Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy
Not sure if anyone caught this, but it's quite the take down of some of the very expensive server/streamer stuff out there. It seems logical to me -- especially when he prices out what some of the internal components are -- but this is above my pay grade so I cannot confirm. It's here: https://youtu.be/MMSC9-qQ_K4
Wonder if others agree or disagree with the basic takedown.
Because you use capitals it must be true! Sorry, but many other components have lots of claims that are not true too. After you eliminate electrical noise, there is really not much you can do unless you are purposely manipulating the bit stream, assuming your DAC is good at jitter reduction if SPDIF connected, and with async USB, not much to improve.
Interesting...
Nice trolling, but your not goning to catch any real fish with that bait..;-)
Your comments "not much you can do" and "not much to improve" swims dangerously close to "everything sounds the same."
Don't get me wrong, I am an extremely technical guy. FWIW I have a dual degree in Engineering and hold several Patents in my field.
However, I learned a long time ago that, that when it comes to audio, it is far better to let one's ears inform one's intellect (and system of beliefs), rather than the other way around.
Take a moment to think about that. This distinction is extremely important. If your ears hear a difference and you confirm that difference is reliable and repeatable, then find a logical reason how and why it can be so. Do not let theory sway your judgement, rather let your judgement inform the theory.
It is interesting that OCD Mikey's comments come without much comment on the sonics of servers/streamers at various price points and many comments on this thread follow the same hypothetical path.
Personally I have HEARD many many servers in my system, from an entry level laptop to a custom built desktop PC optimized for audio to the latest servers from Baetis, Laufer Teknik, and Aurender
They all sound significantly different in my system and range is SQ from pedestrian to amazing. I finally spent my hard earned money on a third party solution that cost over 5 figures, even though I would have loved to have had success in my own DIY effort.
As a good friend said to me, until you've driven both, the difference between servers, like the difference between a Porsche 911 and a GT3 is simply no more than speculative.
Not only the aesthetic, but more importantly (to me at least) the sonic
differences between many servers from DIY $500 dollar units to cost no
object devices is not only real but also SUBSTANTIAL. This truth is no
different here than it is in absolutely EVERY OTHER audio component!!!
Because you use capitals it must be true! Sorry, but many other components have lots of claims that are not true too. After you eliminate electrical noise, there is really not much you can do unless you are purposely manipulating the bit stream, assuming your DAC is good at jitter reduction if SPDIF connected, and with async USB, not much to improve.
Interesting comments from each of you. I do not stream still spinning CDs. My buddy just purchased the Rockna (looking forward to hearing it). I have also heard an older MSB at his home that was upgraded to the newest software. It was like a $14K unit new that was bought for $5K used. I make my own products but they are all tube based products. The MSB was a very nice sounding unit. My buddy liked it for the resolution, it is quiet and has a digital volume control so he can probably sell his BeSpoke passive preamp.
What makes us different is that I prefer a more musical sound and he only wants quiet and resolution. I placed a Counterpoint tube preamp in his system (completely modified) and he hears what I like. Depth of sound stage, better separation, more dynamics compared to his passive but not as overall quiet.
So everyone has a sound that they like which is what the hobby is all about.
First I find the logic that SOTA music servers are "just computers" is akin to saying that a state of the art CPU or power transistor, is just a few pennies worth of silicon, copper and plastic; or that a capacitor is just a bit of metal and a dielectric.
Pulease.
At some point we must all pay for some form of human endeavor in the form of technology. If you don't believe that servers are more than the some of the parts assembled, then buy a desktop, better yet put one of your own together. So easy a child of 12 could do it.
Not only the aesthetic, but more importantly (to me at least) the sonic differences between many servers from DIY $500 dollar units to cost no object devices is not only real but also SUBSTANTIAL. This truth is no different here than it is in absolutely EVERY OTHER audio component!!!
