2026 Awards – Product of the Year, Innovation & Extreme Audio

How could we give the Product of the Year award to anything else? The dCS Varèse digital audio system represents a new standard in digital audio replay, not only setting the benchmark for detail and precision but also unlocking degrees of musical insight and enjoyment previously available only to the best LP systems. To sit in front of this extraordinary achievement is to be humbled by it.

Set across five boxes, the dCS Varèse abandons conventional domestic digital audio architecture in favour of a series of linked devices, each at the absolute top of its game. And unlike most systems, these devices are connected via a unique digital pathway called ACTUS (Audio Control Timing Unified System), which uses Lemo connectors to deliver the ultimate communications network.

Where we think of a digital device in linear form, from input to output, Varèse considers the digital audio platform like a client/server system. Each device performs its specialist task remotely, all from the Core centre of operations. This largest box in the quintet imports, noise-shapes, and filters digital files received via a USB input or an Ethernet cable as standard. An optional input/output module and a sixth Varèse box (a CD/SACD transport using ACTUS) are available. 

The choice of digital file is governed by the User Interface box, which sports a user-configurable front panel and comes with a Bluetooth-enabled, round, CNC-milled Remote handset.

Having done the heavy lifting of file processing and massaging, the Core unit sends the digital file to two Varèse Mono DACs. The monophonic version of dCS’ Ring DAC is part of the lockdown project that created the Ring DAC APEX for the Vivaldi, Rossini and Bartók digital converters. Reworking the Ring DAC to produce APEX paved the way for the dual differential Ring DACs used in the Varèse Mono DACs, which is a pithy way of brushing over many man-years of product development. In his test, Alan Sircom described this fundamental change in the dCS DAC’ central architecture as “the company’s Manhattan Project.” 

To control the two DACs, there is also a Varèse Master Clock which uses the company’s Tomix clocking technology to deliver unrivalled jitter performance.

No words

The dCS Varèse silenced the normally loquacious Alan Sircom; “It’s a bit of a ‘fail’ for an audio reviewer; I find myself at a loss for words when it comes to sound quality.” He added that “nothing can prepare you for this. It’s nothing like digital or analogue. It feels like being in the studio. You are closer to the music and the musicians playing it” adding that all his audio notetaking immediately turned to listening to the music, not the system. “Interestingly, at no point did my notepad contain the usual terminology. There were no discussions of dynamics, staging, or details; it was all about the music and how it made me feel. This was because those aspects of performance had been so well executed that they ceased to be a concern.”

He also suggested that the dCS Varèse “elevates digital audio to such a high level that record collection need no longer be an essential part of your daily musical ritual,” and that the only real criticism of the system is it lays your musical emotions bare, resulting in an ‘ugly cry’ moment. “Be careful” he said, “This equipment unlocks emotions in ways that most other audio devices can’t.” It’s a lens on your music without being a microscope on a musical experiment. In audio terms, this is reminiscent of the first time you heard music that truly moved you.

Alan summed the dCS Varèse up by saying that it “resets your listening criteria so effectively that you feel humbled in its presence, and your usual methods of contextualising an audio product become obsolete.” And that makes it a worthy Product of the Year.

Reviewed in Issue 241

dCS • dcsaudio.com

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Linn has consistently challenged the mass vs value debate over the years. Its iconic LP12 turntable adds very little weight and size as its specifications grow, while its flagship Klimax Solo 800 amp can be moved without requiring a sack barrow. The Klimax Solo 500 is a more compact and moveable (‘portable’ wouldn’t be the right word) mono amplifier, at only 35cm wide and just over 36cm deep. It’s pretty extraordinary how powerful it is, then, delivering 250 watts into 8 ohms (and double the power as impedance halves).

It’s easy to overlook such a formidable output, and most owners will not come close to exhausting the Solo 500’s capabilities, let alone ten of them. Naturally, however, Linn engineers have worked to provide optimal performance for multiple monoblocks in operation. The Solo 500 has the same Adaptive Bias Control system as its flagship sibling, with the current supplied to its eight output devices constantly sampled, digitised and then adjusted to maintain the ideal bias current for the transistors. Linn’s Utopik power supplies employ feedback loops to compare output against input at each stage, too.

It’s also very easy to look at the Klimax Solo 500 as simply a scaled-down version of the Klimax Solo 800, but that doesn’t tell the full story. The smaller footprint of the Linn Klimax Solo 500 means cooling technologies become paramount. In the Solo 500, Linn employed a Hybrid Cooling Matrix system designed to be equally effective at passively cooling the system at lower temperatures and actively cooling it at higher temperatures when the amplifier is pushed hard. 

When cooling passively, heat is transferred and spread through a special machined thermal plate into a series of fins that radiate the heat away into the air. However, when the active part of the cooling system begins, air is pressurised and evenly distributed through the channels between those fins. As the air moves along each of the channels, it removes the heat from the fins and exits through the top and rear of the amplifier.

