Digital Processor Reviews

I felt like I'd just been offered a choice of 31 flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream topped with up to 57 varieties of Heinz ketchup, 57 condiments, and 47 brands of coddled cream. My head began to spin, my stomach churned, and my mouth grew very dry as I read that Gold Note's DS-10 ($2995) was a "chameleon DAC" with 192 setup options that enable it to "completely blend in with different music genres, giving the listener the opportunity to adapt the behavior of the unit to the music playing, to one's stereo system and, most of all, to the listener's taste."

My brain was rattled by memories of Michael Green Designs Chameleon tunable speakers and the frightening number of hours I had devoted to trying to get them to sound "right." I flashed back to the afternoon in my East Oakland living room when I was so convinced that everything was perfect that I had invited my friend Danaan over for a visit. That's when I indulged in one of my friend's joints—something I never do when reviewing equipment because it affects my hearing.

"Something's wrong with the tuning," cried the delusional one (me). Much to Danaan's chagrin—he was a practitioner of vibrational medicine, and my vibes had just shot into critical diagnosis zone—I grabbed the tuning control and began to alter speaker settings far too much. After the fiasco ended rather abruptly—how could anyone possibly groove to music as this wide-eyed mad person was radically altering tonal balance, soundstage width, and bass while babbling hysterically?—my friend gave up and left. Hours later, after I had returned to a "normal-for-me" level of audiophilia nervosa, I took one listen to the mess I'd made and vowed that I would rather sell those speakers than engage in one more round of tuning.

Here I was again, but this time it was a compact, multifunction D/A processor that threatened to metamorphose my delight into delirium. I resolved arbitrarily to set the DAC's three presets, each with multiple choices of equalization curve, de-emphasis curve, and power setting, all on 1, all in the middle, and all at max, respectively. I then took a brief listen, scribbled in my notes "the higher the three settings go in tandem, the warmer and fatter the sound," and decided that was as far as I would go. Dismiss me, fire me, shoot me if you must, but I swore I'd rather embrace death than spend endless days and nights playing with 192 setup options.

When desperation had subsided, and the DS-10 had experienced the 200 hours of break-in that, I was assured, guaranteed I would hear it at its best, I discovered that the little baby sounded so good with its "presets off, all parameters at 0" setting that I had no desire to change filters, curves, or output voltage. Instead, I began to wonder if Editor Jim Austin had tasked me with reviewing a DAC that might set new benchmarks for performance at the price.

From OEM to OMG
The history of Italy's Gold Note dates back 30 years, to its beginnings as an OEM supplier for large and small audio brands worldwide. I didn't press for names, because I expected them to be secret. (When I toured the ATI factory of OEM supplier/amp designer Morris Kessler in southern California more than a decade ago, as I stared bug-eyed at the major brands on its production lines, I was counseled, "You didn't see that.")

In 2008, after the worldwide economic crisis took its toll, the company chose a new direction. That's when the Gold Note (originally "Golde Note") and the now-discontinued Black Note brands emerged.

The company now has 50 unique products including analog, digital, and loudspeakers, designed by a team that includes electrical engineer Flavio Lenzi and distributed in 42 countries.

Gold Note offers three streaming DACs: the DS-10, based on AKM Japan's AK4493 DAC chip, which was released in August 2019; the almost-twice-as-expensive DS-1000 ($5599), which was released five years ago and uses the Burr-Brown PCM1792 DAC; and the DS-10 Plus ($3495), available later this year, which adds to the DS-10 a 3.5mm minijack analog input, internal Bluetooth antenna, and "better" internal power supply. Barring the simultaneous arrival of all 10 plagues, the DS-1000 will cede to the DS-1000 EVO in 2021.

While the DS-10 can accept, through its USB-B input, up to PCM 32/384 and DSD512, the AK4493's limits dictate that the DS-10 downsample rates higher than 24/192 and DSD64. During the review period, DSD remained DSD only through the USB input; otherwise, it was converted to PCM. By the time you read this, new firmware may keep DSD native through other inputs. Perhaps it goes without saying, but your UPnP server must support DSD streaming if you want to stream DSD files.

The DS-10's front panel includes a standby/on button with a teeny LED indicator, a ¼" headphone jack, a large, dimmable-and-defeatable display with volume numbers easily read from 12 feet away, and a volume knob that is also used to select items in the setup menu. Both of those things can also be achieved with the unit's lightweight, plastic remote control.

The volume-control potentiometer, made by ALPS in Japan, is optical-encoded and, according to company head and mechanical engineer Maurizio Aterini, "guarantees highest resolution and strict tolerance." It has a logarithmic run, with approximately 1dB steps at the beginning and smaller steps in the middle "where the ear is most sensitive."