If you don't think that custom power supplies, custom I/0 solutions, and custom software solutions make any difference, then don't buy a custom server, and while your at it, sell your entire existing system and buy a 60 dollar solution that has EXACTLY the same functionality from E-bay.
There are certainly several logical fallacies in the video. Those inclined may have a field day but I choose to take the good and throw away the bad. To that end, I hear him say to **dive deep** before investing large amounts of cash unless you are at/near audio nirvana - which is excellent advice for those into music and audio gear.
OCD Mikey doesn't criticize spending exhorbitant sums for gear. Rather, he reps several very high-end ($$$$) brands such as Rockna, Jeff Rowland and Playback Designs. He also sells what he portends is a high-value/high-end
AudioByte
DAC (if a $4k DAC can be considered a value.) He tells what he believes makes AudioByte a value (uses latest proven technology FPGA clock and DAC.) He also states that their soon-to-be released HUB streamer (est. $2,000) will be worth the money and the wait.
Is the Taiko
SGM
Extreme Server a compromised design? I have no idea. But it certainly is remarkable that the motherboard and USB subsystems are non-proprietary. The Taiko Extreme is undeniably a "statement piece" - so shouldn't its internal design make a stronger statement? The Rockna and Playback Designs servers he reps use proprietary motherboard designs with comparable aesthetics/build quality. He is certainly ripping Innuos - and perhaps unfairly - although surely some of their dense product line is overpriced.
I think what he is getting at here is that far more audible system improvements are possible using other gear ((such as DACs)) - and that high-end servers/streamers are reserved for those reaching for the final few drops of audio goodness. He happens to sell some killer DACs - and the same companies also make high-end servers - so, if you're going for the best, high-end, luxury system, you may also want the physical design of the DAC and Server to match.
On a personal note, if I had that kind of scratch to spend on audio systems I would go for MSB, dCS, or Meitner DACs that, unlike Mikey's brands, also support MQA. :-)
Well given the extreme density difference between electrolytic and film caps, if I want 100,000uf and film caps should I forgo the washroom or kitchen.
Last year I decided to replace playing CDs with storing them on a hard drive and playing them through a server connected to my vintage MSB Platinum DAC. The salesman persuaded me to get a Bluesound Vault 2i which copse CDs to its hard drive and corrects detectable bit errors in part by reading a CD more than once. I ran onto some difficulties which included extreme complication whenever I added a new CD or download and the impossibility of listing each piece of music by its composer. With help I got a copy of the library stored in the Vault 2i onto a folder in my laptop. My complete entire collection took up a little more than 30 gB, something that could easily fit a 50 gB flash drive. I made a separate folder for each composer and I use the flash drive rather than the hard drive. The Vault 2i can get near HD for any classical music station though for four classical music stations when the weather is right I still use an FM tuner for the better resolution than HD has to offer. I suspect there might have been a cheaper way to do this but I do not think far more expensive servers have anything better. On the subject of rationalization dismissing extremely costly components I have some skepticism. Cables costing 5 figures advertise such expedients as litz or ribbon construction to ameliorate skin effect at high frequencies. If you calculate the effective loss of cross sectional ares of an 8 gauge speaker wire in series with a 4 Ohm speaker, the difference is only a few hundredths of an Ohm resistance increase at 20 kHz over DC resistance, which could cause a few hundredths of a dB attenuation at frequencies we can't hear. This the junk science used to sell such speakers does not get you what you pay for. How do we know what other deceptions might be in the audio industry. There is another reason I take extreme prices with a grain of salt. There is a $350,000 pair of monoblocks which can be built for approximately $2000. I do not know whether the $350,000 model even uses polypropylene filter capacitors in the high voltage power supplies instead of the inferior electrolytic kind you see in "high end" amplifiers costing $20,000 or more. This is why I design and build my own amplifiers.
a music server is just another computer application. Has nothing go to do with making sound. Just serving up files from storage like any other program.
