Cambridge-based Data Conversion Systems recently announced its new, range-topping Varèse streaming system and, to mark the occasion, hosted an intimate listening session in the leafy idyl of rural Bedfordshire at the fabulous Hi-Fi Lounge, co-presented by Ricardo Franassovici of Absolute Sounds.

The result of five years of research and development, it goes on sale in January 2025 and replaces dCS's former flagship, the Vivaldi. The latter was launched twelve years ago, and has seen multiple upgrades to its current Vivaldi One Apex guise. The Varèse boasts true mono DACs, each housed in their own chassis, the Core that hosts the i/o panel, the Master Clock, and a clear and user-friendly user interface featuring a full-length screen to display settings, sample rates, album art, source, volume, etc. We were also told that a CD/SACD drive is in the works.

The British company carries out all the design and manufacturing in Cambridge under the leadership of president David Steven (sixteen years at dCS) and chief technician Andy McHarg (thirty-one years at the firm), both of whom were at this event to explain why and how the Varèse came to be. The demonstration also featured Dan D'Agostino Momentum and Progression amplification going out into a pair of Wilson Audio Chronosonic loudspeakers. With the legend 'Only the Music' and a streaming digital system that costs over £200,000, the pressure was on for this exotic new creation.

With Andy and his team focused on technical performance, it was up to them to see if any worthwhile improvements could be made. He explained: "We're a DAC company first and foremost, and started making other stuff because we realised that the DAC is only as good as the stuff you feed it, right?" He added: "People say dual mono architecture is better, so we have two DACs in different boxes, which gives you some benefits, and actually, the more you delve into it, with our particular architecture, the more it's helpful and beneficial."

Unfortunately for dCS, it wasn't that simple, as the team then had to resolve bandwidth limitations while keeping two DACs in sync, which ultimately saw the creation of the Varèse Core. The next hurdle was how to test the DACs if you haven't got a Core and how to make a Core if you haven't got a DAC…

David recalled: "The first listening test that we, Andy and the team ever did was two circuit boards on trolleys. It was essentially the DAC boards of the two DACs here, but they had an AES socket stuck on them and were being fed data from the Vivaldi upsampler. But even from that, we were like, wow, we can hear something here! You're on to something. That gave us the foolishness, or the confidence, to keep going. We get 6db better noise and 12db better linearity, and you actually get infinite crosstalk. So, there are all these technical improvements, but how do we keep them in perfect sync? That was one massive challenge for Andy and the team. The other one was the high-speed interface between all the boxes."

This led dCS to develop its TOMIX. Although AES is great in terms of being self-clocking, it is reliably limited to 192k per wire. Andy explained: "TOMIX is a rather nifty thing. So, if you imagine a square wave, the rising edge of the square wave is a point in time. Now, we want to do some conversion. The falling edge is cunningly modulated to tell you what time it is because the problem is you've got two DACs, and the two DACs have to agree. Not just when now is, but what sample that relates to, so they have an elastic buffer. They agree on what time it is so they can perfectly correlate themselves because they're only using the rising edge for the clock – there's no data on it."

This is the genius of what Andy and the team do. Where others might use Ravenna, AES67, Dante, or have two mono DACs and accept that there will be a little clock drift, that's not the dCS way. Let's face it, this company has a history of designing the Blue Vixen radar system for the Royal Navy's Harrier jump-jet and keeping the BBC pips on time every hour.

Once the dCS team felt that they had solved the separate DAC problem, they went on to the interface, as the AES/EBU limitation was not just technical or around the data rate, but also the complexity. We were informed that many calls to dCS customer support were due to incorrectly setting up multi-box systems. So, dCS wanted to create something way more accessible and much easier to use, much easier to set up, and ultimately more reliable instead of a whole plethora of cables. Enter the ACTUS interface – Audio Command Time and Unified System.

Andy told us: "If you take the concept of 'put everything in one wire', then you can't get it wrong, which is pretty attractive. And you've effectively got distributed intelligence throughout the system because everything's connected together via a high speed bus. As everything is talking to each other and agreeing on what they're meant to be doing, it's seamless in terms of your touchpoints, and it's all swift and really responsive."

He continued: "Naturally, dCS then needed to put all these different things in one wire, which took about two years because you have clocks inside the cable where there could be crosstalk, so you must carefully match impedances. dCS makes the cables ourselves with connectors from Limo, meaning that they have absolute control over the wire and the connector. We were informed that the cable can run anything up to 100 metres in length. dCS has shared the cable design with other manufacturers, should they want to create a third-party version, but it will still require certification."

Of course, during the development of Varèse, the new technology was used in other dCS products, which not only benefitted their performance but also ameliorated some of the development costs. For example, Apex was an improvement to the analogue stage of the Ring DAC, which came out of the Varèse project. As it could be implemented via a board change, it made its way into Bartok, Rossini and Vivaldi as an upgrade.

The approach to mechanical design, such as machining from a single billet, getting rid of inter panels and standoffs and making the chassis a heatsink that is totally inert, was piloted in Lina and then realised in a more significant form factor in the Varèse. Moreover, the Lina circuit board, possibly a first in audio, features a four-point flex-rigid PCB. The Varèse Core has nine points of flex, which all wrap around the chassis. The resulting components retain the dCS aesthetic of wonderfully sculptured curved fascias aside from the User Interface, which is the only flat-fronted rectangular box, albeit a luxuriously finished one.

THE LISTENING

Varèse makes a serious statement even before the music starts. However, as the opening strains of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Zaïs: Overture (Live) performed by Les Musiciens du Louvre and Marc Minkowski began, there was a clear sense of the vast auditorium. This spaciousness was underlined by the sound of audience members moving in their seats or trying to stifle a cough. Meanwhile, Nat King Cole's The Very Thought of You was delivered with strings imbued with a warm timbre whilst vocals were presented with organic realism. This was further evidenced by Nouela's cover of Simon & Garfunkle's The Sound of Silence.

A slice of funk fusion courtesy of Webster Lewis performing Do You Believe at Club 7, Norway, got heads nodding and feet tapping. Such was the infectious quality of the live-sounding instrumentation. The snare had a clean snap, while the hi-hat displayed crisp leading edges and natural decay. Rock was equally vital, as Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water was cranked up through the system, making it feel that Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord and Paice were all in the room with us. This was especially remarkable as the intro built around that unmistakable riff, with the rhythm section laying down an immovable foundation.

It didn't seem to matter if it was Schubert's Stabat Mater or The Little Dog performed by Mark Levinson on upright bass (yes, that Mark Levinson) with then-partner Kim Cattrall on vocals; the emotion and realism of the performances were notable. Meanwhile, orchestral works such as Concerto for Viola & String Orchestra: II. Allegro moderato, performed by Maxim Rysanov and Sinfonietta Rīga, showed superlative soundstaging.

The session was naturally wrapped up with noted French composer Edgard Varèse and Ionisation, which features, amongst other instruments, percussion, piano, and two sirens. His namesake hi-fi components allowed the listener to unravel the dissonant and 'organised sound' work and zoom into individual elements of a piece that can sound messy and unlistenable on other systems.

THE VERDICT

The dCS Varèse is supremely impressive in every facet. While I don't expect to see hundreds of these systems being sold when shipping commences towards the end of the year, the company has already proved that the project has yielded upgrades and even a complete system in Lina, so we could expect further improvements to existing offerings. Could this be the ultimate digital front end right now? You know what, I think it just might be.

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