Eyes are sensitive, too, so, to avoid glazing them over, I'll skip an exhaustive review of the DS-10's 200-plus options in favor of a discussion of several unique features. The headphone amplifier, which is automatically activated when headphones are plugged into the front-panel headphone jack, can be set for high or low sensitivity, the low-sensitivity setting corresponding to 5W of power. I selected the latter to use with Audeze LCD-X headphones when I evaluated the headphone amp.

For many DACs with a digital volume control, a simple and effective way to "bypass" it is to turn it up all the way. Not so with the DS-10, which uses a potentiometer to control volume in the analog realm. When I turned the volume all the way up, to 100, I heard distortion. To take the volume control out of the picture, the best approach is to set the DS-10's "enable function" to "DAC" (fixed output) rather than "PRE" (preamplifier-adjustable output). The "DAC" setting was always used when I was listening with the MBL N11 preamp in the system.

When I briefly discussed the DAC's 192 setup options with Lenzi, he sent me charts that listed the choices for low-pass filters, deemphasis, and output voltage. These charts are not included in the otherwise well-conceived 24-page manual, nor can I find them on the Gold Note website; it would be a good idea to make this useful information available to all customers.

In addition to the seven digital inputs on the rear panel, the DS-10 can receive a signal via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth 5.0. Detachable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennae come with the unit. Since I stuck with wired connections, I never attached these. Gold Note claims "Bluetooth High Definition 5.0," but my limited time with the unit compelled me to skip this function. I hope Bluetooth High Definition 5.0 sounds better than the Bluetooth I've quickly abandoned during previous component auditions.

As an alternative to the DS-10's internal power supply, Gold Note provides an external supply, the PSU-10 EVO ($1295), which attaches via a supplied eight-pin DIN connector cable. The PSU-10 EVO is activated by a small toggle switch on its rear panel. When it's attached and on, the teeny LED on the DS-10's front panel changes from blue to green.

Dubbed "EVO" because it is an evolution of the standard PSU-10 external power supply available for Gold Note's phono stage, the company calls the four-transformer PSU-10 EVO a "hybrid" because it merges elements of dual choke, inductive, and cascade designs. Aterini says that one transformer cascades into the other until power reaches the final transformer, which "works like a sort of active super filter to cleanse and amplify energy. The goal is more detail, more depth, more power, greater smoothness, and even elegance."

The very first PSU-10 EVO off the production line arrived here just days before this review was due. I missed my deadline so I could let it break in for a full 100 hours before evaluation.

Strategy and setup
Even though I passed on Bluetooth and an exhaustive evaluation of those 192 preset combinations, I hardly made reviewing the DS-10 easy for myself. First, I evaluated its USB, S/PDIF, AES/EBU, and coaxial digital inputs; then came Ethernet. I used Roon software, played through the Roon Nucleus+ music server/streamer and operated by the Roon app on my iPad Pro. Music was sourced from files on solid-state USB sticks and streamed from Tidal and Qobuz. The Nucleus+ and the HDPlex 200 linear power supply that powered it sat atop Ansuz Darkz T2S resonance support feet with optional Titanium balls; everything else sang on Nordost Titanium Sort Kones. Most components benefited from the extra silence bestowed by Nordost QKore passive ground units.

For comparisons, I planned to use the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ ($2195) and dCS Rossini DAC/Clock ($31,499 total plus three additional cables). While the Brooklyn DAC+ contains a headphone amp, which I compared to the DS-10's, it does not accept Ethernet—for that, you need the Brooklyn Bridge streaming DAC ($2995), which I do not have here. Hence all comparisons between these two units were performed using the USB input on the two DACs. I also connected them to the MBL N11 preamp ($14,600) and attempted to answer the questions: (a) Does this preamp noticeably improve the sound of the DS-10, and (b) does its addition make more or less difference to the sound of the DS-10 than it does to the far more expensive dCS Rossini DAC/Clock combo? I also compared the DS-10/PSU-10 EVO to the Rossini DAC/Clock, both with and without the N11 preamp in the chain.

I had to do a lot of equipment and cable shifting to make the review possible. I put the PSU-10 EVO two shelves below the DS-10. I figured this was at least as good as adhering to Gold Note's counsel to place the PSU-10 EVO at a distance from the DS-10, ideally to the left of the unit. The PSU-10 EVO's umbilical power connector was long enough, but not so long that it kept crossing the 5833 other cables that ran between everything and its teleported-through-time great-grandmother.

At review's end, thanks to all the lifting, tugging, and shifting, I'd lost 1.5lb. There must be an easier way to lose weight.

Three little oopsies
Once the DS-10 arrived in Port Townsend, direct from Italy, I spent nine days breaking it in. After connecting everything, I opened mconnect Control, the generic app recommended for controlling the DS-10, on my iPad Pro—I'd used this same app before, with the Bel Canto Black ACI 600 integrated amplifier I reviewed in April 2018—and refreshed my memory with the instructions in the DS-10 manual.