT-7 (Part 2 of 2)
Reality Quest: Power and Digital Audio with the Sean Jacobs DC4 and Sound Application PGI TT-7 (Part 2 of 2) In Part 1 of this review, I shared the transformational impact of the Sean Jacobs DC3 and DC4 power supplies with a Chord DAVE DAC. In Part 2, I shift my focus from the DC side of power to...
audiophilestyle.com
This is the first component upstream of the Extreme that I've tried that actually made the Extreme better (notably better) vs slowing/dragging it down. More evidence that if you feed Extreme the best power and signal and mechanical environment you can, you will be handsomely rewarded
Agreed Ray - power is always important - and almost always the best bang for the buck to organise. Have you perchance tried a powertorus unit?Folks, for those that are interested in bringing out the best for their Extreme, you may be interested in the impact of the Sound Application PGI TT-7:
Reality Quest: Power and Digital Audio with the Sean Jacobs DC4 and Sound Application PGI TT-7 (Part 2 of 2)
Reality Quest: Power and Digital Audio with the Sean Jacobs DC4 and Sound Application PGI TT-7 (Part 2 of 2) In Part 1 of this review, I shared the transformational impact of the Sean Jacobs DC3 and DC4 power supplies with a Chord DAVE DAC. In Part 2, I shift my focus from the DC side of power to...
This is the first component upstream of the Extreme that I've tried that actually made the Extreme better (notably better) vs slowing/dragging it down. More evidence that if you feed Extreme the best power and signal and mechanical environment you can, you will be handsomely rewarded
Alas, I have not. In normal times, I would have enjoyed visiting various dealers and local audiophiles to experience a broader set of options, but alas, that may be a 2022 followup project.
I have tried enough to have learned that power optimizations are very environment (power grid, home, equipment) specific. The very pleasant surprise for me was hearing that the goodness of the Extreme was being amplified rather than diminished.
I have tried enough to have learned that power optimizations are very environment (power grid, home, equipment) specific. The very pleasant surprise for me was hearing that the goodness of the Extreme was being amplified rather than diminished.
Beta is coming in for landing
We have an email going out tomorrow for Beta testers with a manual, a quick guide and a web link to book an installation appointment.
We did a first virgin Beta install, a few small hiccups but sounding , . . . . . I will let the owner report
We have an email going out tomorrow for Beta testers with a manual, a quick guide and a web link to book an installation appointment.
We did a first virgin Beta install, a few small hiccups but sounding , . . . . . I will let the owner report
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