dCS Vivaldi APEX DAC

The Vivaldi APEX DAC is the digital heart of the Vivaldi system — the world-renowned dCS converter carrying the Ring DAC APEX hardware, and the component the rest of the Vivaldi program is built around. For the listener assembling a component-based reference digital front end, this is where the conversion happens.

The Ring DAC is dCS's answer to a problem the rest of the industry buys its way around: instead of an off-the-shelf converter chip, dCS designs and builds its own conversion architecture, user-selectable between 3 MHz and 6 MHz operation. The APEX revision reconfigured the Ring DAC circuit board and introduced a new analogue output stage, further reducing distortion and increasing linearity — measured improvements that arrive at the ear as greater dynamic drive, detail, finesse, and vitality. Residual noise measures better than -113 dB0 across the audible band.

Connectivity is comprehensive: asynchronous USB 2.0, four AES/EBU inputs configurable as two Dual AES pairs, SPDIF on RCA, BNC, and TOSLINK, and SDIF-2 — with PCM to 24-bit/384 kS/s, DSD in DoP, and full MQA decoding with rendering beyond 16x. The enhanced digital volume control, with four selectable output levels from 0.2 to 6 volts, allows direct connection to a power amplifier — in many systems the Vivaldi APEX DAC is the preamplifier.

Designed and hand-assembled at dCS's Cambridgeshire headquarters in an aerospace-grade machined aluminum chassis with tuned internal damping. The system-building path is clear: add the Vivaldi Upsampler for streaming, the Master Clock for the final timing refinement, the Transport II for silver disc. Hear the Vivaldi architecture in Scottsdale — walk in during business hours or book ahead.