High End 2022 • Hot Product

Digital specialist dCS used the High End show to unveil its new Apex models, which use the latest version of the company's digital-to-analog platform.

The new products include the Vivaldi One Apex (top, $95,000), which combines the features of the original Vivaldi One -- including dCS’s proprietary clocking architecture and the Esoteric VMK3 VRDS-NEO CD/SACD mechanism -- with the newly released Ring DAC Apex hardware. There will be only 50 Vivaldi One Apex players, but, if High End 2022 is any indication, there will many more of...

...the new Bartók 2.0 DAC/headphone amp ($17,950 for the DAC only, $19,950 with headphone amp), which combines the performance upgrades of dCS's Vivaldi and Rossini platforms. These include a significant update to the mapping algorithm that controls the Ring DAC, improvements to DSD upsampling, and new filter options. In a separate room, dCS set up multiple Bartók 2.0s as headphone-listening stations.