I noticed the changes right away and those changes never faded out. I think a rule of thumb is 100 hours.
Got my Apex Rossini today, just want to say thank you dCS! The long waiting time was worth it! 
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Glad that you got it today. However I must go along with a number of other posters writing about their experience with the upgrade. I too thought that it was excellent on the day I installed my returned Vivaldi Apex. However, after a week or so I discovered ā¦it gets even better and IMO not by a small amount 
.
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that review from Whathifi made me thinkā¦
āā¦If you are going to rely on the dCSās built-in streaming module as your main source, we donāt think youāll hear the Rossini Apex DAC at its considerable best. This module is pretty slick and fully featured, delivering a nice, even and detailed sound. Yet, even without comparison to our reference Naim streamer feeding the Rossiniās BNC digital input, weāre aware that things lack a bit of dynamic expression and rhythmic enthusiasm. The streaming section can still be considered good, but the rest of the Rossini Apex design is fabulousā¦ā
I thouhgt the preferred way is LAN?
It is the best sounding but , assuming that the Naim streamer has no network output, then use of S/Pdif would be the only way the comparison made could occur.
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What Hifi is a low-quality rag and not to be taken seriously.
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ok 
ā¦
If you ever have the chance, try an Aurender N20/N30 (synchronised to a dcs clock with the Aurender dongle to switch automatically between 44/48), it outperforms the internal Rossini streamer.
Melco streamer (over the network connection) is another great option.
IMVHO, thats a perfect example of people who subjectively interpret distortion/jitter they hear as ādynamic expression and rhythm enthusiasmā
(Adding an extra stage of async-to-sync-to-AES/SPDIF framing encode + Cable + followed by an AES/SPDIF decode at the input stage cannot somehow magically be objectively better than a direct synchronous feed to the DAC stage. Not physically possible).
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i have a Melco 6TB HDD, using it via upnp (not USB attached). The SQ is great, indeed!
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Whether it is a print magazine like HiFi or somebodyās opinion in a post on the internet, I take none of them seriously. Only my ears know what I am looking for.
Reading stuff like this in the audio press just makes me sad. With data delivered by cat5e, dCSās ethernet implementation is essentially perfect. It has to be - data is error corrected and noise is shunted to ground. The simple truth is that if ethernet protocol didnāt deliver perfect data transfer our entire society would collapse! Why complicate things by sticking other stuff in between?
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Agree that the quote is basically chasing ghostsā¦ But thereās a bit of nuance here. For example, if the network board work creates a lot of electrical noise in the device, this noise might degrade the sound. The isolation in terms of power supplies, ground planes, etc that the Vivaldi separation of DAC and Upsampler affords does make a difference. So the argument āIt is the same bitsā is a little more subtle than that.
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Iāll try to get for testing a new Innuos Pulsar network bridge to offload the network duties (this thing is connected via USB to a DAC)ā¦
The separation of the networking functionally in a separate box makes perfect sense @miguelito, thanks for clarifying. Although if someone said to me, āyou can trade your Bartok for a Vivaldi DAC sans upsamplierā, iād plug my mac mini into the Vivaldi via usb and never look back 
There is no requirement Iām aware of to be an original owner. Just find a local dCS retailer and Iām sure they will be happy to take your order for the upgrade. For my Vivaldi, I paid 50% upon order and the other 50% upon delivery. Not sure what other dealers are doing.
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Thanks, thatās encouraging.
I left a message with my nearest dealer. I hope I hear back from them soon.