Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

“.....he is selling you a Ferrari to drive through a gated retirement village at 25MPH”. 
@djones51,

Thanks for the wonderful analogy. If you’re thinking it then you still have time to act. Cause when you get to that retirement village stage, you will regret not buying a Ferrari. Life is too short to be settling for a smartcar 😂

@hilde45,

Old news but I would take his videos with grain of salt 😊

I say this, it’s convenient to berate a product and overlook R&D, resources put together to bring that finished products to the market.

“It seems logical to me -- especially when he prices out what some of the internal components are”

Just ask him how many servers he has built and sold.....

“price in not always a good indicator of product performance especially in digital audio.”

Very true, different strokes for different folks. Some people are happy with raspberry pi 4 in their closet, others are ecstatic with Taiko Extreme 😊

This articles dives deep into what Taiko Extreme is all about...I do realize $26K is lot of money. The OCD guy picks on Taiko but conveniently spares Jeff Rowland’s....maybe he has a vested interest in JR :-)

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

Speaking of extreme....one can buy class D amp for $500 then why one would pay $58K for JR’s 925 mono’s?

https://www.11stereo.com/poweramplifiers

@lubachl

I recommend watching following videos for your journey into streaming, enjoy!

https://youtu.be/E5rGHPYh3E0

https://youtu.be/tT-qby5q3V0

@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...

@jond,

Taiko Extreme has set the standards for others to follow. I am patiently waiting for Taiko Mini Extreme to come out later this year. 

“Buy a good USB isolator and a good DAC and the streamer becomes 0 importance unless it is intentionally modifying the sound.”

@audio2design,

What did you buy to accomplish above? Please list brand names so we can replicate and learn from your experience. 

+1, @arafiq

Great post!

There is never going be any single consensus on what is a fair value of a given product. What I consider of high value (R&D, build quality, proprietary circuits, app interface, features) others may consider them as frivolous or marketing gimmicks. There are folks here who are perfectly happy with raspberry pi’s or Node 2i and others with offerings from Lumin, Auralic and Aurender.

A product with dealer / distributor network comes padded with markups for dealer. It’s up to you, to either pay full price or negotiate a deal. One guy pointed out in this thread about OCD Hifi guy own brand (Verastarr) of cables with high price tag. Look at some of the brands he is selling and tell me if you don’t find excessive padding for resellers or as others have pointed out excessive ‘greed’.

I am with @arafiq, If you cannot afford it, or don’t see the value, that’s fine. Save your money and buy something else. Fortunately, there are plenty of options to choose from, be happy and enjoy the music!

Peace!

@tonywinga,

Great post! Congratulations on your retirement, now you can sit back and enjoy the music :-)

I have learned in life that there is no substitute for quality.