MartinLeong to directly answer your first question, per channel the Vivaldi APEX will be higher quality than the MCD 16. What you are essentially asking here is if eight Vivaldi APEX DACs will provide higher quality than a single MCD 16, and the answer there is definitely yes. This is less to do with the specific DAC technology as it is having perfect channel pair separation, individual power supplies for each channel pair, processing for every channel pair and so on. You could feed 8 Vivaldi DACs directly from a Trinnov (and we do have customers running this type of setup with a mix of dCS DACs). This is definitely going to give ultimate resolution, but it takes a lot of space and is a significant investment.
However, the MCD 16 will work perfectly alongside a Vivaldi APEX DAC. You can keep the Vivaldi converting the left and right channels for example, and the MCD 16 can take over for all other channels. It’s an additive process.
Those who have been using or following dCS products for a while will know that we are, and have always been, a signal conversion company. Straying into the world of multichannel processing, video processing and the like isn’t our area of expertese. However, large multichannel products typically rely on the use of multichannel DAC chips to carry out the conversion to analogue – whether in the source device or in the downstream connected equipment. This represents a bottleneck in the system’s performance.
If the conversion can be carried out by a standalone converter with proper discrete D/A, with a class A output stage to drive the downstream equipment, everything gets better. The processor can stay in the digital domain, the amplifiers can be driven by physically large circuitry that generates a lot of heat so would be impractical to keep in the processor, and so the performance of both is properly unlocked. Plus, the Ring DAC is the best D/A converter available, so that helps a bit 
In terms of the technologies we have used for the MCD 16, our standard Ring DAC is – to put it frankly – an enormous step up in performance compared to what is currently happening in a lot of multichannel systems. Our other DAC technologies, such as APEX or Differential, are used in specific products where appropriate, but they aren’t the default. This is the first time the Ring DAC has been used for more than 2 channels per chassis, and getting that working, sounding right, keeping it cool, making sure it is totally reliable, has been a huge task.
I love seeing the enthusiasm from the Community on our products, and I really can’t wait for you guys to get to hear the MCD 16 once we start shipping units. Some of our partners are naturally sceptical of a new product and won’t recommend it to their clients unless they themselves are totally convinced, and we’ve had dropped jaws across the board when showing it to them. This thing absolutely rips.
