Radical Innovation, Exhilarating Realism: Reinterpreting state-of-the-art with dCS Varèse.
The Varèse Music System reimagines playback for a new era, using a suite of new innovations to bring listeners an even more immersive and revealing musical experience, says the company.
The company says it stives to reproduce each aspect of a musical recording with absolute fidelity. This ethos has guided the maker’s work for more than 35 years, driving the development of everything from the earliest digital converters to the current product range.
The company says it has devised some of the most sophisticated audio technologies available in efforts to reveal the full impact of the music listeners love – allowing them to appreciate the full breadth of detail and emotion in the works that inspire them.
The new system, dCS Varèse, embodies these philosophies. It is the most advanced music system to date from the maker and offers a level of performance beyond anything it has created before. At the same time, it brings a simpler, more intuitive user experience and an ambitious design that marries cutting-edge mechanics and hardware with a striking and tactile form.
Reimagining the dCS experience
Varèse is the culmination of a series of projects that began several years ago. In addition to researching and developing updates to existing products, dCS spent a great deal of time exploring how to further improve the sonic and measured performance of DACs. The maker also begun investigating whether it could develop a unified system to transport audio, timing and control signals and improve clocking arrangements between audio components.
Alongside this, the manufacturer has been considering how to make it even easier and more rewarding for listeners to discover music and manage playback.
As these strands of research converged, the team decided to embark on an ambitious project to reinterpret the dCS experience for a new era – devising a complete playback system that reimagines how we interact with and listen to music.
The Varèse Music System
The Varèse Music System comprises five components:
– Core
– 2 Mono DACs: one for each audio channel
– User Interface
– Master Clock
It also includes a dedicated remote control and a new app, dCS Mosaic ACTUS
A dedicated CD/SACD Transport will also be available from 2025.
New technologies & innovations
Varèse uses a suite of new technologies that have enabled the maker to further enhance performance and deliver sound with greater precision and clarity.
These include:
– dCS Tomix: a patented new clocking technology
– ACTUS: a bespoke interface that carries audio, control and Sming signals between components
– The Differential Ring DAC: a new version of the dCS Ring DACÔ that represents the biggest change to our DAC architecture in a generation.
Varèse also features several mechanical and electronic innovations , from new circuit design to enhanced power supplies. The benefits of these advancements are wide-ranging: reduced jitter, whilst increasing linearity, lowering noise floor and eliminating crosstalk.
For listeners, Varèse offers all the qualities people have come to expect from dCS on an even grander scale, building on the current range to deliver a new level of realism. Listeners have noted an even broader, more expansive soundstage; an increased sense of effortlessness, musicality and rhythmic flow; even more tangible vocals; improved texture, timing and impact of bass instruments; and enhanced speed and tunefulness at lower frequencies.
Managing Director David Steven, says, “We set out to redesign state-of-the-art whilst at the same time creating an entirely new and immersive user experience. We knew we had to embrace a singular vision, and be brave and relentless in our pursuit of this, to bring listeners a system that is measurably and demonstrably special and exceeds the capabilities of our current body of work.”
Andy McHarg, Technical Director at dCS, added, “I’ve been at dCS for over 30 years, working across every major project for audio professionals and consumers. I think it’s fair to say that Varèse is the most complicated and challenging project I’ve been involved in, but I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of the team and the system they have created.”
Systems will be manufactured in limited quantities and global shipping will commence in late 2024. Absolute Sounds is responsible for distribution in the UK.
UK RRPs (inc. VAT):
Varèse Core: £75,000
Varèse User Interface: £20,000
Varèse Mono DAC: £90,000 (pair)
Varèse Master Clock: £32,500