The German company Taiko Audio presents a computer entirely dedicated to audio. The goal is to offer you a perfect streaming sound experience. As usual, quality pays for itself.
How much would you be willing to pay to stream songs from your favorite artist or band in the highest sound quality possible ? Obviously, the Germans from Taiko Audio answered the question by aiming high, very high.
They designed theExtreme“a cutting-edge music server designed to deliver the most realistic sound/live reproduction from stored music files and streaming music from Qobuz and Tidal“, we read as a preamble. The French platform Qobuz and the Swedish Tidal are known for offering music with an emphasis on audio quality.
From the outside, apart from its horizontal placement, the device looks like a fairly classic computer. But already, the wall dotted with holes visible in the illustration photo of this article suggests that it is not that simple. And that is indeed the case.
This PC for music lovers costs more than some cars
The inside of the Taiko Audio doesn’t look like an ordinary PC. Everything has been designed to restore the purest sound, both in terms of the components chosen and the assembly. So, you will not find fans, which are too noisy, but a passive liquid cooling system silent.
There are also two Intel Xeon Scalable processors. One is dedicated to the operating system derived from Windows 10 Enterprise, the other to the in-house application Theremusic management interface. The 48 GB of RAM are divided into 12 strips of 4 GB manufactured for the machine. According to Taiko, “DIMMs [module de mémoire double en ligne, ndlr] Fewer and slower are better for sound quality“.
The rest of the spec sheet is to match, which leads to the question: how much does it cost? Excluding tax and without changing configuration, the Taiko Audio Extreme is yours for 28 000 €. We’re far from the most powerful PC in the world, but it’s still an investment. At this price, you can be sure you’re in the minority of people who really hear the difference between lossless audio and MP3.
