This may be the best CD player ever – and the most expensive

If there was ever a reason to dust off your CDs, this is it

Product photography of the dCS Varèse Transport on a pale background
(Image credit: dCS)
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Quick Summary

Digital audio expert dCS has unveiled the Varèse Transport – an astonishingly expensive CD/SACD transport that promises to be the best CD player ever made. Possibly the priciest, too.

The transport itself is £35K, while the entire system will set you back more than a quarter of a million pounds.

The British digital audio firm dCS makes exceptional Hi-Fi systems for very fortunate customers, and its now added a CD / SACD transport to its high-end Varèse music system.

The company makes some bold claims about its latest addition. It says the Varèse Transport, as part of a full Varèse Music System, "delivers the finest sound ever achieved with Compact Disc". And it comes with a price tag to match.

The transport alone is £35,000 (about €40,000 / $47,275 / AU$71,720), but to buy the entire Varèse system, you'll have to pay an eye-watering £252,000. That's roughly €288,575 / $340,380 / AU$516,390.

You could buy a Ferrari 296 GTB for less. Or one of Liverpool striker Alexander Isak's toes.

Product photography of the dCS Varèse Transport on a pale background

(Image credit: dCS)

dCS Varèse Transport: key features

The original Varèse Music System was unveiled in 2024 as a five-piece setup. It's made up of the Core streaming and processing unit, two Mono DACs, an optional master clock and a separate user interface unit. Now the Varèse Transport makes it a six-piece system.

This isn't the first dCS transport by any means – the firm has been making CD and SACD separates for 25 years. But the firm says that the Varèse Transport is the quietest, lowest vibration disc transport it has ever made. It also features an all-new chassis design and the firm's bespoke ACTUS interface.

The Varèse Transport plays CDs in native 44.1kS/s format and SACDs in their native DSD, connecting to the Varèse Core via a single cable. The manufacturer says this delivers bit-perfect transmission of the digital audio, with asynchronous audio, control and timing signals sent via the ACTUS interface. That, dCS says, means simpler setup and advanced control.

The mechanism is the same as in the Vivaldi Transport II and Rossini Transport, but in this version it ha been mounted differently in a way that further reduces unwanted vibrations.

The top, sides and front of the chassis are machined from a single piece of billet aluminium – an approach also seen in the Varèse Clock, Core and Mono DACS – with constrained layer damping between the chassis base and dress plates. The mechanism mounts are milled from a single piece of aluminium with no joins or fixings.

The dCS Varèse Transport is available to order worldwide, and if you're interested in buying a full system to go with it the other components are:

  • Varèse Core, User Interface and Remote: £95,000 (priced together)
  • Varèse Mono DAC: £90,000 (pair)
  • Varèse Master Clock: £32,500
  • Varèse Transport: £35,000
Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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