My Rossini DAC came back today after the APEX upgrade. The technician was so kind to take photos during the process. This was the start: my Rossini still boxed, and the opened upgrade kit on top. You can see the new APEX Ring DAC board, and the new backplate.
4 Likes
A statement such as “next generation” in the context of now would have to mean efficiency’ surely time to say goodbye to wasting energy.
No separates, an all-in-one music center with class
D amplification, no FM tuner or tape deck mind!
Yes, but there were no changes in the digital part as far as I know.
99% members of this forum hope you are right !
That would convinced me to get the Apex upgrade…I wasn’t really convinced until now…but if they issue the 3.0 Vivaldi…then I get the Apex update pretty soon…dCS you know what to do if you want the last Vivaldi dac non apexed in the world 
Right. My point is flashing to a different DAC firmware on APEX units and showing “Vivaldi APEX” on power-on is entirely possible.
2 Likes
I am curious about your statement… Why do you say APEX was conceived as a software project?
Well you do keep repeating it, so i’ll just pitch in here as someone that should be in dCS target audience moving forward ( Millennial ) :
- Don’t care about DSD XXXX. Never gonna bother with it, I don’t even like DSD upsampling on the dCS dacs.
- Exclusively stream, couldn’t pay me to buy/spin a cd. Don’t even get me started on Vinyl. No time, hate the clutter.
- DSD XXXX isn’t going to convince me about some technological upper hand. It’s a mostly dead technology, and CD audio is already past the point where improvements are actually relevant. Let’s be honest with ourselves. They diminish year by year, and the cheap chinese stuff is improving at a much faster rate, with prices going down, not up. Part of what we’re buying is “Designer” sound. My Samsung soundbar has 11.1.4 virtual surround sound with results so good I wouldn’t bother with an actual 11.4.1 setup. All for 1k. No Nordost or Taikos required
- Want to show actual technical chops? I’d love to see dCS work on support for Atmos music. Though not sure that’s possible without yet another hardware upgrade. There’s not a lot of content there, but I’m sure in a year it will outpace DSD, if it hasn’t already.
1 Like
He might be referring to the fact that the 2.0 software was actually intended for the Apex boards. That was stated by dCS a while back. But he is wrong about the order. First came the software update, than the hardware, but it makes sense that there will be other updates as well.
Interesting… Given the platform can do Expanse, and my understanding is that is not trivial, I wouldn’t put it past it to do Atmos. However, I will say it would be like putting undercarriage color lights on your Ferrari…
This is the most logical, my analysis as well.
Next gen comprises both hardware and software.
With the apex coming to bartok, all their lineup is updated on the hardware side.
The only thing coming is a software update for apex boards.
No need for a new product at this stage.
3 Likes
Exactly what he said.
Am I not wrong in saying that years ago dCS had a way of offering software updates for free to original owners - and used to charge secondary owners? I was told this by the previous American representation. The upgrades were flashed via web subject to serial number authorization.
Fingers crossed
A dCS NAS with integrated Roon core, clock, swappable SSD, networking, large display… please …( ok, thought I could add my wish as well here…)
1 Like
I’d say it’s more like car lovers made fun of automatic gear boxes in the beginning. Expanse is not trivial, but it requires a lot less processing power and it’s implemented at a hardware level.
The advantage of an FPGA is you have full control over everything, no in between layers. Fun fact: the Xiling FPGAs used in dCS, Chord, and other dacs are also used in ballistic missiles and military tech.
The disadvantage is you can’t just install a Dolby atmos driver because you don’t have the OS layer, not to mention a player. dCS would have to develop all that themselves to ensure they run the “out of the box” driver. I’m inclined to think most audio companies would go bankrupt before achieving a feat like that. It might just be cheaper to build their own version of the driver, like they did with MQA, but again, the complexity involved is much greater than stereo sound. And when Gustard comes out with a 500$ dac that will play Atmos and put any “soundstage” and “imaging” we imagine we have right now to shame (within the limited content of course), it won’t be pretty
Apologies for the rant.
Pretty sure Expanse is not hardware implemented but rather just part of DSP.
What’s actually preventing dCS for implementing DSD 512 etc?
Could it be done via software update or it would need a hardware evolution?
Is it just philosophical?
Well this customer has little interest in higher DSD rates so that will not stop me from considering a. Vivaldi replacement without them
The Ring DAC runs at 5 MHz 5 bit. So max is DSD128. Now lets be clear: What exactly are your sources for DSD256+??? HQPlayer upsampling? Some weird great sounding but otherwise irrelevant music from Octave Records?
3 Likes
I have no problem with it, I don’t really care for DSD++
It just seems like a recurring complaint from some users
