David Steven and Emron Mangelson of dCS hosted a fantastic “Listen & Learn” event at Crescendo Fine Audio (Wheat Ridge, CO) yesterday.
They really put the Varèse through its paces and it sounded great. Directly driving a Luxman M-10X amp and a pair of Wilson Sasha V, the sound stage was very deep, though width varied by recording.
They gave a great explanation of why dCS made many of the decisions they did in designing Varèse, and various other items like the new ACTUS cables that combine clock signals, control signals and digital audio on a single cable used to interconnect the five pieces that made up the Varèse (User interface, Clock, Core, and left and right mono DACs.) This means to connect the pieces, all you need is to connect power and the single ACTUS cable except for output from the DACs.
A huge thanks to David and Emron for sharing their time and for a great evening, and to Matt Alterman and the crew at Crescendo for setting up and hosting the event.