dCS Introduces Varèse

Radical Innovation, Exhilarating Realism: Reinterpreting state-of-the-art with dCS Varèse

The Varèse Music System reimagines playback for a new era, utilising a suite of new innova<ons to bring listeners an even more immersive and revealing musical experience...

At dCS we strive to reproduce each aspect of a musical recording with absolute fidelity. This ethos has guided our work for more than 35 years, driving the development of everything from our earliest digital converters to our current product range. We have devised some of the most sophisticated audio technologies available in our efforts to reveal the full impact of the music our listeners love – allowing them to appreciate the full breadth of detail and emotion in the works that inspire them.

As we’ve evolved from developing professional audio equipment to making high-performance music systems and separates, we’ve broadened our focus to explore how we can provide the most accurate sound and the most rewarding playback experience. As music lovers ourselves, we understand the importance of music in our customers’ lives and we aim to honour this with exceptional equipment that makes listening an even greater pleasure.

Our new system, dCS Varèse, embodies these philosophies. It is our most advanced music system to date and offers a level of performance beyond anything we’ve ever created. 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, we had spent a great deal of time exploring how we could further improve the sonic and measured performance of our DACs. We’d also begun investigating whether we could develop a unified system to transport audio, timing and control signals and improve clocking arrangements between audio components.

Alongside this, we’d been considering how we could make it even easier and more rewarding for listeners to discover music and manage playback, conducting interviews with dCS owners around the world and exploring what future music interfaces could look like.

As these strands of research converged, we 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 uSlises a suite of new technologies that have enabled us to further enhance performance and deliver sound with even 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: we’ve further reduced jiVer, whilst increasing linearity, lowering noise floor and eliminating crosstalk, once again seXng a new standard for measured performance in the process.

A more palpable presence

For listeners, Varèse offers all the qualities people have come to expect from dCS on an even grander scale, building on the exceptional capabilities of our 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, Sming, and impact of bass instruments; and enhanced speed and tunefulness at lower frequencies, among other qualities.

Each person's experience is unique, but there's one thing that all who have experienced Varèse agree on: it has the ability to connect them even more intimately with the music they love. The breakthroughs we’ve made have resulted in our most compelling, visceral and emotionally evolving experience yet – taking listeners further inside their music and helping them feel closer to the artists and musicians they love.

A singular vision

Developing Varèse has been a huge undertaking for the entire team at dCS: “[Varèse] is the most challenging undertaking of our careers in audio,” said Managing Director David Steven. “We set out to redesign state-of-the-art whilst at the same Sme 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 immeasurably and demonstrable 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.”

Further information

More information about Varèse and its supporting technologies will be published on dcsaudio.com on 9 August.

We’ll provide an in-depth look at the system’s design over the next few months, with deep dives and videos showcasing the

technologies and features that drive its performance.

Varèse will debut on static display at the Hong Kong AV show on 9 August, before travelling to other events worldwide throughout 2024. Active demonstrations will take place in the UK and US from September 2024 onwards.

Systems will be manufactured in limited quanSSes 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

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