Wasn’t the Vivaldi One discontinued recently? (Or was it always intended to be limited in numbers?)
I’d be up for that being replaced…and for it not to have a disc spinner. Puts me off a machine that I would otherwise love.
One box DAC/Streamer.
One box Clock.
Yes please! But not if the streamer spins discs. A spinner makes me think it’ll a) go phut one day and b) look as dated as a hotel’s iPod Dock radio in two days.
I agree with you, mono Vivaldi design can beat the current
To get a year’s worth of APEX upgrade revenue out of current owners before discontinuing the current generation of products? I don’t mean to be cynical, but it does make for a great business case as otherwise upgraders might have waited for the new model(s).
In addition, as much as they say the capability is not needed, it may be getting embarrassing when inexpensive Chinese DACs sold on Amazon can process DSD256, DSD512 and DSD768 and you can only process up to DSD128 on your flagship products.
(No matter how much you say it’s silly, many people do shop on specs.)
My guess is a new flagship, and Vivaldi will be discontinued with Rossini continuing until it gets replaced after the Vivaldi follow-on captures a round of upgrades from those who currently own Vivaldi as well as Rossini.
That would leave nowhere to go to upgrade other the new flagship, and when that market is saturated after another 18 months or so they will release the Rossini follow-on; if they release a Rossini follow-on too quickly, Rossini owners might upgrade to that rather than the new flagship.
In the mean time someone who can only afford Rossini will still buy Rossini because the jump to the Vivaldi follow-on is too pricy and they may not want to wait for the Rossini follow-on to be released.
(Also, Vivaldi One APEX was announced as a very limited edition.)
My thoughts exactly. I remember a rumour 2 years ago that a brand new Vivaldi was ready to go however its release was delayed due to COVID and the world wide situation. They could finally be ready to unleash it however I cannot help but think current Vivaldi owners, who just spent money upgrading to APEX, would be slightly upset at the introduction of a new machine so close to the APEX upgrade.
If that were to happen some of the Vivaldi to Vivaldi Apex owners might even have paid their $9k for an upgrade that they don’t have yet! Wouldn’t be the smartest of moves from dCS if that happened. (In my opinion.)
Plenty of other potentially ill-conceived options, too — Vivaldi Apex upgraders who would rather have stumped up more money for the all-singing, all-dancing dCS Bonzo Dog for example.
dCS make lovely gear. They’re likely clued up on all these different scenarios. Will be fun to see where this goes 
Something different than Vivaldi. Next generation, right? A new name, new device. Integrated touch screen, like Lina. APEX. Optimized for streaming, nothing else. Built in storage. Maybe a built in clock.
No recent upgraders shafted. No, this must be something new.
They would not make this big a deal about a Bartok APEX.
We shall see.
If that were to happen some of the Vivaldi to Vivaldi Apex owners might even have paid their $9k for an upgrade that they don’t have yet! Wouldn’t be the smartest of moves from dCS if that happened. (In my opinion.)
Plenty of other potentially ill-conceived options, too — Vivaldi Apex upgraders who would rather have stumped up more money for the all-singing, all-dancing dCS Bonzo Dog for example.
Anyone willing to upgrade to the latest flagship won’t be dissuaded by the fact they just upgraded their Vivaldi to APEX last year.
It’s possible some of those waiting on APEX boards might cancel their upgrades, but you’ve got to figure that the new flagship will be at least $20K higher than the price point of the current Vivaldi APEX (or at least $11K more than the price of the APEX upgrade) and dCS will continue to make APEX upgrades available (no reason to give up that cash flow from those who cannot/don’t want to move to the new box.)
Note this also means we’ve likely seen the last firmware update for Vivaldi and possibly Rossini as dCS doesn’t update the firmware for discontinued products.
Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not trashing dCS here, it’s just product churn is inevitable and required in this industry, particularly for products as old as Vivaldi and Rossini are.
The APEX not only was a nice revenue kicker, it is a wonderful upgrade for those who can get it, and it nicely shows proof that dCS will update the new flagship in the future.
I agree, but only up to a point, Bill. The Apex upgrades don’t feel even close to over and done with — several of my friends are still waiting for their $9k upgrade Apex units to come home.
Even if their units come back tomorrow, and the Next Big Thing is markedly more expensive it would take the lustre off the Apex unit for me. Us audiophiles are a funny bunch. I don’t think absolute performance is really a thing for some of us.
