dCS Varese short review

[still-one]

This DAC sounds promising. Has anyone compared it side by side with a good turntable system?

That would never be consideration for me.

 

[Lee]

Stirling starts with digital and ends with analog. At least that’s what he did with the CH Stenheim in London, and I believe he would have done for dcc’s Stenheim as well.

The digital would have helped the speed to get there, but by no means is sufficient or necessary.

Either way, if some set up expert did only digital, he will be successful surely given the audiophile profile, does not mean he is correct. You can get there by measurements alone sometimes, does not make it right not to also listen. There is an overlap between what is correct and what is not, it is not a mutually exclusive Venn diagram

For setup folks, there are real advantages to digital playback.

1. You can easily carry the gear unlike a turntable.
2. You have a drive of setup tracks like Jim Smith’s list in Get Better Sound.
3. You know what characteristics to listen for on each track.
4. The setup guy knows what ‘levers’ to adjust to get improvement.

I think digital files, even just 16/44, are sufficient for optimal setup even when analog playback can sound better.

 

[Lee]

with digital the media is 'wanting'.......not robust......in terms of degrees of sounding real. so as our technology is approaching digital's ideal it seems to really reward over-the-top approaches to noise and power supplies. tiny incremental steps matter and we can hear them. it's one reason we use digital to set up systems, it tells you clearly the slightest restrictions. analog is not nearly as sensitive to not being perfectly optimized.

the CD media seems to be a little better by degrees with this, but with files or streaming it's extreme.

so when you see Wadax with all it's exotic chassis shapes and mass, very large heavy power supplies, crazy spendy DC cables......then read about all the stuff Taiko is doing lowering noise with the Olympus efforts just for the server......what dCS is doing is simply staying with that trend. and it will likely get more that way than less. with the Varese i was actually surprised there are not separate added power supplies, or even interfaces to add them later. it's just the way it is chasing ultimate digital. one piece 'simple' chassis digital can't compete, and is not sufficiently relatively future proof. maybe a trickle-down piece like the Wadax Studio Player might be one answer that does some of that. i'm sure there will be a dCS version of that based on the Varese technology at some point.

the good thing is the ease of use of digital and musical access makes up for it's fragility and cost/complication of all the chassis pieces. so the experiential equation chasing great digital performance makes it worth it to some.

Well said. I found a significant improvement with my Rossini Apex from router getting plugged into a conditioner, adding a Sortz noise control device, getting better ethernet cable, adding Wilson Pedestals, and adding an Ansuz ethernet switch. It sounded great before but these things took it to a new level.

 

[jfrech]

For setup folks, there are real advantages to digital playback.

1. You can easily carry the gear unlike a turntable.

Huh? 13 digital cables, 4 power cords, interconnects, plus each box 30-50 pounds... haha, not a very portable set up

 

[Lee]

Huh? 13 digital cables, 4 power cords, interconnects, plus each box 30-50 pounds... haha, not a very portable set up

I'm obviously not thinking about a Varese system here. Think about what Peter McGrath brings...a laptop with his recordings, a Berkely USB SPDIF converter, a cable or two, and he uses the customer's DAC. Jim Smith will bring along a DAC, a MacBook with his preferred playlist, and a good line conditioner.

Much lighter than a turntable and phono stage.