Network Audio Players/Servers

Joining Aurender's W20SE [HFN Mar '23], Grimm Audio's MU1 [HFN Dec '20], the Innuos Statement [HFN Jan '20], Auralic Sirius G2.1 [HFN Oct '22] and Antipodes Oladra [HFN Aug '23], the HiFi Rose RS130 is firmly in the upper echelon of music storage/streaming devices. There is great flexibility in its digital input/output (bridge) functions while user-manipulation of the streams includes DSD-to-LPCM conversion, digital volume and the option of either native, albeit reclocked, or asynchronous/synchronous resampling. The latter's impact is typically very dependent on the attached DAC, but the RS130 did demonstrate a fractional improvement with synchronous (48kHz-to-96kHz) upsampling via USB, so this may well be worth trialling with your hardware.

Otherwise the RS130 was tested in as direct a mode as possible via files stored on a USB-attached SSD, its performance inferred via several outboard USB DACs including iFi Audio's NEO iDSD [HFN Mar '21], Mytek's Brooklyn [HFN Aug '17] and the dCS Vivaldi APEX [HFN Jun '22]. As we've seen in earlier reviews, AudioQuest's budget DragonFly USB hub-powered DAC [HFN Mar '14] offers a useful window on incoming data integrity and noise on the +5V supply – here the RS130 halved the 300psec jitter seen via a standard PC USB source to 156psec [see Graph 1], though <100psec is possible. Similarly, the repeating ±33/66Hz/99Hz sidebands seen from iFi Audio's NEO iDSD DAC were all but flattened from 550psec down to just 8psec (native sampling) and to 6psec (synchronous upsampling). These figures are on a par with the best we've measured via Aurender's W20SE and N30SA [HFN Jul '23] storage/streamer solutions.

Finally, as on previous occasions, the onboard reclocking and full galvanic isolation offered by the dCS and Mytek DACs provides near-total suppression of any incoming jitter or noise on the USB or S/PDIF pathways. Very little difference in their inherent 5-10psec jitter was detected. Again, it's the more 'affordable' DACs that demonstrate the biggest uplift with the RS130. PM