Audiophile Legends
A Brief History Lesson
Following the acclaim given to our professional ADC/DAC technology and the growing undercurrent from dedicated music lovers using our unusually ‘analogue sounding' studio converters we began the transition to developing audiophile products for the consumer market in 1996.
The result was the launch of the dCS Elgar; the world's first 24/192 Consumer DAC and since then genre defining audiophile products, industry awards and customer plaudits have kept on coming.
Building on the success of dCS Elgar we decided to match our consumer DAC with a consumer version of our studio D-D converter. This was based on our 972 but had a much simpler interface and the dCS Purcell became the world's first consumer sample rate converter.
Hard on the heels of the Purcell upsampler was the dCS Delius, a more affordable DAC using the same chassis as the Purcell and many of the Elgar electronics.
To complete the digital front end we introduced the dCS Verdi in 2001. Verdi could play SACD as well as CD and the encryption system we developed to take a DSD bitstream out of the dCS Verdi meant we became the first manufacturer of a dedicated SACD disc transport using a proprietary firewire link between Transport and DAC to pass 1-bit DSD audio.
Later in 2003 we added DSD upsampling capability to the transport to make the Verdi LaScala, enabling listeners to upsample CD audio to 1 bit/2.822 MS/s without the need for a separate upsampler. Then we added AES and S/PDIF interfaces and launched the dCS Verdi Encore.
Another product that arose out of our professional background and audiophiles experimenting with our pro technology was an outboard master clock. By locking all the digital components in a system to one reference source an audible improvement in performance was gained and we developed the dCS Verona for consumers.
In 2005 we launched the P8i which was the world's first integrated CD/SACD Player with DSD upsampling. In April 2006 Stereophile declared that the P8i was "As Good as SACD Can Sound!"
Until 2007....when we launched our new series, surpassing everything that came before...
For more information on our legendary series of Audiophile products you can download the relevant Product Manual or feel free to complete our enquiry form if you need help or specific information.