Well …… it appears we like similar things😉. I just had a look at your system - Stenheim 5SE! A pair started residing at Chez Gregg this past May
I’ve just come home after a long drive back from Hifi Lounge who demonstrated the varese system with big Wilson speakers and small dagostino amps today. All cables are transparent top line.
It’s tired for a 7h round trip on the road plus a few more hours at the shop to experience first hand how the new flagship from dcs sounds, but it’s worth the travel.
The only thing I am not totally satisfied is they didn’t compare the vivaldi with varese, so I have no clue how much better the varese sounds.
But the dcs signature sound can be easily recognised, particularly well reflected in different tracks with different recording quality.
Aesthetically speaking, the varese looks stunning in real life, however I don’t think vivaldi is falling behind at all.
It’s curious to understand whether it’s worth the money going up the ladder in this case but I have to say I did have a goosebump once when Hallelujah track was played.
The varese is amazing with vocal and midrange while bass is super fast and punchy with the right tracks. Some poor recordings were revealed straightaway with bloating and boomy bass without mercy.
The demonstration used all downloaded files for playback but in the end, an old audiophile asked for a song streamed directly via qobuz so I could hear how much the sound deteriorated compared to the local file.
The shop was super busy with 3 listening sessions but I managed to have a chat with David for awhile. It’s great to understand that dcs is preparing to trickle down in near future and potentially v/r/b will be able to work with varese boxes. Very promising indeed!
A few pictures that I took today and a final thing to note that the xvx speakers have never sounded that good even being driven by small dagostino amps. In Munich they used mega amps but, I know due to show conditions, the sound fell apart.
The new watt puppy sounds really impressive too with gorgeous burgundy finish, being driven by constellation amps and fed by dcs rosini player + clock.
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They didn’t compare them. Well that’s a surprise and i would have been very disappointed about that, as that’s the only way to truly hear the difference.
But anyway looks a fun time
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Yes it was fun spending time with the system today and listening for roughly 45 minutes from various types of music :).
That’s such a shame. I’ve just got back from two Varèse launches in Asia and we did A-Bs at both. I thought it was SOP. We are proud of Vivaldi and know what it is capable of, as do many of the folks coming to these launches. So allowing everyone to set a baseline with a familiar source in an unfamiliar room is invaluable.
A journalist at one of these events came up to me afterwards and said it was the first time he had ever seen a manufacturer do this (and it didn’t look like this was his first rodeo!) As a complete industry n00b I had no idea it was anything unusual.
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When I worked on Wall Street this was a standard part of a new, significant product launch, for obvious reasons. You want the investment community, and then, the press and the public to be convinced of the difference/benefits.
Now that you are there Andrew, maybe it will become a new SOP! : )
With dealer launch events it is obviously the dealer that has the final say on everything. With the distributor events (as were both the ones I attended) it seems we have more of a say and are better able to follow our SOP. I am guessing there was a good reason for the decision in this case. HFL are extremely experienced and certainly know what they are doing.
I will ask paul when i get down to his for a listen.
But the vivaldi was on the rack looking at the picture, so really it should have been on first for a few tracks, and then off we go.
That is what i would have done.
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I disagree. It’s your product. What if the dealer wanted to pair it with $20 speakers? It’s a $300k product (!) and dCS certifies the dealers, and is only giving Varese to a select few. You’re in control, or should be.
Just my 2p ; )
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With the VTT, I had 10 years without any issue whatsoever. It’s only in the last 2 subsequent years that I’ve had to have it serviced; first for a minor disc tray problem, and more recently a slightly more extensive service and control battery replacement (*Touch-wood*, hoping it’ll last me another decade 
).
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Anup - sounds like you’re trying to convince me to get a CD transport 
The issue with optical transports and long term reliability is that optical pickups have a finite life and the laser power reduces meaning that it needs replacement at some point. However spares availability is limited as the original manufacturer has pulled out of the market. The OEM supplier of the mechanism that dCS recently used (D&M) has now done that.
It is irrelevant if anyone has not suffered this failure so far as it is ultimately unavoidable. Of course if you rarely use the unit the failure will be delayed but it will happen eventually.
DCS are responsible and keep a stock of replacements for as long as they can but these too eventually become exhausted.
So far I have had to send their transports back to the factory for 2 Sony OPUs and 1 Esotetic Mk V. Of course in my case transports are used less frequently these days thus offering a delay to this event for my D&M based Rossini Transport.
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Only if you have plenty of silver discs to make it a worthy investment. These days I still average 70/30 spinning discs versus streaming.