The streamer is where things start to get interesting. The streamer takes the data from the files served up by the server and produces the digital electric signal that the DAC then uses to produce the music in real time. Streamers can have an effect on the sound quality but in practice it may be hard to tell.
The DAC is by far the biggest factor in practice regarding the end sound quality in the digital streaming pipeline. Keeping jitter to a minimum is key for good sound quality. The wire connection from streamer to DAC can also play a part in regards to jitter levels into the DAC as a result of signal reflections.
Also noise in the circuit that makes it into the signal from streamer to DAC may also have an effect. I like wireless connections from server to streamer for that reason...isolation for the music making components from the wired computer network. Wired circuits can be very prone to noise. Won’t hurt the computer programs that run on it but might hurt the music making process if it makes it’s way into the circuit between streamer and dac.
A few comments about this video . It is true that servers are computers and most of the time are built with parts that you can buy of the shelf except for company like aurender,melco,auralic.... This is just a fraction of the cost .Very good power supply are expensive and computer audio requires some very specific and very good psu . Another big cost is the development cost for a well tuned software. What makes very good digital front end is these three points : the right pc parts ,excellent psu , well tuned software . with that you can achieve really magical level of sound quality that I felt was impossible to reach with digital audio . In my own diy efforts server-player , I have about 5k invested in parts only ... I get excellent sq but at a cost .
My take on value components: 1. If one assumes parts quality is associated with sound quality. I want high quality parts vs. lower quality parts. 2. Engineering expertise, how those parts are put together. This is more difficult to ascertain, one has to acquire knowledge in order to make value judgement. I assume this judgement may be theoretical, perhaps many roads to highest sound quality. Costs here may vary widely, R&D. 3. Business model, lower profit per unit manufactured. Is direct sales model most efficient, could be. Small manufacturer vs. large? Are any economies of scale at work here?
4. Subjective sound quality. I would have to hear all streamers, servers in my system to judge sq. And so, best value would be highest parts quality, best engineering, low profit business model and best sq in my system. Obviously I'll never know if any component I purchase is best value. And so we're left to subjective estimations of value, right back to square one.
Nothing surprising in this video for me. I did, on the same link, look at his video on I2S and external clocks, which made sense to me also, especially if you have a DAC with an asychronous input.
Couple of good recent comments about price to cost ratio and fetishistic nature of the hobby at times. I think the video guy and some others here are addressing the fact that some companies do offer lower markup for very good sound quality and that newcomers who might be initially turned off to the hobby (or in this case, to streaming) should understand that they can get some very good results without needing to win the lottery first. The video guy also assumes that some people are wary of being ripped off, even if they recognize that others have to make some profit. This thread has had comments indicating that price and value are very relative, especially when one considers how narrowly or broadly the term “value” can be construed.
Most electronic parts are dirt cheap to manufacture. The rule of thumb is to sell high end audio for 6 times its manufacturing cost. This includes the building, the electricity, the parts and cabinets, etc, the labor and insurance, etc, and a doubling of the dealer cost for the retail price. Despite these margins, many companies gloriously exceed that margin. When a $300,000 Ferrari costs $160,000 to make, that $140,000 profit to the maker seems like a lot, but when a $10,000 amp costs $3000 (if it is a good one), to make, we barely flinch.
The audio hobby is largely a fetish, one in which I admittedly indulge. Over the years I have concluded that there is little relation between price and sound quality. People tend to pay megabucks for a very minor return in audible improvements. But the stuff is cool and gratifies our irrational urge. Getting a new component that is unusual and well made is a big thrill. It’s just like the big cable controversy where people claim to hear all sorts of subtle differences and think they break in. Personally I prefer my $25 Beldens over my $600 Wireworlds, but so what? It’s all harmless if one can afford it.
