dCS Vivaldi Apex D/A processor $46,500 Review

https://www.stereophile.com/content/dcs-vivaldi-apex-da-processor

I wasn’t feeling up to rock music, but I ventured as far as the first tracks of Roger Waters’s Amused to Death (24/192 MQA, Columbia/Tidal) and was wowed again by the Vivaldi Apex’s ability to harness detail in service to emotion. In Yosi Horikawa’s fascinating, gimmicky “Bubbles” (footnote 3) (16/44.1, Tidal), I felt surrounded by the dropping balls at the beginning—uncanny. In “Twilight Song,” from bassist Charlie Hayden and pianist Kenny Barron’s sublime live recording Night and the City (16/44.1, Verve/Qobuz), every note of the piano sounded like a precious pearl. And on Harmonia Mundi’s wonderful period-instruments recording of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, with violinist Isabelle Faust, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, and pianist Alexander Melnikov, the sound was so natural and flowing that I closed my eyes and thanked the universe for the glory of it all.