Hmm, we go from Plank to Puck. Not necessarily an advance. Perhaps in the far future the principles of ergonomic design will be re-discovered, and historians will explain how and why they got forgotten. Not that I’d say ‘no’ to a Varese of course.
The high-end rack companies are going to love Varese 
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Isn’t “Ionisation” the one with the police siren?
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Spot on Pete!
It’s a purely untuned percussion piece (I think the first ever) and yes it has these sirens making an extraordinary noise. He also has this thing called a “Lion’s Roar”, which is a large drum head with a cord that is pulled through it. Supposed to sound like a lion roaring, but actually sounds more like a dinosaur fart.
[EDIT] quote FZ:
“No Varèse, no jazz; no jazz, no Elvis; no Elvis, no Dylan;
no Dylan, no Beatles: none of us would be shit without them.
No Beatles, no Frank Zappa; no Zappa, no Mothers of Invention:
you fuckers wouldn’t have nothin’ to listen to but church hymns—
sit your loser asses down and listen to some real fucking music
with the same reverence you’d pay your own mother
for the day she labored to give birth to your sorry ass!”
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This is what Frank Zappa did, inspired by Varèse:
Frank Zappa - Pedro’s Dowry:
Frank Zappa - G-Spot Tornado:
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If you look at the Vivaldi Apex’s measurements on Stereophile, it’s got a stunningly low noise-floor of better than -140dB; doesn’t surprise me that dCS didn’t feel the need for any standalone PSUs, there’s nothing to be gained.
However, the Vivaldi Apex’s channel separation is only at around -113-125dB, I’m guessing the dual mono DACs addresses that.
Looking forward to reading about the rest of the innovations. They’ll probably set the Varèse up as a new benchmark (for others to catchup to in years to come 
)
Considering how successful the Vivaldi was, perhaps an attempt to pick another “V” named unit? 
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Varèse’s compositional output was revolutionary . I expect the dCS Varèse to be named because of that.
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My guess on the dual analog outputs on each unit is to allow you to start with a single unit in stereo mode then upgrade to two on mono. Gives a lower point of entry and an upgrade path for the future.
Not sure, but would be nice. The rear text seems to read DAC Left / Right. Two outputs eg to a speaker amp and to a headphone amp.
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No, I think @Anupc is spot on, this is a new flagship series with a dual mono DAC architecture addressing one of the few areas of measured performance where the previous flagship, Vivaldi, had meaningful room for improvement, namely channel separation. Syncing L and R channels (potentially even multi-channel) is an obvious use case for the communication protocol described in the recent patent application, which would appear to have manifested itself in the Actus connection on these units.
Other units might follow, such as a transport and a stereo DAC. But I am fairly sure that is not what these pictures depict.
I think we can all agree however that this is a
side issue. The $64,000 question here is obviously does Varèse support DSD256??
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My jaw will drop if this is not the case…
I think you will see it here, and then, hopefully, a FREE! upgrade path for V/R/B/L models, as a thank you for having us wait so long.
Let’s hope!
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The $64,000 question is, “Does this cost $264,000 or some other number?”
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Good source says $220K USD for 6 boxes (including transport- apparently not pictured or is it in the top box???)
Best Sir,
Bob
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My source suggests higher cost in gbp ( including VAT) but we shall see. I suspect that in this case “Transport” may mean software ( streaming services, UPnP) ,not silver disc.
I think it is interesting that a transport, if offered, is not included in the marketing video.
I also note that MSB does not even offer a transport.
A Transport with a cool display to show album cover etc. would be spot on…