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

[austinpop]

Wow, Ray, I am speechless! Extreme Week — what an amazing debut as an AS reviewer! You hit it out of the park. 

 

Please keep writing and sharing about your audio journey.

[austinpop]

 

3 hours ago, bbosler said:

So yea, I just said the same thing 6 different ways

 

The fact of the matter is that every audio system — whether based on analog or digital sources — is composed of a chain of components, and the overall performance can be compromised by a weak link in the chain.

 

It's all very well to wish that an expensive piece of gear should be immune to its upstream, but it just doesn't work this way. This is why even expensive DACs like a dCS Rossini, a Chord DAVE, an MSB Select etc. all benefit from a device like the Extreme upstream of them. SQ optimization is necessarily an end-to-end endeavor.

 

As for why digital devices can cause SQ degradation, this is way outside the scope of this thread. For one manufacturer's rationale, please read Uptone's white paper here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0660/6121/files/UpTone-J.Swenson_EtherREGEN_white_paper.pdf?v=1583429386

[austinpop]

3 minutes ago, bbosler said:

point taken, but where does "upstream" begin? I contend that it should begin with the $26K streamer. Obviously you believe it is further up. 

 

 

It's not a matter of belief. See Matt's path above. You can contend whatever you like, but you ignore the full chain at your peril.

 

Again, it's not about the functionality of the network. It's about SQ-sapping noise. See the white paper linked in my previous post, and my EtherRegen review.

[austinpop]

40 minutes ago, bbosler said:

Rossini is a DAC with a streamer tacked on

 

As a dCS customer, I'm surprised you'd make such a cavalier statement! Nothing dCS does is slapdash - and btw - I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. Having dabbled with my fair share of Ethernet audio devices — be they DACs, streamers, or servers — I found the dCS Bartók and Rossini to be better than most in handling the upstream grunge. But it's not immune. Nothing — that I know of currently — is.

 

If it were easy to eliminate the upstream noise, everyone would have done it already. This is a process, and it's getting better over time.

 

If you notice Ray's post here — and this has been my observation too with better gear — the better engineered a product is, the better its innate performance is, and the less it benefits from optimizations. 

 

51 minutes ago, bbosler said:

I don't seem to be making my point so I'll give up on this 

 

We understand your point. We're just pointing out that your expectations are unrealistic, given the current state of the art. And I do agree we should terminate this discussion here. Feel free to open a thread if you wish to continue.

[austinpop]

22 minutes ago, bbosler said:

a $26K streamer.

The fact that you keep referring to the Extreme as a streamer tells me you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this product. 

 

24 minutes ago, bbosler said:

We are obviously on different journeys.. enjoy yours

Indeed. You too. Peace.

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

I am curious and eager to learn. please educate me, or as my electronics students used to say "learn me about that," (seriously, I do want to know)

 

I base my terminology on things like this from Taiko

The Taiko Audio SGM Extreme is a State of the Art Music Server

 

As you quoted, the Extreme is a Music Server, which is more than a streamer. The term Streamer (or Endpoint) is usually reserved for a device that  does not itself do music serving (i.e. library management, retrieval of music from storage), but receives a music stream from an upstream music server.

 

This is typical in streaming architectures, where these 3 types of functionality are logical distributed:

• server
• renderer
• control

Physically, devices could combine roles into one. The Extreme is a good example - the most common and recommended use is attached directly to the DAC. In this case, the serving and rendering is on the same box. Such devices are interchangeably referred to as either servers, or alternatively, music players.

 

As to the other matter, regarding what you expect an expensive component to do - I'm done with that discussion. The horse you were flogging was already dead, and I shouldn't have engaged.