Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

hilde45,

If that is the case, claims in the video are not worth much. Speaker's words are supported by speaker's words only. It appears to be one of the videos that is there to attract clicks for whatever reason. It goes on for 16 minutes of saying virtually nothing substantial which is another red flag that trustworthiness is questionable at best. I understand that the speaker has a reputation of being valuable in Hi-Fi world, but his claims are, so far, only claims with not even a hint of proof that what he is saying is remotely true.

I didn’t watch all of the video because I can’t stand watching the guy. The notion that these uber expensive streaming/serving devices are worth the price is up to the buyer to decide. If they are claiming they sound better than less expensive devices I would be very skeptical and look for verification, subjective anecdotal flowery prose is not verification. 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. This is where I have trouble with these types of devices, I don’t really care what they cost or what anyone buys but I do take exception when they claim superior sound without showing why?
I can or anyone can put their server in another room, there goes the noise advantage out the window, put a decent streamer as an endpoint, DAC that measures beyond human hearing in SINAD, THD+ N and listen to each blind and pick which is which,  better than  chance. All you ever get is anecdotes like above, every time I spend more it sounds better, well Duh?

I never take these YouTube guys seriously unless they are showing me why. One good YouTube guy to watch is Erin’s Audio Corner. He uses measurement equipment to show why a certain speaker behaves the way it does. He interviews speaker designers and engineers. Gives you real verifiable useful  information not just A sounds better than B because my golden ears tells me it does.

@hilde45,

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.

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/reality-quest-going-to-extremes-with-the-taiko-audio-sgm-extr...