Question: what would Bob Dylan’s classic Like a Rolling Stone sound like played at you from a £67,000 piece of luxury audio kit from dCS? Answer: fucking awesome.
Yesterday, world leading luxury audio technology company, dCS, took over the Billiard Room at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel to showcase its flagship system, the Vivaldi. And yep, lucky duck me received an invite to pop round and check it out. Like most folks reading this, I’d never heard of dCS before, but man oh man it was fantastic finding out about its revved gear and getting to listen to a few tunes played through it.
This year, the Cambridge based company marks its 25th anniversary. With roots in R&D of advanced radar systems for defense aerospace applications, today dCS’s focus is on creating domestic sound systems that “deliver the best sounding music reproduction that money can buy.” Built on technology originally designed by dCS for use in military defense systems, the small team of audiophiles behind dCS have endeavored to reinvent music playback, making on-demand systems which carry a correspondingly high price tag with a new Vivaldi system retailing at £67,000 (about $115,000) … sigh.
From what I could tell, they very much seem to have succeeded. I loved sitting there enjoying one of the richest music experiences of my life … if only for about 15 minutes or so.
I gotta tell ya though, with the invitation to bring my “favourite piece of music so we can treat you to a listening experience which will blow you away” the pressure was on! The track I chose to go with was Like a Rolling Stone – a song I have never tired of listening to and that I’ve heard via all sort of crappy and snappy playbacks and even performed live by Dylan himself. I was not disappointed and my session with the Vivaldi certainly proved to be the best that song had ever sounded to my ears.
Just in case, though, I brought some back up. In addition to the thrill of the luxury high tech experience, I got of kick out of wracking my brain thinking about which songs I’d love to hear played back in such ideal conditions … and came up with the following playlist. In the end, I only got to hear one other preferred song: Harborcoat by REM which sounded so crisp and clean and ‘right there’ – like the first time I heard the song when I was kid (I still couldn’t make out more than a word or two of Michael Stipe’s lyrics though). Beyond the 12 tracks in my list, if I’d had the chance I probably would have relished a chance to just sit there all day letting Slayer rock my face off for a few hours.
You can find out more about dCS at dcsltd.co.uk.
