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dCS Varèse

Maybe I'm being slow here, but how does one even connect an optical, coax, or AES/EBU digital source to this? I only see 1 USB input and 1 ethernet input. Does one need to buy another box or multiple boxes?
How dare you connect inferior crap :facepalm: !

But yes, behind the plates on the lower box, there is room to add other modules.
 
Wonder how they will top this ? Make an even more silly expensive product.

I suppose the lower tier lineup will be “upgraded” with trickle down tech from the SOTA product . A classic marketing move .

The typical audiophile mindset so that everything matters and things like DAC’s can continuously be upgraded forever , their are always more veils to remove , next years model is even better ;):facepalm:
Yes, within 5 years (then MK 2) this will be their entry model;)
 
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Opinion: if dCS doesn't make any fraudulent claims about this thing, and if people are willing to buy it, then they basically have an arbitrage market which I'm just fine with.
 
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Maybe the Varese is SOTA and measures better than any other DAC on the planet. We’ll never know.

What I do know is the dCS have their own sophisticated metal fabrication shop so making as many metal things as possible is good for business.
 
Is there a finite limit to the number of boxes, will we reach the stage where every capacitor has its own box?
What a sham the ‘high-end’ is.
Keith
 
will we reach the stage where every capacitor has its own box?
I think that sounds great, would they be like very high quality Lego blocks made from aluminium billet you have to build into a dac, with different ways of assembling them to build different products. Endless fun with no soldering.
 
Perhaps they can find a way to add more 'taps' with more boxes.
My request would be for more air and space around the instruments. As box quantity increases and components are more separated I can see logically how this type of improvement could be achieved.
 
fyi The February 2025 issue of Hi-Fi News has a review of dCS Varèse - download here

The article includes a "LAB REPORT", focusing on marginal improvements over Vivaldi APEX. I imagine the unanimous view of ASR folks will be that such variations are inaudible in even the most "sensitive" (high-end/upmarket/revealing etc) systems. Anyone here heard Varèse / Vivaldi side-by-side?

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Referring to the Wiki page on Edgar Varèse, I was tempted to think dCS may have been inspired (naming this device) by Varèse reminiscing:

When I was about twenty, I came across a definition of music that seemed suddenly to throw light on my gropings toward music I sensed could exist. Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, the Polish physicist, chemist, musicologist and philosopher of the first half of the nineteenth century, defined music as 'the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sounds.' It was a new and exciting conception and to me the first that started me thinking of music as spatial—as moving bodies of sound in space, a conception I gradually made my own.

Wiki also asserts that Varèse posed the question, "what is music but organized noises?" Not dissimilar, then, to the music press.

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Not better than a Dave.
 
Not better than a Dave.
Not better than a $€ 139 DAC:

 
Anyone here heard Varèse / Vivaldi side-by-side?

dCS did a Varese launch event at Innovative Audio (hi-fi store in New York City), where they played the same music on a Varese and Vivaldi Apex for people to compare the two. Some people who attended have posted about the comparison on forums, including on r/audiophile.

On YouTube, TrackingAngle (Michael Fremer's channel) posted a video of the press session from that event. He comments about comparing the two DACs in the video description.
 
Quite an insightful video.
  • over-engineering of DA conversion, power supply resulting in improved SINAD
  • breakthrough tech to be able to sync 2 independant DAC such that the sample gets converted at the same time
  • more details about ACTUS connection
 
dCS did a Varese launch event at Innovative Audio (hi-fi store in New York City), where they played the same music on a Varese and Vivaldi Apex for people to compare the two. Some people who attended have posted about the comparison on forums, including on r/audiophile.

On YouTube, TrackingAngle (Michael Fremer's channel) posted a video of the press session from that event. He comments about comparing the two DACs in the video description.
It's remarkable that Fremer, who wears hearing aids, is willing to comment as an authority on sonic differences that are almost certainly inaudible to people with acute hearing.
 
A store associated with the U.K. distributor is getting one ( is it one or multiple) , I wonder if they would countenance a level matched unsighted comparison ?

That would be a hoot.
Keith
 
Quite an insightful video.
  • over-engineering of DA conversion, power supply resulting in improved SINAD
Improved over what?
  • breakthrough tech to be able to sync 2 independant DAC such that the sample gets converted at the same time
This doesn’t seem like a hard thing to do… they made it difficult by putting the damn things in separate enclosures in the first place :facepalm: . They created a solution for a problem that shouldn’t be there ;)
 
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