Can anyone help me out here? It looks like the RS130 takes a USB SFP to convert to optical, but I cant seem to find a proper USB SFP or a cable that would work with the combo.
Anyone pulled this off with the RS130 built in USB Optical out?
Thanks
As a user of the RSA720 hub, the set comes with all cable & connector that you need for the connection. So why bother to get a third party device or cable that usually not getting cheaper than the Rose 720.
Moreover getting the 720 at least to provide a better synergy to your 130.
How do you even have one? I was told yesterday by support that it was not for sale yet, and there is no price. What gives?
No, it has been in the market for some time and I have owned it for more than 2 weeks already!
Can we ask where you purchased the RSA720 from. Like orosie68 I’ve been unable to find the RSA720 for sale any where.
I happen to have a Transwan USB fiber hub and transceiver module that I have used in the past for extended USB runs and it works with the Rose RS130 but only for USB 3.0 devices. I was able to connect USB 3.0 thumb drives and portable drives to the RS130 but not a DAC (as the interface is USB 2.0). To buy the Transwan hub that supports both USB 3.0 and 2.0 is over $600 and build quality and aesthetics are not great so I’ll wait for the official Rose product.
Right now with the missing Roon Ready support and lack of accessories for this product it feels a little rushed to market. I really like the product and feature set (I actually like the techie aspects of it to be honest) and it sounds fantastic playing files from both Airplay and off USB but I’m used to the Roon experience and ability to move music around my house.
1 Like
It’s not a big deal, you can use any ethernet to optical conversion box (for example Microcenter has one from TP-Link for $25. On the SFP/Cable side just make sure the SFPs match the type of cable (single-mode, usually yellow, or multi-mode, usually orange). I’m using both of the following (I have two RS130s)-a Corning Single-Mode cable connecting two Finisar FTLF1318P3BTL SFPs and also have a Cisco multi-mode SFP-10G-AOC2M 2M Cable/SFP package to experiment with as well. I found a screaming deal on the Cisco package on eBay and bought the Finisar here:Finisar FTLF1318P3BTL - SFP (mini-GBIC) transceiver module - Fibre Channel (LW) - FTLF1318P3BTL - Transceiver Modules - CDW.com. Both get high marks from folks using other optical products (like Sonore).
1 Like
Hi Badgerdms,
You are describing how to connect to your ethernet network over fiber optic cable we are discussing how to access a USB hub over fiber optic (to reduce electrical noise, same as with the fiber optic ethernet connection). The ethernet over fiber optic is pretty straight forward as you describe with interfaces from Amazon costing $20-$25. The USB over fiber optic is a bit more specialized and typically used for long run USB connections (think computer in another room from the mouse and keyboard). The hardware starts at about $250 (for USB 3.0 only) and goes up from that point for USB 2.0/1.0 backwards compatibility.
So what’s the advantage of doing both? Once you have converted to fiber rather than ethernet, you have already galvanically isolated the system. Would setting up the USB on its fiber link actually add anything? You can actually buy a USB cable that does much the same thing, one that completely galvanically isolates signal, power, and ground. Yeah, it’s not cheap but I haven’t seen a price on the RS720 yet either.
@badgerdms Good question. I guess the galvanic isolation of anything you might plug into USB same reason as isolating the ethernet with fiber optic instead of copper twisted pair. I currently have plugged into my RS130 the RSA780 cd drive, my DAC (whose USB port is galvanically isolated) and either a USB 3.0 hard drive or thumbdrive. I also use one of the USB ports with a USB 5v to 12v step up cable. The cable is terminated with a mono 3.5mm plug and connected to the trigger port on my ROSE RA180 to turn it on and off as the RS130 goes from standby to on. Very useful as Rose do not provide any trigger outs on the streamer products annoyingly.
I’ll be 100% honest the sound difference of the ethernet fiber optic and the fiber optic USB port made no difference to my ears. However I am a bit of a completest so getting all the official accessories is something I like to do and it’s fun to mess around and try out the various ports. One advantage of the RSA720 is the ability to have more powered USB ports in a nicer package than a generic USB hub.
To summarize I think we can file the need under the category crazy audiophiles 
The USB signal could still pick up noise running from the RS130 to a DAC, per se. Running the USB over optical again will shield out any noise.
I’ll wait for others to report back on this, not sure the Optical USB would amount to much that’s audible. I am interested in what folks see the use case for this as, and if this ends up discouraging USB connections rather than something like a Coax connection.
Most higher end DACs these days have galvanically isolated USB ports to prevent noise coming in. I’m using both a Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE and a Chord TT2 DAC and both are galvanically isolated so noise like ground loop inference etc gets rejected. Back before galvanic isolation connecting a DAC to a computer would result in so much noise you had to invest in a USB decrapifier box like the Schitt Audio Wyrd to get a clean USB signal.
I did manage to find the RSA720 for sale in Germany here RSA720 | Rose | Marken | audiodomain.de for 429 Euros so hopefully it will be available in US shortly and at close to the same dollar price. It’s certainly cheaper and significantly better looking than the alternative from Transwan. Size wise it will stack nicely with the RSA780 CD drive.
Once I get my hands on one and some time in my system I’ll report back with findings. However as badgerdms suggests I don’t expect that audio wise I will see much if any difference. But trying stuff out is part of the hobby. After all is a 5K streamer that much better than a 1K streamer due to pesky diminishing returns
I have one of these:
Well, actually it consists of two boxes but with the RS130 only one would be needed. I hope to get my RS130 Tuesday, so I will try.
Question: can the Rose’s USB fiber port be used to connect a DAC as well as an external USB drive?
Just to report that I did not succeed connecting the RS130’s fiber USB port using one of these boxes.
To my understanding, even the ROSE does not mention its USB fibre hub supports to connect USB DAC either… it primary purpose to connect external USB storage devices…
The RSA720 USB hub does support connecting an external DAC, this was extensively discussed on a prior thread. With that specific hub there is an audio out detect feature.
Thanks @duffer5 for point out this! I checked from other post that you may purchase the RSA720 USB hub and did you? Does it make a different compare to connect USB from RS130 directly to the DAC?