dCS Varèse digital replay system

By: Alan Sircom [hi-fi+ Issue 240]

The Cambridge-based digital expert dCS names its products after noted classical composers. We’ve seen Scarlatti, Paganini, Puccini, Debussy, and even Elgar for those with long memories. Until the end of last year, the current range included Bartók, Rossini, and Vivaldi (all now in APEX form), and – in a break with tradition – Lina. And now there’s Varèse at the absolute pinnacle of what dCS can currently achieve.

Edgard Varèse differs slightly from the other composers that dCS uses in their nomenclature. He has been dubbed ‘the Father of Electronic Music’ and was described by Henry Miller as “The stratospheric Colossus of Sound.” Why is that important? Because I don’t think I could sum up the dCS Varèse better than Henry Miller’s quote; it is a stratospheric Colossus of Sound. On the other hand, while Varèse might be a fitting name for dCS’s new range-topper, his music is best described as ‘hard work,’ which is in stark contrast to the five-box system that carries his name.

One boxier

Five boxes? Surely the dCS Vivaldi APEX, with its four-box configuration, is quite sufficient? Well, no. Varèse goes ‘one louder’ for a reason. That reason is to reconsider the fundamental workflow of a digital signal from first principles. Our traditional view of digital audio playback is a relatively linear progression from input to output. This is entirely understandable, as it stems from our conceptualisation of digital as an extension of the spinning disc. Data is extracted from the disc and subjected to error correction. The resulting datastream is then passed on to upsampling (if necessary), digital processing, digital-to-analogue conversion, filtering, and subsequently to a set of analogue outputs. Aside from a few power supply and clock inputs, this forms a direct line from spinning the disc to output.

Varèse reconsiders this from a conceptual ‘what if?’ perspective. What if the data didn’t require such extensive manipulation? What if, instead, the digital audio layout operated more like a client/server system, with devices such as the User Interface carrying out their specialised tasks remotely, while all the digital heavy lifting occurred within the same core device? What if a DAC could simply be a DAC?