Thanks, Greg.
I had forgotten that you sold your MSB Select II stack.
My memory is clearly not as infallible as it used to be…
Heh, mine never was!
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I share this view.
Plus the transport will break. It is notable that MSB doesn’t even offer a transport anymore…
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Quite the optimist, I see! 
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: )
Grumpy engineer (and not a very good one!)
As such, I dislike moving parts…
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If you don’t use the transport it never moves
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But then it’s mere presence affects the sound. 
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Positively! (for me) 
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I think the folks at Audio Excellence would be overjoyed that their videos are getting talked about so much! Who knows, they may be following along here. Regardless - nice to see the conversation. In the end we are talking about two luxury brands pushing their respective technology architectures (thermometer DAC vs ladder DAC) to the limit. IMHO however the dCS approach delivers more natural results.
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I would, politely, express this slightly differently:
IMHO, Varèse delivers astoundingly natural results, the best I have ever heard.
I would be less sure that Vivaldi is more natural than Cascade, all of the time; or Cascade is more natural than Rossini, all of the time, etc. Each likely outperforms the other under different circumstances, and MSB hasn’t yet released their new flagship, the Sentinel DAC.
I share the view that these are the two best DAC manufacturers.
Although I have not heard Varese, I agree that it appears to be the best implementation of the Ring DAC tech possible with today’s hardware, software and mfg techniques.
However I look at the big picture differently. - Regardless of cost or where you land within each product line, I think the MSB ladder DAC approach has more drawbacks than the dCS thermometer DAC approach. As such even the entry Lina will offer benefits even the top of the line MSB can’t offer.
I can see why one may prefer one brand or product within the brand vs the other - these are luxury goods after all.
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This is an interesting assertion. I did not find it to be true (for me) when I compared Bartok against the MSB Select II.
And while I concur these are expensive devices of luxury, I don’t think that has any bearing on why one might prefer one over the other, unless one is buying them for all the wrong reasons.
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I’d tend to agree.
Keeping in mind dCS’ invention of the Ring DAC was a rejection of traditional R-2R Ladder DACs (signed or otherwise) prevalent at the time which did not have the precision for true high fidelity reproduction.
Whereas with MSB, from what I understand - and MSB doesn’t make it easy to get to their core DAC module design - is fundamentally just a derivative of the signed-magnitude Ladder DAC design originally made famous by Burr Brown’s 1704 chips back in 1998 (which ironically MSB used to use in their DACs before they designed their own proprietary modules), but just with higher precision modern day components including clocking.
I should caveat that while I’ve heard MSB many times on shop floors, it was never in my own home. So, YMMV 
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