Superior productions like a 24/96 version of Masha Vadhat's Enlighten the night recorded by the Kari Bremnes label Kilkelig kulturverksted gilded my resolution lily. As the D10's display shows, higher voltage sensitivity meant that 40 on the dial now equaled what had taken hard-of-hearing Susvara ~15. Those familiar with external I²S know. No industry standard exists for what connectors or pin assignments to use. This ancient protocol was developed for PCB-based short traces, not external transmission over cables/connectors. Over the years we've seen repurposed S-video, parallel BNC, RJ45 and HDMI ports. Matched i/o sockets alone don't guarantee a handshake if pins don't wire up identical. Fortuitously Soundaware's D300Ref speaks the exact same pinglish as COS. If you own a copasetic transport, the HDMI port should be your preferred entry into the D10.

In my book, AES/EBU comes next then BNC. USB—sorry universal serial bus riders—is last unless a capable reclocker offsets its disadvantages. But never mind socket hierarchy. The key takeaway is simpler. If the COS H1 still represents minor extremism to prioritize speed, articulation and silvery clarity, the D10 in shared DAC/headamp utility goes the other way. It gives up some of the H1's emphasis on the light, quick and lean qualities to instead flesh out its opposites. To my ears, the D10's USB implementation actually flips. It applies the H1's weighting or even more just to the other side. For my tastes which lean more toward the H1 thus Raal ribbons than Audeze orthos, that overshoots. XLR and HDMI don't. They settle closer in the middle. Again, my ears call that virtually ideal. It captures all the flavors without short-changing any one in particular. It's exactly what makes the D10 a more mature thus advanced ambassador for cannily balanced hifi. It's a voicing that's unapologetically powerful – like Simcha Leiner's golden pipes in fact. Just don't put the D10 out in the elements like the video crew did for his custom concert grand.

Newfound weightiness meant that darker bassier fare like Burak Malçok's "Toz Ruhu" from his Hidden Breath album came off appropriately enormous and anchored over now Final's D8000 planars. Actually, the D10's robust power served all the headfi transducers in our collection equally well. Kennerton's Wodan sadly had made onward tracks to St. Peterburg already. I'd have loved to hear those on the COS.

Instead I cued up the Sirba Orchestra for some cossack action with this immaculately played medley of Moldavian tunes. What begins as a simple folk dance keeps scaling up and accelerating. That challenges not only a hifi's general composure but ability to render so many contrasting timbres.

Unlike thicker more opaque USB, the D10 over I²S and Susvara or D8000 nicely separated the constantly intersecting different orchestral sections even when things really mixed up. For subsequent USB sessions, I'd use our D300Ref reclocker between iMac and COS just as I do for our Denafrips Terminator Plus. For now I ran SD cards to enjoy headfi at a very high level.