Taiko Audio SGM Extreme: WTF?

[Purité Audio]

Expensive BS.
Keith

 

[sq225917]

Pointlessly expensive bs

 

[AndrewC]

Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Hi-Fi Plug Awards | Audio Therapy

The Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Music Server has just won the Hi-Fi Plus Magazine Award for "Digital Server of the Year" in their awards issue (issue 202). The Extreme was reviewed initially just 3 months ago in issue 199 and it didn't have to wait long to win the

www.audiotherapyuk.com

I know this is the World-Is-Flat Forum but by God does this thing take digital music to the next level. No, it probably won’t make much of a difference to your $99 DAC. Nor much sense.
But I encourage you all to have a listen. And swallow your tongues.

Sorry, but that's just absolute rubbish. If indeed it made such a significant difference, they wouldn't be shy to prove it objectively. Taiko is one of the biggest scams in audio at the moment, perpetuated in part by WBF which pulls in new suckers every day.

 

[voodooless]

I know this is the World-Is-Flat Forum

You must have ended up in the wrong place, taken a wrong turn or something…

 

[sq225917]

Surely threads like this should be deleted so as not to give these brands any help in their SEO rankings. Surely Amir realises these threads are just shilling to gain aggregate search rankings and as such perceived credibility.

The same thread starters, pushing multiple cross media commentary about a list of foo products

 

[Jinjuku]

Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Hi-Fi Plug Awards | Audio Therapy

The Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Music Server has just won the Hi-Fi Plus Magazine Award for "Digital Server of the Year" in their awards issue (issue 202). The Extreme was reviewed initially just 3 months ago in issue 199 and it didn't have to wait long to win the

www.audiotherapyuk.com

I know this is the World-Is-Flat Forum but by God does this thing take digital music to the next level. No, it probably won’t make much of a difference to your $99 DAC. Nor much sense.
But I encourage you all to have a listen. And swallow your tongues.

I've literally have got $10,000 to your $10,000 that when blinded between two systems playing back to two same DAC's using some form of multicast that you can't hit 17/20 correct guesses of this vs a $1000 computer.

We can setup an escrow account. PM me and we can hammer out the deets.

 

[sq225917]

Let's run a side bet on this. I'm in for $100 that he can't even hit 16/20

 

[Katji]

I know this is the World-Is-Flat Forum but by God does this thing take digital music to the next level. No, it probably won’t make much of a difference to your $99 DAC. Nor much sense.
But I encourage you all to have a listen. And swallow your tongues.

Last seen Sunday at 12:29 AM

So.......
Cat got your tongue?

 

[mhardy6647]

Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Hi-Fi Plug Awards | Audio Therapy

The Taiko Audio SGM Extreme Music Server has just won the Hi-Fi Plus Magazine Award for "Digital Server of the Year" in their awards issue (issue 202). The Extreme was reviewed initially just 3 months ago in issue 199 and it didn't have to wait long to win the

www.audiotherapyuk.com

I know this is the World-Is-Flat Forum but by God does this thing take digital music to the next level. No, it probably won’t make much of a difference to your $99 DAC. Nor much sense.
But I encourage you all to have a listen. And swallow your tongues.

Last seen Sunday at 12:29 AM

So.......
Cat got your tongue?

So -- I'm not quite on the same level* of hardcore, objective skepticism about -- ahh, shall we say, certain qualitative aspects of reproduced audio enjoyment as many folks here @ ASR -- but...

Any time I read any comment about taking [anything] to the next level, my eyes do roll.
The next level of... what?
How many levels are there?
Are they quantized?
Are the deltas between levels linear or exponential?
Should we measure levels in dB (or, perhaps dBl?)
Does that Nyquist thing apply to these levels?
What a tangled web we they weave...

___________
* see what I did there?

 

[Awsmone]

I think that’s very true about WBF & Taiko

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-crème-de-la-crème.27433/

I am sorry but as a audio pc builder this makes no sense to me other than no moving parts

 

[sq225917]

Just buy a pi, an ssd and power them separately maybe throw a real usb isolator into the mix if needed, job done

 

[voodooless]

Fun video:

 

[PipHelix]

Fun video:

Thanks! That was a fun watch. What a waste of money that thing is.

 

[egellings]

Hi

Those are run-of-the-mill prices for the High-End Audio crowd. This particular brand and model has received good reviews and command attention for reasons sociologists will have to study. The reality is that these offer no perceptible or objective advantage over a streamer that would cost less than $1000.
So that you have an idea how extreme and expensive these things can be here is a picture of the dCS Vivaldi, from their web site, it consists of a DAC ($35,999.oo) , a Transport ($41,999.oo, this is just a deck that spins CD or SACD, it only spins it , it doesn't perform digital to analog conversion, it only spins the discs, did I say that it only spins the discs ? ), an upsampler ($21,999.oo Which UPsample the digits to ... but does nothing else, is not a DAC either it only ... upsamples) and a Master Clock ($14,999.oo)... When you have the complete Vivaldi stack then you have this:
View attachment 116025

It will cost you around $115,000.oo and you will have to believe that you are listening to the best digital Audio possible...

Then you learn that, under level matched and blind conditions any PC + a RME AD, sound exactly the same and you ... @#$%W^^#&! ing' and #@$%%!^hit ... for a while .... then some people on the Internet, among them, some tin-eared young person able to hear 20 KHz , tell you that it is 99.999% likely that you may not even be able to hear the differences between this stack and an Apple dongle costing $9.oo ... Your reply with vehemence that measurements do not tell the whole story because you heard the differences, and it was "night and day"...

Peace

Love those curves, though. Such artistry!

 

[fatoldgit]

They are taking the piss again (translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss)

Taiko Audio writes: "The Taiko Audio Router fits in the same beautiful 22 x 22 x 5 cm / 9 x 9 x 2 inch milled-from-solid- copper chassis as the Taiko Audio Extreme Switch. Apart from the rear-panel connections, it will look identical and will have the same finish options, but it may become a little bit less heavy due to the Router PCB being around 20% larger. This proprietary PCB can actually also serve as a full motherboard which can support CPUs with up to 16 cores."

Why would a router need the potential to have 16 cores..

The say proprietary PCB but as we know their server uses off the shelf MB, RAM and disk so I doubt they have made a proprietary PCB/full motherboard for a router... just stretching the truth a little I suspect.

Havent seen any internals yet but they mention that obviously using a high end LPS (rather than the supplied one) will improve the sound.... cause as we know those poor old Ethernet packets are very tired after being sent 100's/1000's of miles from whence they came and a good shot of high end LPS power will reinvigorate them and make your bass more taunt and terrific, your mid range wide and expansive and your treble sparkly and clear.

Peter