Even the industrial design helps deliver maximum power from a relatively small chassis. The Linn Klimax Solo 500’s overall aspect is one of minimalist and sophisticated beauty, with a seamless construction of precision-machined pieces, which gives the impression of a single aluminium mass. The machined-from-solid casework, with its combination of clean lines and elegant curves, is punctuated by finely designed and characterful details. It’s a thing of beauty, outside and in. 

Proficient all-rounder

“The result is a sonic masterclass. When Leila Moss vents her fury in Dark Kitchens on Transparent Eyeball, you can feel the vitriol and passion driving it,” notes reviewer Ed Selley.  “What you hear is accurate, tonally convincing, and infused with the album’s dark, brooding production, creating a perfect sense of the emotions behind it.”  

Ed adds that, “Like anything that has this level of focus and detail retrieval, the Linn is obliged to highlight the limitations of less-than-perfectly recorded material. Still, the way it does so is surprisingly forgiving for something that, when fed truly superb recordings, can sound excellent.” He signed off his review saying, “The Klimax Solo 500 challenges conventions about mass versus value, but even more importantly, it breaks new ground in how we should regard Linn amplifiers in the broader market.”

Much of the Linn’s ease and sophistication comes from the abundant power available. But it is also just as capable of delivering small-scale intimacy as it is of biblical scale, bombast, and impact. And not simply in Linn-based systems. Make no mistake, this is one superb mono amp.

Reviewed in Issue 247

Linn • linn.co.uk

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The R 10 Arreté are Audiovector’s most ambitious loudspeakers yet, despite being smaller and more affordable than the R 11 they replace. Less surprising is that the Danish company’s DNA courses through the R 10 Arreté’s veins. Like previous Audiovector models, these are classic slim floorstanders in the brand’s tradition – timeless and devoid of unnecessary embellishments, just taller and deeper – that strive above all else to bring musical realism into the home. And their innovations focus on combining established technologies rather than reinventing the wheel.

Sticking to the design guns

The familiar teardrop-shaped cabinet is here constructed from vacuum-formed high-density hardwood fibreboard, with a 6061-grade aluminium baffle that further enhances an already acoustically inert structure. The well-regarded Air Motion Transformer tweeter, with its distinctive rear radiation control, returns, but now a second unit reinforces the 20kHz to 53kHz range. And a more sophisticated Line Array Bass System sees eight 12.5cm long-throw drivers adorn the rear panel. There are also specially developed 165mm AFC carbon sandwich midrange and lower midrange drivers that enhance the diaphragm’s initial movement.

This is the very model of ‘Extreme Audio’ but this time fed through the lexicon of Audiovector’s elegant design language. ‘Extreme’ doesn’t need to be a massive audio edifice, or a tribute to the designer’s years of reading hard sci-fi and dreaming of alien space-cruisers. Here, ‘extreme’ is more about what goes on inside the loudspeaker, rather than elaborate design gestures on the outside. With two tweeters and a Line Array Bass System in a super-solid cabinet… the R 10 Arreté is pretty extreme!

Fed the adequate power they require to perform optimally, the R 10 Arreté take Audiovector sound – extended, unforced treble, open midrange, tuneful bass and excellent driver integration – to the next level. 

In his test, Alan Sircom said, “that AMT tweeter array, for example, gives the R 10 Arreté an effortless and fluid upper midrange and top that makes most dome tweeters sound unbalanced somehow; some soft dome tweeters sound relaxed almost to the point of unconsciousness by comparison.” 

A slight warmth to the sound in the lower midrange works in the Audiovector R 10 Arreté’s favour. This adds a little body to musicians and voices, making them more exciting and alluring. Most importantly, though, this never adds or detracts from the music and isn’t the cabinet joining in with the music. 

However, that warmth does not detract from the performance. After listening to ‘Sunson’ from Nils Frahm’s All Melody, Alan commented that, “There’s more precision to that bass and upper midrange caused by that characteristic, not stymied by it.”

Alan found it hard to focus on writing about the loudspeakers because he was enjoying the music they make so much. “My listening notes on this loudspeaker were extremely scattergun,” he said, adding his notes were, “resembling Olivia Colman’s award acceptance speeches more than proper notes, in fact. (“Lady Blackbird… Oooh!” “Webster Lewis… waaaagh!”) This boils down to a loudspeaker that is as flexible and enjoyable as Audiovector can produce, and that’s saying something.”

They pack a real, rhythmically strong punch, deliver an effortless, fluid upper midrange and top that make most dome tweeters sound unbalanced, and revel in a slight warmth in the lower midrange region that makes musicians and voices sound more alluring. “For a small Danish company that keeps knocking it out of the park, the R 10 Arreté needs a bigger park!” concludes Alan’s review.

Reviewed in Issue 243

Audiovector • audiovector.com

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