The Verdi La Scala is built into a double-stack version of the standard dCS chassis: a foursquare but finely made thing that uses a clever arrangement of rubber ridges instead of feet, making the various dCS products easy to stack and seeming to provide very good resistance to external vibrations. The CD mechanism is a Sony twin-laser drive, and the supporting electronics are contained on three substantial boards below the transport proper, alongside a digital (switching) power supply. The serenely pretty front panel contains all the controls you’d expect on a transport, plus a few you might not, for scrolling through and selecting different software choices. There’s also a bidirectional knob, useful for all the above.

The Verdi La Scala puts out a 2.822MHz DSD datastream through an IEEE1394 jack, primarily because that’s the way Sony Corporation, coinventor of DSD, wants it done. But since the 1394 is an asynchronous connection with a data buffer at each end, it isn’t terribly good with timing information. So rather than trust the D/A converter to extract the word clock from the datastream, you must run a separate BNC-terminated cable from the word-clock output jack of the Verdi La Scala to the word-clock input jack of your converter—which, in an all-dCS system, will typically be an Elgar Plus or (ta-da) a Delius.

A pause to review: If you want to hear true DSD or upsampled-to-DSD sound from your system, the simplest setup scheme is to run two cables from the Verdi La Scala to the converter: one to carry the datastream via the IEEE1394 connection and one to carry the word clock. Simple. If you just want to play your Verdi La Scala through an old-fashioned, non-DSD converter, either as a stopgap measure or because you prefer it that way, all you need is to run a single cable from one of the Verdi La Scala’s many AES or S/PDIF outputs to the input of your D/A. Remarkably, the musical and sonic accomplishments of the dCS digital gear contain something for all of us analog diehards. If the things you prize most about vinyl are the smooth and naturally extended trebles, and the extraordinary spatial depth of which the medium seems capable, then you’ll declare the dCS system to be the most analog-like digital front-end available, and you’ll cherish it.