Looks like dCS has decided to join in the home cinema game. The MCD 16 is theirs first 16-channel Digital-to-Analogue converter, and you get inside 8 ring dacs.
As naim with its new owners now, may also be involved in this area in the future, it looks like there is a strong market for very high end products like this in the cinema game.
Not something i am into and god knows what something like this is going to cost, but its great to see a small British company foing stuff lije this.
Cheers dunc
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Apparently this isn’t for cinema? Its for multi channel auido, but obviously you could but this is just for audio
I don’t understand. It doesn’t accept HDMI or do DTS/Dolby?
To use it in cinema world you will need a AV (pre-) processor, such as offered by Trinnov, and others, as it only does audio.
Its so you can dive into the world of high end multichannel (immersive) audio, and NOT only cinema.
To be honest i haven’t got any experience of immersive audìo at all, the closest i have got is say 5.1 years ago, but don’t use any off it these days.
That sounds like something with very limited material and playback options. Is it perhaps more pro orientated than consumer?
Consumer definitely.
Obviously not allowed links, but its on demo at the hifi show in Vienna, being used with Altitude gear.
Basically, the MCD 16 is a multichannel DAC; the AltitudeCI will be handing all of the source and format decoding, rendering of immersive formats like Atmos or Auro-3D, room correction etc. It’ll be feeding the digital audio to the MCD 16 via AES3, which the MCD 16 will convert with the Ring DACs and output as analogue to drive the Amplitude 16s. They are actually using 2 off them as the Altitude has 32 channels.
Apparently the inside of it is very impressive.
Correct.. you need an AV amp.. wow movies and gaming w dCS.. very interesting products, especially when I do gaming (ps5) often .. and I believe it will be very very expansive to go into this area.. not forgetting Atmos speakers etc.. wow …
Stuff of dreams I suppose. I take home cinema pretty seriously but about $15,000 is really my limit for the entire dedicated surround system. I expect that wouldn’t even buy the dcs DAC by a mile let alone the other bits.
Strictly for Uber wealthy enthusiasts.
It will certainly not be cheap with 8 ring dacs in it.
Be very interesting to hear one in the correct system
Not many AV processors out there that have dedicated digital outputs for anything more than stereo. Also, I’d imagine timing for anything with video will be even more difficult than just trying to keep the audio together! £8k start point just for the base Trinnov CI unit… Quite a few of the Atmos mixes I’ve heard will be even more disappointing if you’ve built that system… very limited source material and I’m not sure justifiable for cinema given what I suspect will be huge complexity.
As said its not for cinema its for multi audio channels.
See my above post
I am a bit ignorant, but what is the point of such a multi channel audio DAC? What source should you use to feed such a DAC and what service is providing 16 channel stream? Beats me…
Immersive audio.
I guess you could do a search and find out more if you want?
Multichannel audio ? Does it still exist ? Maybe in Asia, where rich men want to impress the friends with eight Magico M9 speakers and 4 meters wall of boxes.
Right. Immersive audio. I read a bit about it. Apparently it is a hot topic in the music industry. Dolby Atmos seems to be an important technology. That miles from my modest little stereo system 
As i said i haven’t a clue about it as never seen or heard one.
But it looks to be a thing in certain area’s, dCS sells a lot overseas
Digital Concert Hall seems to support it. That’s the Berliner Philharmoniker so perhaps I’ll give it a try.
Will be interesting to see if this takes off more in the uk, as looking at it, its more over sea’s is where the market is, a bit like cd transports.