dCS say they are excited to announce that they will be demonstrating the new Bartók network DAC with Class A headphone amplifier at the forthcoming Munich High End 2019 show between the 9th and 12th of May.

In addition to showing a range of dCS electronics – including Vivaldi (pictured) and Rossini – in its usual room at Atrium 4 Room F209, the company for the first time ever has a dedicated head-fi room in Hall 4 Stand N09 for visitors to hear the new Bartók for themselves.

Headphone fans will be able to connect their own digital audio players and smartphones, choose tracks from the dCS library or stream their favourite music from TIDAL™. Listening to Bartók via a range of high-end headphones will be possible including models from ABYSS, Audeze, Focal, HIFIMAN and Mr.Speakers among others. Four Bartóks will be on demonstration, to allow easy access for audition, with no appointment needed.

The special dCS head-fi room is enclosed to reduce the ambient noise of the show to a minimum, and dCS staff will be on hand to demonstrate the wide functionality of this new network DAC with headphone amplifier and to advise on headphone matters.

The cost of the headphone amplifier equipped version costs £11,999, and features a custom-designed Class A headphone stage that works with both high and low impedance headphones and IEM’s in balanced or unbalanced formats. Bartók also comes with a crossfeed option as standard.

Bartók supports all major music codecs including high-resolution PCM and DSD, with user- selectable upsampling. The network streaming section currently runs at up to 24-bit, 384kS/s and DSD128, supporting all major lossless codecs, plus DSD in DoP  format and native DSD.

Bartók plays music through an array of industry-standard USB, AES or S/PDIF digital  inputs. It streams over Ethernet from a NAS drive or online music services, and from Apple devices via Airplay. Its network interface performs full MQA decoding and rendering. With its award-winning Ring DAC digital processing engine – shared with the flagship Vivaldi DAC – it offers unparalleled performance at its price.

Location of the headphone listening space is at Hall 4 Stand N09; the main dCS room is at Atrium 4 Room F209.

Queens Award

In other news dCS say they are thrilled to announce that it has won The Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2019, for the technology inside its flagship Vivaldi Digital Playback System – specifically the digital processing platform, the latest version of the Ring DAC™ and its new network audio platform and control software.

dCS joins the ranks of the UK’s most prestigious, innovative and pioneering companies  as a recipient of this coveted award. The highest official UK award for British business  recognises outstanding achievement and was instituted by Royal Warrant in 1965.

dCS Managing Director David Steven says, “We are truly elated. Applying for the award was an extensive, across-the-board audit of dCS as a company and the research and  development journey we went through with Vivaldi. The award process made us look at every aspect of how we function as a company. This exhaustive process meant we had to detail all the investments and strategic decisions we made across the entire business from  Development to Manufacturing to Supply Chain.”

“Vivaldi was a hugely important project for dCS,” says David, “because we had to look many years into the future. Back in 2010 we believed there was an unrealised demand for a solution that would provide state of the art music playback from any digital source  (legacy compact disc to file playback) in a connected home. With Vivaldi our goal was to develop a number of key technologies that would take advantage of these opportunities and overcome the many technical challenges we had identified.

To win this coveted award, dCS had to demonstrate how its business impacts positively on the local community and society, its environmental impact, how its employees are supported and its ethical trading practices. The use of almost exclusively UK-sourced components, along with investment in people and customer service, made winning possible. “Winning the award has been an interesting process as it made us look closely at the journey we’ve been on, the untapped market needs we had to address and the products we developed. The success of the Vivaldi system and this award have helped us to push forward and keep innovating into the future.” says David.