dCS at the Verbier Festival Academy 2025

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Recently published on dCS Edit:

https://dcsaudio.com/edit/verbier-festival-highlights

This idea finally took shape in 2025, when Verbier UNLTD director Stephen McHolm, together with Leonard, dreamt up a 7.4.1 listening space in a chalet room used mostly for Academy masterclasses and workshops.

The expert team at Hi-Fi Lausanne – who have worked with the festival in previous years – curated a playback system in partnership with dCS, Stenheim and Nagra, providing four dCS Lina Network DACs, a Vivaldi Master Clock, seven Stenheim alumine two speakers and four Nagra amplifiers.

(plus a Audient Oria Immersive Audio Interface and Monitor Controller)

dCS-Verbier2025
dCS-Verbier20251920×1920 231 KB

Can someone explain how 4 Lina’s, a clock, 4 amps and 7 speakers, and the Audient Oria can produce 7.4.1 spatial/ Atmos audio?

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AES Outputs: 16 Audio Channels (8x AES Data Streams)

Word Clock (Input): 44.1kHz to 96kHz

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Thanks Anup. That Audient link was already in my OP.

But what the 4 Lina’s do: 4 x 2 channels AES output?

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Oops! Missed that line you quoted! :smiling_face:

Yup, just D-to-A conversion. All fully clocked synced clearly.

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Thanks, but what is the source? Four identical streams?

Or is it the other way: Atmos source file → Audient Oria → 4 Linas clocked by Vivaldi → analog Lina outputs to 4 Nagra’s → 7 Stenheim speakers?

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Considering there were 4 Lina DACs / 4 Nagra Stereo Amps, presumably it must have been 8-chanel ATMOS masters supplied through the Oria.

The system is just a “disaggregated multi-channel AV Receiver”; So, instead of the ATMOS receiver + multi-channel DACs + multi-channel amplification all being in a single box, like with a Denon, Marantz, Yamaha, etc etc, this system has each element as a discrete component, all synced together with an external Clock.

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Got it :+1:

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I don’t know but will have a guess.

The box sitting on the vivaldi clock, I guess is what is receiving the digital inputs from the 4 lina dac, and then sending a signal to the 4 amps.

One amp doing a pair of speakers each, front, middle and rear, and finally one doing a sub ?

The vivaldi as it has enough clock outputs to feed each dac.

Just not sure why you need 4 dacs?

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I’m just guessing here but 7.1.4 makes a lot more sense to me than 7.4.1. Why would you want 4 subs but only one height channel? If I’m right I suspect the LINAs/Nagras were only driving the 7 Stenheim speakers and the sub. I assume the ORIA box was doing the ATMOS processing and sending the 4 height channels to some other equipment, not mentioned.

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I attended the presentation in Verbier. The system had 7 Stenheim Alumine 2 speakers, no height speakers and a Stenheim subwoofer.

I assume that only the base layer of the atmos mix was used in the demos by Mark Willsher.

A photo of the speaker layout can be found here at the bottom of the page. In its own documentation, Verbier clearly denotes the layout of the room as 7.1, so I think the info on the dCS site should be updated.

2025 Verbier Academy Soundroom
2025 Verbier Academy Soundroom1920×2499 300 KB

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Many thanks Rudi. I have asked the marketing team to check back with the Verbier Festival Academy as they had approved the original release. However I agree that it looks from the pictures like this was in fact a 7.1 system, and that would be consistent with having 8 channels of DAC. We’ll correct the text on the homepage when we get confirmation from Verbier.