3K spinning discs, 7k vinyl…80% listening time spent with dCS streaming. It’s just too easy…and dCS just too good.
I started ripping in 2011 when I left CD and moved to my Linn Klimax DS. In 14 years I have ripped 1000 CD’s…with only 2000 to go 
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Send them out Gregg. You will be done in two weeks.
Just so folks understand the variation event-to-event.
The dealer (it is after all his store and, more importantly, his customers) and distributor call the shots at these events. We can and do recommend what we feel is best practice but that’s as far as it goes. So you will see the full gamut from events where we are left to run the show as we see fit (e.g. China and Taiwan) to ones where the distributor runs the show (e.g. HFL) to some where the dealer runs the show, alone or with our support (e.g. the US events).
Same with choice of ancillary equipment. The dealers will of course pick from lines they carry (or loan in from their distributor if needed). It is in their interest to pick equipment that will show the Varèse off to best effect so we haven’t had any dust ups over $20 speakers (yet).
Hard to know for sure but my sense from having heard Varèse in some extremely high end systems (the system in China weighed in at $1.1m retail) is that it has more to give. I am really looking forward to supporting more launch events in the New Year!
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Hi Richard - I saw further up you posted about sending CD’s out to Minnesota. Aside from the cost (ie shipping weight) my main concern was always about tagging. I have many specialty CD’s which most likely are not in the database. I cannot imagine an operator will sit there and manually enter track titles etc reading from a CD jewel case - or am I wrong?
I agree with your concern Gregg. My experience is that although they will almost certainly draw the information from a pre-existing database, as soon as one departs from well known repertoire accuracy is not reliable. Even with well known items the databases can be suspect. For example I was ripping Beatles albums and one database had all of their songs written only by John Lennon. As my interest is mainly classic music I have needed to make some kind of editing to just about all of well over 1K albums.
My rule has always been rip once and get it right. Unfortunately the information held on the databases originates with folks like us and not all care very much. Fortunately things have improved over the years though.
The most fun part of participating in these launch events for me is meeting the customers as they are all serious audiophiles and/or musicophiles.
Our default flow for the events in Asia was:
- A-B Vivaldi with Varèse with 5 tracks back-and-forth. It was always fun to watch people’s faces at the start of the first track played on the Varèse (which was invariably Ai Kuwabara’s ”Somehow it’s Been a Rough Day” as it’s a real foot-tapper). Several times listeners burst out laughing or made some involuntary sound even before the first piano note (a lovely juicy D2) is struck**.
- 15-20 minutes of “talking heads” just going through the goals with Varèse and how this drove the various design decisions and the need for all the new innovations.
- Free play and requests.
The last part was the most fun. Some of these customers were deep into their music. We didn’t get many requests for Diana Krall or Brothers in Arms iykwim (we didn’t get any in fact)!
One gentleman I remember said without hesitation and in excellent English “Yes, please can you play Bruch’s Scottish Fantasia by Oistrakh and Beethoven’s Violin Concerto by Kogan”. Wow! Now the Oistrakh is a classic performance and fairly well known, but the Kogan is an obscure 1950s masterpiece that I have only seen in my father’s LP collection and never even heard played on the radio. I didn’t even know it had made it over to the digital world!
I was struggling to find it so Rav played another well known recording of the same concerto while I kept looking, but the customer was howling in disapproval after only a few seconds “no, please stop, the string tone is so harsh!” I was able to find the Kogan after a bit of digging on Qobuz (poor metadata) but it turned out to be a needle drop and the SQ was awful. So I played my father’s go-to, the Alfredo Campoli, which was a new acquaintance for him but had him grinning from ear-to-ear!
** It is a live track and starts with audience applause. This was the first thing that struck me. Through the Vivaldi the applause sounds a bit “spattery”, like hard rain on concrete if you know what I mean. Through the Varèse you can hear each individual clap, almost like every piece of skin hitting every piece of skin, and that everyone is clapping with flat hands, not cupping them as a more experienced audience does. Then there is a second-or-so of silence before the first piano note is struck. But it isn’t silence, it is ambience. It’s the atmosphere of the Blue Note jazz club in Tokyo dripping with anticipation. The “texture” of this ambience is completely transformed with Varèse. Hard to describe, one has to experience it!
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This is the album for anyone wanting to play it. It’s one of my Gadd favourites (and it still sounds pretty damn good on Vivaldi and MBL)
Andrew, try the Reference Recordings Firebird Suite by Eiji Oue on Varese and let me know how it goes. That, I would love to hear. DR 25!
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