Flagship dCS Varèse launched

This is the way.

ABS came from trains.

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I might have read this before but I am not quite sure

The Varese had this addictive, relaxed reproduction that made me not want to leave the listening seat. This digital experience was very similar to when you hear a great tape or LP being reproduced; you get pulled in, you feel relaxed, the system disappears, and it’s just the music. It may have been the best digital reproduction that I have ever experienced.

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The good news is that it supports MQA so there’s that.

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I wonder if JA at Stereophile will ever get his hands on it and give it a full suite of tests with his Audio Precision?

At this price point, it would have to be measurably perfect.

But wait, there are already measurably perfect Streamer/DACs at about 1% of the cost of the Varèse.

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Shame , in Rands that is 5 Million , think I’ll pass on that one !!

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I’m looking forward to GoldenSounds review :wink:

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I suppose the same can be said about the price of some optional extras when pricing a car in some cases.
To be fair if I had lottery winners levels of money, my listening spaces would be acoustically treated and I’d be demoing whatever I could get my hands on, life is too short to care.
But in the real world, I’ll stick with the mojo2 for now :slight_smile:

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I guess so, but they are trying to sell a display and a few buttons for the price of a car. The most expensive part here will be the case machining. Granted, when you buy a Bentley it’s similar.

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We have been working at Bentley’s in Crewe, UK. We’ve been installing HVAC systems in two of their new buildings.

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I worry that it might be a bit poopy and too expensive.

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I work for a luxury car manufacturer, not Bentley, £20k in carbon fibre or bits of bespoke trim and engraved parts is easily achieved.
£20k to some people is like me spending £200.

This product is not aimed at me.

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The Varèse Core case.

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Yeah, same with all of these super high end companies. Burmester in Germany also has their cases machined from blocks and polished by qualified metal workers in Germany: There are two sides to this, and I kinda get them both.

  • If you do this, it’s inevitable that the device costs 50K although this has zero influence on SQ.
  • On the other hand, a customer can argue that they want it to look nice and if they pay 50K anyway then it should have the highest workmanship even for the case.
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CNC machined cases, made out of one piece of aluminium, do contribute to SQ:

  • vibration control
  • heat dissipation
  • EMI shielding
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If it were a turntable, or maybe a tube device, it might have some effect. For a solid state digital device none of these either matter (vibration) or work any better than a paper-thin case like you find on a stereo from WalMart.

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If any of this really has an effect, for which there is scarce evidence, then each of these items can be achieved in other ways than machining from a block and in particular without hand polishing and chrome plating in a high-wage country.

It’s still nice to have for various other reasons, though, I’m not denying that

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Aluminum of any thickness or machining will not shield from magnetically induced interference like transformer stray fields i.e., so that’s a wasted effort right there, if heroic shielding was the goal to begin with.

There’s just too much marketing and audiophile mysticism instead of real engineering going on in high end audiophile circles.

And don’t let me even start about the other cited “sound quality contributions”.

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I think it’s safe to say the law of diminishing returns applies here most definitely.

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It’s Euro millions tonight, if I win I’ll let you know :wink:

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