“Bill’s Bonzo Dog is better than my Vivaldi Apex! Booooooooo! I’d have paid the $20k extra had i known. And I’d have had my Vivaldi to listen to in the meantime, rather than this ropey thing I fished out of the closet!”
For people thinking this is an amp, sorry to disappoint, you can clearly see an AES input. So it’s a dac. A Vivaldi replacement makes the most sense I guess.
Maybe this is just a nice picture for the teaser and nothing else, not the new product picture really.
After reading all of your opinions I’m still thinking could be a new line of products as happened with 3 boxes Lina, a really “next generation” and not exactly new versions of the current products, specially with APEX upgrade still on and going.
A completely new amplifier, or a nice and top streamer “reference” with all inboard, not as the previous network bridge…is my bet.
It’s actually a screenshot from the teaser video, and these things always have a part of the product. Apple made it cool. Lina is more like "3 generations ago in a cost effective form " ,streamers also only relevant to people who find expensive cables relevant, and like I said, amps don’t have AES inputs. Combine that with the comment from the aforementioned review that “Vivaldi Apex isn’t the pinnacle, not by far”, it’s clear that the Apex upgrade is just a taste of Vivaldi’s successor. That makes the most business sense imo. It also explains the big delay with the Apex upgrades. The new units have priority. Apex was always a teaser for this.
My Rossini is going to be picked up tomorrow, Apex-ed, and returned on Friday. Just in time before I can regret this upgrade …
I have a feeling the regret will go away once the pricing for the “Next” thing is available 
Given historical precedent, I suspect that the new flagship will be priced at least 20% to 25% higher than the current MSRP of a Vivaldi APEX stack.
To remain even basically competitive the new DAC, as I mentioned earlier, will need to support at least DSD512, if not, DSD1024, and an upsampler will need to be able to convert 44.1/16 to DSD1024.
I wonder if dCS will finally be the first to use one of the chip-scale atomic clocks for a clock reference, it would certainly be a technological feather in their cap to do so. They could also follow the lead of Esoteric and provide a way to keep the clock in sync with GPS to take advantage of NIST’s atomic clocks.
Given the decade since Vivaldi’s introduction there is a massive tech jump to be made on the processing side, yet the new APEX Ring DAC is likely to remain the way the analog signals are processed.
Certainly better (delay-less) processing of DoP and DSD detection will be present, given off-the-shelf DACs like the $91 ESS ES9038PRO have been able to do so and it can do PCM768, DoP at DSD256 and native DSD1024.
If we proceed by elimination, we’ve had the apex upgrade for vivaldi and rossini, it seems it’s coming for bartok, I don’t think the announcement is about that.
I think their lineup is quite well hierarchized, they even have the Lina now, so between all products, they have a nice range and all quite new.
In terms of hardware, I don’t see the room for another product, and I don’t see them releasing a streamer or any other piece of equipment, I think they stick to making dacs.
If we take tas vivaldi review comment:
“Is this the last word in digital playback? Heaven forbid. The blunt truth is that digital engineers keep chasing down the audio gremlins to provide better and better playback, and I’m told that dCS itself has some developments up its sleeve that may further rock the audio world.”
They took care of hardware, maybe a software upgrade?
Could it be a new mapping + mosaic evolution?
That would make sense
The announcement says clearly “The Next Generation”. That means successors to the present generation. So that would mean a completely new line-up IMO. And maybe not a complete line-up from the start, as was the case with Vivaldi, after which Rossini and Bartók followed later.
The Next Generation also could point to the next generation of dCS customers, younger ones. They listen mobile…
Yeah well, additionally to making dacs, they certainly know how to entertain mystery 
Yes. But why bother releasing Apex versions if a few months later everything would be obsolete? That part is weird. It would make a whole lot more sense to just focus on the new generation alone and not release Apex.
I do agree that the pics seem to indicate it is a DAC coming out.
Maybe this all happened because of Covid. Maybe the next generation was nearly finished already in 2020. Then Covid, so many difficulties for launching a new product line. And low revenue. So maybe they stripped the Apex part from the upcoming line-up, and sold that first as a separate upgrade.
Just guessing, of course.
Interesting. Could be software v3, only for Apex units. That would make more sense to me product-wise.