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dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor Page 2

So much tidier than the Vivaldi stack! The User Interface (top) connects via BT to the remote and via an ACTUS umbilical to the Master Clock (below). The Core (bottom) hosts USB-A and wired Ethernet inputs (there's no Wi-Fi), with ACTUS outputs to the two Mono DACs above. The Mono DACs each have two analog outputs, on XLRs and RCAs. (Photo: Paul Miller.)

The ACTUS cable
During my factory tour, I had the opportunity to chat for 51 minutes with one of dCS's younger engineers, Ben Ashcroft. In his almost 11 years with the company, he has risen from apprentice in the production…

dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor Page 3

Oh, the sound!
When the time finally came to write this section—the part of the review that, if you're like me, you may have eagerly jumped to after the introduction—I looked at my notes and was a bit aghast. How was it possible that after weeks of listening in both the UK and at home, I only had two pages of notes?

Only once before had I experienced something like this. In 2024, shortly before the start of High End Munich, I sat in row 6 of Vienna's acoustically fabled Musikverein as Riccardo Muti conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the 200th anniversary performance of…

dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor David Steven

Sidebar 1: dCS Managing Director David Steven on Varèse and its Mono DACs

David Steven (center) discusses the design and features of the dCS Varèse at New York's Innovative Audio in January. (Photo: John Atkinson).

Varèse really started with us as a team saying, "If there were no constraints and we had infinite time and infinite budget, what could we do? Where could we go? How can we make a system that is simple to use, easy to set up, and super reliable? How can we support higher sample rates? How can we support streaming services? How can we make it easier to control…

dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor The Varèse Unwrapped

Sidebar 2: Varèse Unwrapped

The Varèse Core, pictured above—photo by Paul Miller—is the largest component in the system. All calls between boxes are integrated here, and the Core generates the system clock if the external Varèse Master Clock is not connected.

As the system hub, the Core is home to all the upsampling, the primary digital filtering, and a good deal of the modulation—truncation and the noise-shaping—but not the bit mapping, which happens on a dynamic basis within the Mono Ring DACs. More about this later.

All data, clock, and other signals are…

dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor Specifications

Sidebar 3: Specifications

Description: Five-box streaming digital music system—two Mono DACs, Varèse Master Clock, Core, User Interface/display—with remote control, proprietary ACTUS (Audio, Control & Timing Unified System) connectors, Mosaic ACTUS control app, optional CD/SACD transport, and I/O interface. Roon Ready. Enables PCM rates up to 24/384 and DSD up to DSD512. MQA coming.
Dimensions: Core—9.7" (244mm) H × 17.5" (444mm) W × 17.3" (437mm) D. Weight: 73lb (33.1kg); User Interface—5.2" (131mm) H × 17.5" (444mm) W × 17.8" (450mm) D. Weight: 32.2lb (14.6kg); each Mono DAC—5.2…

dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor Associated Equipment

Sidebar 4: Associated Equipment

Digital sources: dCS Vivaldi APEX DAC, Vivaldi Upsampler Plus, Vivaldi Master Clock; Innuos Statement Next-Gen Music Server and PhoenixNET network switch; Small Green Computer Sonore opticalModule Deluxe (2); Broadcom/Avago AFBR-5718PZ 1GB SX-SFP, Gen 5 Fiber Optic modules; Nordost QSource linear power supply (2); Sonore Audiophile Linear Power Supply; Synology 5-bay 1019+ NAS with Ferrum Hypsos linear/switching hybrid power supply; Linksys MR9000 mesh router and Arris modem; Apple 2023 iPad Pro and 2017 MacBook Pro laptop with 2.8GHz Intel i7, SSD, 16GB…

dCS Varèse Music System D/A Processor Measurements

Sidebar 5: Measurements

Fig.1 Distortion + noise versus 24-bit/48kHz digital signal level over a 120dB range (black, 1kHz; blue, 20kHz). Note 140dB Y axis.

With the separation of the Varèse's core components—not least the evolution of the Ring DAC into two mono, differential arrays—we would expect to witness some uplift in technical performance. And indeed, comparisons with the Vivaldi APEX DAC show incremental gains in S/N ratio, distortion, and low-level linearity. Specifically, while the 5.88V maximum output (in the Varèse's top 6V mode) has not changed, and the sub–1 ohm…

A Quintessence Audio room: Ø Audio, Boulder Amplifiers, dCS, Innuos, and AudioQuest

I heard people at the show, including Stereophile writers, were talking about the Ø Audio room—though when I say they were talking about it, I don’t mean that they were saying the company’s name, since no one knew how to do that. I looked it up. Ø is a letter in Norwegian and Danish that comes after the end of our alphabet, after Æ and before Å. If you want to know how to pronounce it, I'll provide a link to a pronunciation guide. You'll notice that the pronunciation in Danish and Norwegian is quite different—though the pronunciation I heard from Norwegian Jonathan Cook to me sounded more…

Re-Tales #53: Making Hi-Fi a Viable Career

Last month's column looked at the hi-fi industry's struggles with recruiting and retaining qualified staff. For that article, Specialty Sound and Vision's Anthony Chiarella, also director of sales and marketing for Gryphon Audio and Brinkmann Audio, made a comment that bears repeating here: "If we're going to have a future in hi-fi, we have to make it worthwhile to make a career in hi-fi." How might that be achieved?

Achieving that key objective requires achieving another one: How do we make more people aware that our industry exists?

Long ago there was a saying. People (read:…

Hornucopia: True Source Audio Distribution and G.I.P. Laboratory Go All In

Steve Mishoe of True Source Audio Distribution originally introduced me to Shindo Laboratory and DeVore Fidelity—brands that shaped my listening sensibility and critical framework. His colleague Steve Cohen often assists with system setup and calibration. In fact, he helps with every review I write for Stereophile, fine-tuning gear and speaker placement and acting as a sounding board.

Their latest import from Japan, G.I.P. Laboratory’s 506 and 4165 horn-loaded, field-coil loudspeakers ($82,000/pair), commanded attention for reasons well beyond personal ties. Along with the…