I placed an order for my Bartok a couple of weeks back (a stretch for me even with the old pricing). I’m glad I did. If I had waited, the new pricing would have put the dCS brand beyond my reach.
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But will the rossini apex as good as the old vivaldi ?
If it is then the game of leapfrog continues. There is an Apex Vivaldi as well.
Indeed, at € 8600 more, for just € 39.500 for the DAC. And then the clock and upsampler…
I unfortunately have to end my dCS upgrades 
And good luck to the marketing department of dCS, to “sell the story” of this move.
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I wonder if the upgrades to Rossini and Vivaldi, and the price upgrade for Bartók will translate into a software upgrade for Bartók as well 
. This I will welcome!
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I’m hoping for an upgrade to the DAC as well, maybe with some trickle-down tech from the new flagship that’s surely in development. Support for higher bit rates would really help these units stay competitive going forward. They may not be that important in practice but specs are a key metric consumers look at when comparing models and they don’t like getting ‘less’ of anything.
A DAC board upgrade would also help explain the heavy price increases. I guess we’ll find out soon 
A software upgrade for Bartok, v.1.11, was released yesterday, No cost.
I didn’t update anything yesterday, but I have 1.11. I think it’s old firmware but someone had an even older one yesterday… There has been nothing so far for Bartok, except for a possible price increase to Rossini in February ))
…with the new prices, I think that my journey into the world of dCS will end at Bartok. Unfortunately.
Much cheaper Meitner MA3 is not much worse than my Bartok.
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Bartók 1.11 is from April 2021:
Yesterday @smdzhm advised that he had updated 1.01 to 1.11.
dCS software update history shows no update whatsoever has ever been released for Bartok:
So I accepted smdzhm at face value. What does this mean? It seems to mean that dCS have not been keeping the software update documentation resource on their webpages up to date if v 1.11 is not new. So @James please ignore my remark from yesterday on the “upgrade”.
I suspect that is going to be the case for many of us here.
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Well the good news is that our existing units will continue to perform 100% the same, and personally I’ve hit my right balance with Rossini; I sought nothing else since I got it last year and just about every day it brings joy to my ears.
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Well, I paid full price for my Rossini six weeks ago. On Tuesday it’s an obsolete model. The consolation is that if I had delayed the purchase I’d be faced with the new price which means I’d not proceed. Still annoying though.
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Simon, it’s not annoying. You have a fantastic DAC, one that will work exactly the same come Tuesday as it does tonight. Chase the next best thing and you’ll never live to enjoy the moment. There will always be a newer model of anything. Even wives. But wisdom would suggest wanting what you have, not having what you want.
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What did they change vs non-Apex?
A perfectly good NBS was discontinued, perhaps apex points to this area? Assuming the current range might have an extended lifecycle perhaps it’s as simple as having Optical input in or HDMI pass-through. Not sure these would have been top priority 10+ years ago.