Hi Jim,
The Varèse is the flagship for a new dCS product generation. To raise the bar significantly we had to go back to the drawing board and make a leap to some completely new technologies and architectures:
- Dual mono
- ACTUS cabling to overcome AES/EBU bandwidth limitations and improve ease of setup and configuration.
- Tomix for dual mono clock synchronization
etc.
Part of this architectural shift was to move all functionality not directly concerned with digital to analog conversion to the core:
- Input processing and selection (network streaming and USB stick native, others via modular plug-in cards)
- D2D processing (all filtering, upsampling etc.)
- Master clock distribution
etc.
The Varèse DACs can’t function without a core.
However, please understand that the Varèse is not intended as a Vivaldi replacement/upgrade. Market feedback on Varèse will help us shape both any trickle down models that follow as well as potential upgrades to the Vivaldi generation.