dCS Varèse is the British brand's new flagship streaming DAC system. It maintains the company's tradition of naming its products after composers; this time, it's the turn of one Edgard Varése (1883-1965).

While it leapfrogs the four-box Vivaldi APEX system into the top spot, it is not a replacement. Here, dCS presents a new platform, adding an even higher-end layer to its already high-end offerings with a promise of even loftier performance. As you are already probably thinking, this also comes at an equally elevated price.

The dCS Varèse sits at the top of the brand's existing product platforms and is the result of a series of projects that began a few years ago, says the brand.

The press release tells us that, while exploring how to improve the sonic and measured performance of its DACs, the engineers contemplated if they could develop a unified system to transport audio, timing and control signals while improving clocking arrangements between audio components. Apparently, they also wanted to make discovering music and managing playback easier. Which is very nice of them.

FIVE STAR

Varèse comprises a User Interface, a Master Clock, and two Mono DACs, all driven by a Core unit. The latter is a digital hub that takes a USB and Ethernet input and handles upsampling conversion, noise shaping, and filtering. The resulting signal is then fed through a pair of ACTUS (Audio-Control-Timing-Unified-System) links to Mono DACs.

Interestingly, there is not a power supply component in this stack. Instead, each part of the dCS Varèse tower has its own IEC connection. So have your high-end distribution blocks ready, especially as dCS plans to add a dedicated CD/SACD transport in 2025, pushing the total system even closer to the quarter-million mark.

DIFFERENTIAL RING DAC

The Cambridge-based hi-fi manufacturer has some key new tech that has made this ambitious music system possible, with the Ring DAC APEX from 2022 forging the way. In the Differential Ring DAC, dCS is "Creating a new design with twice as many current sources and introducing a new differential mode of operation." dCS says that its Differential Ring DAC is "the biggest change to our DAC architecture in a generation."

This joins a Masterclock with Tomix, a new patented clocking technology that uses a single two-way ACTUS connection from the Master Clock to the Core to reduce jitter while increasing linearity, lowering the noise floor, and eliminating crosstalk, which is essential when running a pair of mono DACs.

ACTUS also connects the User Interface with the dCS Varèse Core. This works with the new dCS Mosaic ACTUS app and the Varèse Remote control. The User Interface section features a customisable full-colour touchscreen front panel that hands you the system's status and album, track, and playlist information.

It sounds like dCS has taken a leaf out of MOON's playbook to move away from the usual rectangular remote control design in favour of a round CNC-milled aluminium handset with capacitive glass hotkeys. These sit around a central dial that can control both track functions and volume. The remote is rechargeable via USB-C and connects to the dCS Varèse through Bluetooth, so it does not require 'line-of-sight' to work.

The dCS Varèse was unveiled as a static display today at the Hong Kong AV Show on August 9th. It will be available in Australia from November 2024.

Australian RRPs as follows:

• Varese Core System, $190,000
  • Varese Core
  • Varese UI 
  • Varese Remote Control
  • Varese Actus Cable
• Varese Mono DAC Pair- $180,000
• Varese Master Clock - $65,000
• Varese IO Module - $23,000
• Varese CD/SACD Transport - $70,000

Visit dCS for more information