I just read Craigr's first impressions of the dCS Varese in a high-end system. It was exciting to read about its purity, its substantial improvement over the Vivaldi, and the difficulty in telling - as they used to say - "Is it Live or is it Memorex?"
That made me think about the trickle-down process in no-limits audio. Will the Varese's technology be available in more pedestrian components in five or ten years, and is there a line at which the plots on the graph cross to indicate maximum cost/benefit? For example, after drooling over the out-of-reach-for-me Taiko Extreme and Olympus, I found the Pachanko Labs Constellation Mini SE, and got a very satisfying taste of what a superb digital front-end could deliver.
I'm assuming that actual production costs and market interest will forever maintain some kind of gulf between high-end and consumer-level audio, but I'm also hoping that the audio quality of the million(ish)-dollar system Craigr heard might be available for far less in the twenty-ish years I'm guessing I might have left...
That made me think about the trickle-down process in no-limits audio. Will the Varese's technology be available in more pedestrian components in five or ten years, and is there a line at which the plots on the graph cross to indicate maximum cost/benefit? For example, after drooling over the out-of-reach-for-me Taiko Extreme and Olympus, I found the Pachanko Labs Constellation Mini SE, and got a very satisfying taste of what a superb digital front-end could deliver.
I'm assuming that actual production costs and market interest will forever maintain some kind of gulf between high-end and consumer-level audio, but I'm also hoping that the audio quality of the million(ish)-dollar system Craigr heard might be available for far less in the twenty-ish years I'm guessing I might have left...
Last edited:
