Dutch high-end audio company Taiko Audio sells a fanless music server designed for the most dedicated audiophile. The Taiko Audio Extreme Server, which FanlessTech shared on X (formerly Twitter), is intended to store lossless audio files and stream music from services like Tidal. It starts at €28,000 or over US$29,600 with 2TB of storage. Its other specifications include two Intel Xeon Scalable 10-core CPUs and a custom, entirely passive cooling system, ensuring your listening pleasure isn’t disturbed by fan noise and airflow.
Taiko’s approach of using two processors allows the Extreme Server to use dedicated servers for specific processes—one for running the user interface (which is still based on a custom Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 operating system) and one for exclusively running the Roon music management app. According to the company, “The choice to design a dual CPU system was largely fueled by finding a way around the impact Roon’s luxury interface has on sound quality. It does enable Roon processing to become virtually inaudible, a world’s first in our experience.”
Aside from this, the other specifications of the Extreme Server include a 280 GB SSD for the operating system and a base storage capacity of 2 TB for your music files, which you can expand up to 64 TB (but will cost you an additional €1,855 or more than $1,960). It’s also equipped with 48GB of RAM, which, amazingly, is divided into twelve 4GB custom-made industrial memory modules. Taiko says that “fewer and lower speed DIMMs are better for sound quality,” which is why it didn’t use the best RAM for gaming.
Who buys €28,000 fanless music server exactly? https://t.co/buwXaiKkCV pic.twitter.com/at5z3PvWgDDecember 9, 2024
Of course, we cannot forget about the specialized power supply that ensures the best sound quality. It also includes multiple audio and peripheral connections, including five USB ports, two copper Ethernet ports, a fiber SFP open slot Ethernet port, a VGA port, a S/PDIF port, and a single AES/EBU port (which is optionally available in dual or quad setups).
This isn’t the only audiophile server to come on the market, with the $3,699 Nucleus Titan audiophile media server—powered by a standard NUC—arriving to market early this year, and the $1,795 Undentia Cirrus7-SE music server has been available since 2021. However, the Taiko Audio Extreme Server takes an audiophile music server's performance (and price) to the extreme. These unbelievable prices align with other audiophile equipment we find in the market. While many of these specialized devices do have an extra layer of care and research, which could justify their hefty costs, some other devices, like the LAN iSilencer, Innuos Phoenix audiophile network switch, and this ‘audiophile’ SSD, are just dubious snake-oil equipment.
The two Intel Xeon processors and the custom cooling solution will make the Extreme Server more expensive than your average gaming PC. But we wonder: does the eight-fold price increase between Nucleus Titan and the Extreme Server deliver an eight-fold jump in sound quality?
