This month, the Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire visited dCS to present it with a 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise – Innovation.
Founded in 1965, The King’s Award for Enterprise is the highest official UK honour granted to British businesses. It recognises outstanding achievements in four areas: International Trade, Innovation, Sustainable Development and Promoting Opportunity through Social Mobility.
Each year, hundreds of applications are vetted by a panel of independent experts, who are tasked with selecting a shortlist of winners. This shortlist is put to both the UK Prime Minister and reigning UK monarch for approval, before a final list of winners is announced.
Preparing applications is an intensive process: companies must submit detailed evidence of the impact of their work, providing a wealth of information against a specific set of criteria (innovation applicants, for example, must be able to demonstrate the unique nature of an invention, along with information regarding its release and market impact).
dCS received a 2025 Innovation award, in recognition of our work on the Ring DAC APEX – an improved version of the dCS Ring DAC platform. We are one of three Cambridgeshire companies to receive a 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise, and one of 45 British businesses to be recognised within the Innovation field. Winners span various industries, from medical and healthcare provision to vehicle manufacturing.
As Edit readers might remember, development on APEX began in 2020, when our engineering team spent several weeks working from home during Covid-19 lockdowns. dCS Product Development Director Chris Hales undertook a research project to explore how he could further improve the performance of the dCS Ring DAC. This led to the creation of APEX, a major hardware upgrade which enabled us to further improve the performance of our Vivaldi, Rossini and Bartók DACs and Players. Several of the developments made with APEX are also seen in our Varèse Music System.
APEX, for us, was a major undertaking – one that reflects our overarching ambition to keep setting new standards in measured performance, in order to improve people’s listening experience, and our desire to keep improving products throughout their lifespan.
Instead of reserving developments for future product ranges, we took the decision to introduce a major hardware upgrade that we knew would improve the musical experience of Rossini, Vivaldi and Bartók owners. We made it available to new and existing owners, including the APEX Ring DAC as standard in new models, and running a global upgrade programme for those who wished to upgrade their device.
We were notified in April that dCS we had received a King’s Award for our work on APEX, and last week, we were delighted to welcome Mrs Julie Spence OBE QPM, the Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, to the dCS factory to receive the award in person.
The Lord-Lieutenant was joined by Deputy Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire Mrs Sophie Costello and two Lord-Lieutenant Cadets – Flight Sergeant James Wallman and Lance Corporal Olivia Baldwin.
Whilst on-site, the Lord-Lieutenant, Deputy Lieutenant and Lord-Lieutenant Cadets spent time meeting with our team, and touring our R&D and production areas, where dCS products are designed and assembled. They also spent time listening to dCS in our specially-designed listening room.
The Lord-Lieutenant then delivered a speech congratulating dCS staff, and providing more information about the King’s Award programme, before presenting our Managing Director David Steven with the physical award. Addressing the team, Mrs Spence praised dCS’s commitment to excellence, and read out comments from this year’s judging panel, who noted Chris Hales and the dCS engineering team’s efforts to further enhance a state-of-the-art invention and deliver measurable improvements for dCS listeners.
Our Managing Director David Steven also addressed staff and the Lord-Lieutenant. In a short speech, he reflected on the significance of APEX and praised Chris Hales’ continued commitment to setting new standards in audio performance, as well as the efforts of our partners and entire team in helping bring APEX upgrades to listeners worldwide.
“APEX is the embodiment of our mission and what dCS is about. It started with an idea from Chris on how to improve the Ring DAC, which was already the state of the art in digital to analogue conversion,” he said. “Chris’s idea was refined, prototyped, tested, voiced and measured extensively over a long period until we had an improved Ring DAC that set new standards in our field by being measurably and audibly superior to anything before it.
“Getting APEX out into the world, whether it be new APEX models or the thousands of APEX upgrade kits to existing owners was and is a huge undertaking. The design may come out of engineering but taking it to the world involves everyone at dCS from production to operations to finance, marketing, sales and service.”
“In reality though, [it] would never have been possible were it not for a very special and supremely talented Mr Chris Hales. In my time at dCS Chris has been a constant source of inspiration to me as he is always looking at ways to improve our products and technologies, develop others inside the company and he cares deeply about dCS.”
The King’s Award is the second royal honour we have received, and follows a 2019 Queen’s Award for Enterprise – Innovation, granted in recognition of technologies developed for our Vivaldi range.
We were honoured to accept the accolade and meet with the Lord-Lieutenant, Deputy Lord-Lieutenant, and Lord-Lieutenant Cadets at dCS.
It’s always a privilege to see our work recognised, and we’ve been delighted with the response we’ve had from listeners who’ve experienced the Ring DAC APEX. To hear that it has enhanced people’s musical experience is the best feedback of all, so we hope all those who have invested in an APEX product or upgrade have been delighted with the results, and would like to thank everyone who has purchased or been involved in bringing APEX to life – without our listeners, customers and partners, our work would not be possible, and we’ll continue exploring how we can improve our technologies and enhance the listening experience for all dCS owners…