Among the most interesting products on show at the Munich High End trade fair was the HiFi Rose RS130, a new high-end network transport whose technology stands out in particular for its ability to enter directly via fibre, for both USB and Internet connections. While we wait for the manufacturer’s USB SFP hub, we took a look at the new transport and its magnificent 15.4’ screen in USB 3.0 with an external hard drive, and of course in RJ45, to bring out all the musical purity of a network source distinguished above all by its neutrality.
The South Korean brand Rose has been making a name for itself for several years now with its network streamers and media players, as well as adding to its catalogue a highly innovative amplifier and two all-in-ones with small built-in speakers. Up until now, its most advanced product has been the RS150B network player (€4,490), already remarkable for the quality of its digital-to-analogue conversion based on the ESS 9038PRO chip and its large front-panel touch screen.
But the company is now taking things a step further with the launch of a new network transport, without DAC, called the RS130 (€4,790), featuring a superb liquid crystal touch screen with an impressive 39 cm diagonal (15.4″), whose excellent resolution can play videos at up to 60 frames per second.
The RS130 is a true transfer hub, not only for audio to a DAC, but also for video, with the ability to be connected via HDMI to a 4K screen for HD playback of content from external hard drives or RoseTube, for example. On the audio side, the new transport contains not only the native Qobuz or Tidal applications, but also AppleMusic, as well as being Spotify Connect, Roon Ready and offering DLNA for transferring music files via an application other than Rose’s own.
For the less purist, Airplay will allow you to send sound information directly from your Apple smartphone, or simply via Bluetooth, but obviously the data will not be able to reach the available power of the device, i.e. up to 32 bits/758 kHz or DSD512 file playback (22.4 MHz).
Designed as a very high-fidelity product, the RS130 is encased in an aluminium enclosure with a number of separate blocks inside, designed to keep vibrations to a minimum and to evacuate heat as efficiently as possible, notably via the very classy ventilation hole in the shape of the Rose logo inlaid on the unit’s cover. At the opposite end of the spectrum, four feet with foam underpinnings also act to limit the propagation of vibrations to and from the device.
A plethora of connections and ultra-modern components
Perfectly smooth on the front thanks to its HD IPS panel, with just four very discreet buttons on top, including the Power standby button, the RS130 network transport is also very complete on the rear panel in terms of connections. In addition to an IEC connection socket, it offers all the output possibilities for a DAC, including Toslink optical, RCA coaxial and AES/EBU, as well as a USB Audio port, in addition to the aforementioned HDMI connection and an I2S port.
For maximum stability, the RS130 can also be connected to external clocks via a 50 ohm or 75 ohm input. This can further improve synchronisation and therefore reduce jitter to extremely low levels, but in any case, the internal clock is already perfectly optimised thanks to a very advanced version of an OCXO clock from the Chinese company Jingyuan Electronics, available up to 10,000 MHz.
Another feature of the product to minimise noise is the linear power supply. To deliver the current, an encapsulated toroidal transformer custom-made for Rose is combined with a supercapacitor that acts as a storage device, like a battery, with the aim of then delivering a direct current with the greatest possible purity. With the same idea, an SSD disk caches data before reading, again to block all vibrations and other noise induced by an external hard disk or USB key, for example.
Finally, the Rose RS130 is distinguished by the appearance of two fibre ports, one for USB and the other for direct integration into the Internet network via fibre optics. Still complicated, this set-up already exists on very high-end devices like the Linn Klimax DSM, but it’s clearly the way of the future: using a fibre hub that avoids the traditional Internet box, and using USB Fibre rather than USB 3.0. What’s more, as well as working more and more on sound settings via the dedicated application, Rose’s engineers are also developing a small USB fibre hub, the RS720, scheduled for the end of the year.
The set up
Seen and heard with great interest at the High End show in Munich, where its presence in the auditorium and on static allowed us to talk to the product’s chief engineer and project manager, the RS130 then arrived in our auditoriums to be used for over a month. Compared to the streamer parts of our network players, it was integrated into the coaxial and USB DACs, and was used mainly for streamed playback, but also for files from an external hard drive.
We don’t yet have a fibre box or USB SFP hub, so for the time being we’re sticking with USB 3.0 and RJ45 connections, which are already highly optimised. The arrival of the RS720 at the end of the year will undoubtedly give us the opportunity to add to our fibre reading.
Gapless is not automatically configured, so you’ll need to look for it in the settings to enjoy continuous playback, without a break between each track, which is very important when listening to opera, for example. In playback with Audirvana Studio, this pre-setting is also possible, so we regularly used this application in comparison with Rose’s, with the further aim of checking the stability of the application in network playback against our benchmark.
The sound of the HiFi Rose RS130
We can often talk about the sonic typicity of a brand or even a region of the world, and if Japan, now extremely mature in hi-fi, makes some of the most singing products, South Korea and China seem for the moment to be seeking neutrality and the absence of coloration at all costs.
Even more than most of the top-of-the-range products recently tested from this part of Asia, the RS130 is in tune with this quest, offering a neutrality and purity that are reminiscent of certain Aurender products at even higher prices. But while neutrality implies an absence of effects, it does not mean an absence of musicality. On the contrary, the RS130 is undoubtedly the HiFi Rose’s most musical source, in that its purity can be adapted at will by the DAC it is driving.
Integrated into the conversion of our Mark Levinson 5101, the transport did not give at all the same results as with the ST300. But in all cases, it surpassed in the absence of noise and in the finesse of the textures the message given by the network parts of the two devices, integrated moreover only in coaxial, since there is no USB input.
With files on an external hard drive, we can see the same quality, even more stable than network playback, even if this is increasingly purified on our systems thanks to the various switches and high-quality Ethernet cables. To take advantage of the best files, we were also able to connect the RS130 to a B.Audio B.dpr, the Alsatian brand’s big preamplifier-converter, which can be integrated into USB for 32-bit output that’s even better than coaxial.
Once again, the impartiality of the message, combined with a digital-to-analogue conversion that also seeks to eliminate any coloration, tends to develop the finest and most defined musical rendering possible, deployed at extreme levels.
Our conclusion
Beautifully built, extremely flattering to the eye in a room and around any other hi-fi equipment, Rose’s new RS130 affirms the brand’s desire to be one of the manufacturers of tomorrow in the very high-end segment. Despite this, its price remains contained, even if its European price of €4,790 makes it more expensive than any of the South Korean manufacturer’s network players, even though it has no DAC and remains a pure transport.
In fact, the term ‘pure’ is precisely the most appropriate to define this network transport, as the quality of the data it produces offers the best that can be achieved today in terms of stability and noise suppression for a network source.
Superb thanks to its very large touch screen, the RS130 is not only a modern product, but also one for the future, since more and more hardcore listeners will soon be looking to acquire fibre Internet boxes to avoid the RJ45 connection, while others still keen on NAS or external hard drives will be adopting USB SFP, for which Rose intends to offer a solution very soon.
Author: Vincent Guillemin
Technical sheet: HiFi Rose RS130
- Origin: South Korea
- Price : €4,790
- Dimensions : 430 x 125 x 317 mm
- Weight : 12 kg
- Audio inputs and outputs :
- Outputs: 1 x optical; 1 x coaxial; 1 x AES/EBU; 1 x HDMI I2S
- Inputs: SPF Ethernet 10/100/1000 BASE-T; 2 x USB 3.0; 1 x SATA; 1 x USB 3.0 Fibre Wifi: 802.11ac; Bluetooth: V4.2
- Memory and storage : LPDDR4; NVMe SSD 256GB
- Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR ): 141.9 dB
