Of course we have seen a glimpse of the future with Varèse with ACTUS, Tomix and a whole new UI paradigm. No doubt some or all of this will trickle down in time. However largely speaking the Vivaldi is still pretty much SoTA, the notable fly in the ointment being support for 4x and higher DSD. It should be possible to solve this as the Stream800 is a modular part. The problem is that there is no drop-in alternative so, as Anup says, it is a question of cost and opportunity cost and it’s pretty much impossible for us to speculate on either.
On the Varèse release webinar David said, in response to a question, that engineering were ”trying to find a workaround”. That gave me a little bit of hope that this might be soluble. Time will tell.