Taiko

[wwm]

It’s as heavy as it is because it houses a fully linear power supply which has to be able to power two 10 core Xeon CPU’s and the entire machine is passively cooled so lots of heat sinks required.

If you read the (admittedley very long) thread I linked to in my previous post all design choices you also mention (win10, why there’s no ‘super clock’ fitted, whether the specs are really overkill or selected because of SQ end results etc.) are discussed there. I follow the thread since I’m very interested in computer audio and Emile Bok (founder and designer) is quite open why it’s build as it is. But of course the real design secrets (e.g. specs of the custom RAM modules) are kept secret. Nonetheless I’m quite impressed from what I read. If I could easily afford it I’d probably would have listened to it already and perhaps bought it.

Several people who I follow on the forums and that have extensive experience with much of the top stuff available on the market and also much of the DIY stuff have bought it which I consider high praise.

Taiko is a Dutch company so perhaps I should try to make a visit to their ‘HQ’ one day to hear what all the buzz is about.

PS; they’re currently in the prototyping phase of their own USB output card and ethernet switch. They want full control on the end result and optimal configuration to go with their Extreme server. They’re also developing their own music server software as Roon has let them down in the past several times when Roon issued updates which caused SQ deteriorations and caused complaints from their buyers.

Hi Antoine,
Read a couple of reviews that have been most positive but no mention of usb prototyping or moving away from Roon. I will ask Paul at Hifi Lounge when I see him next week, he may know something. I have to say I really like Aurender’s conductor.
Cheers.
Bill.