For our system we picked the DS-10's balanced outputs with a pair of Grimm Audio interconnects, for power a Furutech-terminated Akiko cord. Furutech's plug is fairly thick so the DS-10's Bluetooth antenna had to sit at an angle to make room thus looked a bit awkward upfront. When we mentioned that, Gold Note's reply was that most customers will use large power plugs on the additional PSU-10 external power supply. This would imply that running the DS-10 without it will only be done with a generic power cord like the one supplied.
In their owner's manual, Gold Note recommend and include a convenient QR code for the Convers Digital MConnect media player. Installing this on an iPad or mobile phone is very easy. The next step is to configure the DS-10 as playback device. With it hardwired to our home network, the connection was just a click away. Wireless, things got a bit more involved because in our case, the wireless network is protected by a complex password. This is Wifi Protected Setup or WPS. The manual suggests to now push the small Wifi reset button for about 10 seconds to connect the DS-10 to the network as indicated by the corresponding blue LED. We tried extensively to no avail so asked for help. The suggestion was to first connect the DS-10 to the wired network then use MConnect to configure the DS-10. That's how it's done until Convers Digital introduce the update Gold Note already mentioned. We managed to include the DS-10 in our wireless LAN after selecting our network from a list of available networks and entering our password.
MConnect embed a list of available streaming sources so we configured Tidal and Qobuz with our credentials. Now we had access through MConnect to both our remote libraries. As we had already used MConnect's HD version in our Mytek Brooklyn Bridge review—more on this device by comparison later—finding our way through its menu options was routine and within a minute or so we had music.
Can't make out the meaning of this? Keep reading. It will become clear.
One of the artists we like for most of his work to follow him religiously is Ibrahim Maalouf who is known for his eclectic fusion of jazz, classical and Arabian styles with catchy phrases and many quarter tones. In his latest S3NS recording, the Lebanese-born Parisian focuses on Latin and Afro-Cuban. That seems novel until one realizes that more than 8 million Lebanese live in South America and only 4 million are left in Lebanon proper. Historians speak of an actual Lebanese Diaspora. Singer Shakira is an example of a family of Lebanese descent who now live in Columbia. On S3NS the Latin touch is enhanced by piano virtuosi Harold Lopez, Alfredo Rodriguez and Roberto Fonseca plus violinist Ylilian Canizares.