Being an IT professional and audio guy I find this video OK and nothing against Mike. He's right for about 98-99% of this video and kudos to him for calling this out. He's been fair and honest about this audio voodoo with dealers and gear. I've built many machines for Roon/streaming and you don't need a $5k computer to do this right. Now those high end "audio servers" are nice and clean looking for sure but not necessary.
@hilde45
I don't want to go over old ground or seem to be stirring up controversy for no reason
No matter what you post, Someone will make it controversial. I can't tell you how many times I have posted something innocently, only to be called out on it as if I were trying to be controversial. Reading levels are very poor anymore
I personally have the sonore signature rendu, melco streamer, and the pink faun 2.16x and I can tell you streamers do make a vast difference. I tricked my brother and had the sonore playing and he l expressed that he was sorry I paid that much fir my pink faun. And that was just casual listening.
@hide45 "Ok, well I feel quite satisfied that OCD is not worth taking very seriously."
He claims to "make $ on cables and the rest is for fun" to "demo to help others" who cannot. He tries stuff and records with an iPhone. Lots of high $ gear around and no good mics or audio/video recording tools for his Youtube videos, yet. Pushes some brands and gets fixated on "looks" as much as sound. Calls himself "OCD", openly. What he likes, good for him. I enjoy how he takes close-up video of some gear just to see it.
I put it in the "hobby" category like many of us here. It’s okay to have fun too and not take ourselves or these hobbyist videos too seriously. It can be fun to watch people with passion for their hobby, or skip on.
djones513,529 posts02-10-2021 2:56pm "I believe the Taiko Taiko Extreme is one of the devices. I have not heard it but I have researched it. I grant that it does everything it claims. It looks to be a very well made streamer/server. Does it sound better than cheaper units? From what I’ve seen I doubt it very much"
You have not heard it - so your opinion is ... inane
Unlike some whom posted comments early in this thread i assume like most like myself would actually listen to said components in your own system to compare, However specifications and measurements is all they need to determine a components worth and measure of playback quality , actually listening for themselves isn’t how they do things ,,..
Its all some sort of comic act with this notion of a digital front end playback quality starts and ends with their choice , like this thread they are always some of the first to comment to tell you how foolish you are with your money, they are some sort of Ralph Naders of home audio I guess ,..
Then there’s the guys that claim with their technical skill they can build a server / streamer with off the shelf parts for a few hundred bucks that will rival and or surpass any brand on the market today ,
Though when asking them questions if they have their own server streamer they have actually compared with side by side the answers are no , however I’m sure some of these home hobby enthusiasts have built a great sounding server streamer though perhaps I missed it none of them claimed they have at least not on these forums.
They always direct their dismissive ridicule on forums like this and never actually directly at the online reviewer with a open comment section below their review or even at the manufacturer themselves on any of their open comments on social media and what have you .
I have directed some of these guys to these open comments of the reviewer they berated including the manufacturer themselves and none of them showed up , how comical is that,..
Perceived value is can be emotional or monetary. Audiophiles are a diverse group. Price sensitivity has different ceilings for each of us. Most of us won't blink at spending $ 50 for a immediately perceived improvement and at that price would care less about what the cost of the parts are as we are well below the monetary ceiling and in the emotional valuation. We like it, we want it, lets buy it and we feel good about the buy.
Spending $ 1000 or $ 5000 or $25000 most of us bump into the monetary ceiling and have to balance that with the emotional. It gets harder and harder to justify the improvement. Cost accounting the parts is one way to convince us it is a bad buy even though we want it.
We like it, its not a good value, lets not buy it and we feel good about the decision........
Well, at the higher end, audio equipment is both furniture and art (physical and audio sculpture), and thus provides the same sort of aesthetic pleasure that a painting we like does. So price is meaningless. When someone buys a painting for tens of thousands of dollars or more, do they kvetch that the cost of materials was only around $200, and the artist dashed it off in an afternoon? If I trust the sound of a system that has broken my bank more than I do a $10 boom box I picked up at Goodwill, then it will sound better to me (regardless of 'specs') and I will get mroe pleasure out of listening to it, no?
