Article: Reality Quest: Going to Extremes with the Taiko Audio SGM Extreme (Part 2 of 5)

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

okay, I have to ask, there is no optical output?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, ray-dude said:

 

I have not seen an optical out option from Taiko.  Alas I don't have my Matrix Audio XSPDIF DDC (it is on loan to a friend), or I'd be happy to see whether the Extreme (vs NUC) is impactful with it.

 

 

Okay thanks for that.

 

Some maintain optical isolation is superior so it I am wondering why this was not included as a digital interface option. It almost certainly (?) would have been considered in the design stages and rejected.

 

The matrix DDC appears only to have Toslink out, not SFP or ST glass. I am not sure Toslink is the best optical choice?

 

I guess they are going for the best USB audio implementation in their products.

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

18 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

Two system iterations ago, my reference was NUC end point (battery) to ISORegen (LPS 1.2) to Matrix Audio to toslink to DAVE. Getting mains isolated was the last extra icing on the cake (DAVE is particularly good at dealing with jitter, so I didn’t have that wrinkle to deal with). Absolutely loved it. 
 

it wasn’t until I got the tX-USBultra that I found something better. The clock in the tX tipped things in its favor I think. 
 

Even compared with the tX, the USB implementation in the Extreme is way ahead of the game.  It would be very interesting to hear Extreme USB direct vs Extreme USB to Matrix Audio, just to hear the real impact of the DDC

 

I don't want to labor the point but why offer an allegedly outmoded toslink interface on their DDC in the first place and why not offer an SFP optical out on their extremely expensive server.

USB audio may have been chosen as simply superior in their view (and it may well be). It would be interesting to find out their reasons.