Amen to that, David, Spock. I could barely afford my Bartok to Rossini transition. Now, essentially, many of us are being told - ‘Good News! - we have some spiffy new circuitry which will make things sound even more sublime! Bad News! - you can’t afford it’. My response is ‘Grrrrr…’
These further massive price hikes put any thoughts of further upgrades out of the question. For me, at least. And - I suspect - plenty of other ‘normal’ (?) folks. The market for high-end/bespoke audio equipment may be price-elastic, but not THAT elastic. Even the most resilient rubber band, when stretched, will eventually break. In short, I’m outta here. I now need to learn to be content with what I have… something I really should have done years ago.
Well for me this so called upgrade will have to take my rossini player to a higher level than what a vivaldi would do now, as i compared the vivaldi to the rossini and for me the difference in sound wasn’t worth the extra expense, that could well be down to my age/ears (51 at the time) but no point in going for it if the difference is slight, as the price to upgrade is certainly not a small number and i would rather spend the cash elsewhere.
It looks a lot of money right now for what looks like just a chip change and a few different bits on the dac board, from the 2 pics i have seen showing them both, but obviously we dont know the full story yet.
So it needs to be a big increase in sound quality, will it be that or will it just be a different sound
Future proof it for 10years, for new software improvements, etc.
Not be a stop gap and in a year or so, see new model to replace the rossini and vivaldi.
So I called my US dealer. They expect to have a Rossini APEX in May available for audition. They were also under the impression that the upgrade might be done at the dealer itself rather than needing to send the unit to a service center.
Anyway, I reserved a spot on the upgrade list. No obligation, but I have a spot if I want it.
David, the dealer mentioned $9k, which is consistent with the posts above.
BTW, the dealer said that based everything they’ve heard so far from dCS, they anticipate the upgrade to be a pretty massive improvement to SQ, as it should be for the price. I look forward to an audition!
Assuming the change is indeed the DAC board and the rear text plate, any of us could do it with a couple of screwdrivers and 30 minutes. Unclear if it needs some kind of firmware update that can only be done in a service center though.
The analog output stage is part of the DAC board, so it’s really just swapping that one board. If you see a picture of the interior of the DAC there’s ribbon cable connecting the board directly to the RCA/XLR jacks on the rear panel.
Not to complicate things but my dealer here in the U.S. has told me $8500.00 for the upgrade and indeed he will be doing them in his shop, starting with his own in a matter of days. He did mention that the upgrade is supposed to be significant to justify the expense. Ahh, the expense…
In that case I am not surprised you hear no difference.
I am actually very surprised that there are NO reviews comparing sound quality of servers over ethernet. The reason is clear: If you get a review sample from Innuos or any other high end server manufacturer and your conclusion is there is NO difference in sound quality over Ethernet, they are not going to be very happy.
I once asked a reviewer (someone I don’t know personally) and he said plain and simple “If there’s no difference it is not interesting to write about”. I would argue EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE!!!
Out of curiosity, is the Apex pricing the same regardless of when the dac was bought? I recall reading somewhere that dacs made < 6 months before the Apex launch had a preferential price, or something of the sort. Curious if there is any truth to that.
What I have understood is that the first batch of Apex boards currently is being offered at a (fixed) “introductory” price. This first batch has nearly depleted, and a second batch is coming early next year, at a (fixed) considerably higher price (> 30%).