I agree with him about Servers and Streamers. Just so the cpu can handle the load, the bit stream entering a DAC is identical regardless of cost. The feature I would be willing to pay extra for, and can be expensive, is the User Interface or Human Interface software/hardware.
I disagree that he can tell the difference between a FLAC and WAVE file. A decompressed FLAC is identical bit for bit to the original WAVE file. Only the meta data is different. If a lossless compression does not expand into an exact copy of the original, restoring a computer backup would never work.
I really don’t understand the point for bashing any products based on they component value. If they sound bad then sure let us know, but estimating component value is completely useless.
That’s an interesting take. Many comments I’ve read on this and other forum try to estimate value, where value means whether the cost of the unit is worth the money paid. Sonic performance is one part of value; other parts include comparisons with other units at similar or different price points.
Right now, there’s a thread on Agon about Pass Labs vs. Sugden Class A amplifiers that is assessing whether or not the extra $$ paid for Pass labs is worth the additional money, or whether the Sugden offers more "bang for the buck." Some judging this question are referring to the parts on the inside of each and how good they are, etc., in order to judge if the Pass is worth the money. This seems to be a regular way that people drill into the details of the value question, especially when it’s hard to audition both. It’s not that sound of the unit is irrelevant, but if someone is going to pay a lot more for something, they often want to know more than just the reported sound of it, which we know is very subjective. Often, both are not available to audition, and even if they are, they might not immediately reveal everything one might eventually hear. Many buy with an eye to "future-proofing," knowing that down the road, one might be able to tell that, for example, the high quality capacitors in a better-made product sound better, even if this isn't immediately obvious. Then again, there's durability, etc. We all experience this with, say, a house or a car, which only shows its virtues or vices after a longer run of experiences with it.
This is my understanding as to why some downgrade (or "bash" as you put it) a product for charging a lot when the internal parts are not as good as other units. To each his own.
Mikes definitely makes some very good points but I think
this can go completely across the audio spectrum, from cabling to speakers and
if you look at what it cost to build a set of speakers and what they retail
for, you truly are not getting your money's worth in regard to cost of parts.
I have personally had 93 different digital devices through
my reference system. In regards to servers, I highly recommend that people
listen to different manufacturers and make their own judgment because the best
servers do create a more holographic type of imaging. I'm certainly not an expert
and have never had any interest in manufacturing products or even investigating the cost
of the parts but I have found that the top five servers/streamers we have tested
do sound significantly better than the less expensive pieces that we have
tested. We are actually going to test a sub $5000 server/streamer set up in the
next couple of weeks but so far we have not found anything at that price point
that is as holographic as the more expensive server/streamer's.
Also I personally know very few people that are buying more
expensive products just say that they own them. Rather I find the people
that have more money to purchase more expensive audio products have been
through a lot of equipment and they are looking for the endgame product so that
they can do other things in life that they enjoy well listening to their music.
The only problem I have with Mikes opinion is that it is all
hypothetical.
I really don’t understand the point for bashing any products based on they component value. If they sound bad then sure let us know, but estimating component value is completely useless. OCD HiFi guy would be watchable if he would just keep commenting about sound quality and device matching... hmmm maybe not. I realized that I don’t value his opinions at all.
My music server is a broken down DELL computer that I took from the trash heap of an old employer. I figure a audiophile music server is a much quieter machine than mine. However, I use Fibre Optical cable from my network switch to my Sonore OpticalRendu then USB to my DAC.
I cannot figure out how this is not as good or maybe even better than any audiophile music server.
@lalitk Holy crap that Taiko looks like one of the best built audio devices I've ever seen. And 700,000 microfarads of capacitance for a streamer/server??!! Honestly just based on build quality that looks like its well worth the $26K they're asking. No comment on it otherwise for obvious reasons.
