HiFi Rose RS130 Music Library/Streamer Lab Report

Lab Report

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

1123hifi.l1

48kHz/24-bit jitter spectra from AQ DragonFly (via HiFi Rose RS130, black w/mkrs; via PC, red)

1123hifi.l2

48kHz/24-bit jitter spectra from iFi Audio's NEO iDSD DAC (via HiFi Rose RS130, black; and PC, red)

Digital inputs 1x Ethernet; 2x USB-A 3.0; 1x fibre USB
Digital outputs 1x USB-A; 1x coax/opt; 1xAES/EBU; 1xI2S
Digital jitter (AQ DragonFly) 156psec (300psec via PC USB)
Digital jitter (iFi Audio NEO iDSD) 6psec (550psec via PC USB)
Digital jitter (Mytek Brooklyn) 7psec (8psec via PC USB)
Power consumption 18W (1W standby)
Dimensions (WHD) / Weight 430x125x317mm / 12kg
Price £4299

COMPANY INFO
Citech Co., Ltd
South Korea
Supplied by: Henley Audio Ltd, UK
01235 511166
ARTICLE CONTENTS

X