It’s true a music server is just a computer doing a job that is not very hard. I got mine of Amazon for about $250 plus another couple hundred for 2tb storage and backup storage. It doubles as my at home work computer. I listen to it all the time and the sound is top notch off any of my systems that use it.
I recall seeing another video from him (OCD Guy) a while ago. At first I thought it was a parody, misnaming several components and misidentifying their purpose. Made me laugh.
But then I figured out he wasn't kidding and was trying to make a serious video.
I'm strongly in the "don't take this guy seriously" camp.
"It’s a box full of parts any consumer can buy off the shelf."
The trick is that many (most?) of us could buy those parts, but would not know what to do with them, even if we were provided schematics. That is why we have to pay more than what the sum of parts would cost.
Another thing is design/aesthetics of the product. Many streamers look better than home-brewed items.
How much is all that worth to anyone is another discussion.
Disagree ... the 'Takedown' (by OCD) is not a valid criticism because no evidence of knowledge are cited. Only misguided opinion. One quick trip to SGM Extreme Music Server web site provides seven bullet points highlighting design consideration. For example: "
The Extreme is built for bit perfect output without up sampling the data stream to cater to the latest premium R2R and Sigma/Delta D to A converters. With bit perfect streaming, system latency (= active processing time) becomes a significant part of the resulting sound quality. In our design of the Extreme, we focused on providing the lowest latency possible for every instruction or set of instructions the server has to manage. ". The video starts with a flow chart explanation of components used to render audio files. Which appears to be the focus of the posted video and criticism of ' over priced Gear ' as an aside. A reference to lower priced ' Streamers ' is a bit more to the point - comparison in terms of value of dedicated renderer for Roon, Tidal, and Qobuz vs. PC / Mac. I would state that a personal PC custom built and optimized for playback could be more cost effective but not equivalent. Another note is that a ' proprietary ' board is not a guarantee of anything. My opinion ... # cheap Asus parts ... this I would also take exception to as well. @hilde45 if the implication is that Asus is equivalent to ' Cheap ' or that Taiko is somehow offering a misrepresented product is irresponsible and does not serve a meaningful discussion.
Alot of people want to talk R&D, that's why the price is what it is. Well watch OCD's video when he opens an innous streamer. It's a box full of parts any consumer can buy off the shelf. Way over priced in my opinion. If you open my DAC's by Cees Ruetenburg, Metrum Acoustics Pavane and Sonnet Morpheus what you will see is proprietary technology (DAC Modules) and high quality inputs (USB I2S ect) and power supplies (toroids) also lundahl transformer coupled (Pavane). I can actually see (and hear) why they are priced the way they are.
As someone who knows very little about streamers and servers I found the video informative on the sort of basic level needed to begin looking. Thank you for posting this.
Ok, well I feel quite satisfied that OCD is not worth taking very seriously. I also better understand the skepticism at my posting the video. I really thought he had more credibility than he does. You all have done a good job at showing me that, and as a relative newbie, I will take my lesson with good humor.
As a relative audio newcomer, it has sometimes been hard to start conversations because I don't want to go over old ground or seem to be stirring up controversy for no reason. I know people do that and then are disingenuous about their motives. But that is really not me. Glupson, I am sorry for my tone, earlier.
I said in my first post. Take OCD video / opinions with grain of salt. He often picks on products that he doesn’t sell for the sake of educating audiophiles. Not saying there isn’t any truth what he says but did he actually showed us a product in the video with cheap parts and fancy case work bidding for our top dollars?
I am all for buyers beware type of videos. But the attached video isn’t one of those, in fact far from it. What you hear is a raves and rant of a man who just doesn’t quite understand the extreme build of Taiko. If he did, he would have dissected each part and showed us how much something like that should cost...just by waving hands and saying oh something like that shouldn’t cost more than $5K or so just goes to show his poor taste and bad choice of words.
You want affirmations, read the 3 part review of Taiko.
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