This is a quote from Sean Kim boss of HiFi Rose
“But there is another important element that explains HiFi Rose’s success, says Kim: “We listen to our customers.” The brand puts a lot of energy into talking to its ‘community’, including via its own forum . The Korean HiFi Rose CEO puts it in a charming way: “We have very open ears. In fact, our customers help build our products in this way.””
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Let me guess what this really meant.
“Let our customers help test our immature products”
Hm, you can have a very negative twist on this. But have you ever been on the ‘Sony forum’ or ‘Mc Intosh’ forum? Or B&W or any of the old high end brands?
It’s so easy to be critical. But a streamer is so far removed in complexity from a simple amplifier or speaker. You want all the versatility of a computer with all its software with the simplicity of a lightbulb.
And you keep forgetting that the other big players like Apple and Google et al are defending their territory like raging bulls. They don’t like intruders. And tolerate no competition from little players. I notice this from YouTube especially with their stupid AI translated Audio tracks now.
I don’t want to be negative.
However, it is hard not to criticize a manufacturer that forgets to update the official driver version after the product is released, and only notices that the driver does not work after consumers report it.
Of course, all products have shortcomings, well, maybe we can tolerate some of them and hope that they will improve.
But forgot to upload the driver, and no one noticed it after the product was released for a month or two? This shows that there may be something wrong with this company.
I have the basic 201D and use it everyday in my breakfast room.
I use the radio, play tracks from the hard disk I installed and CD from the addon CD rom drive.
I have now owned it for over 2 years and apart from a few radio station issues a year ago have had no problems.
I thoroughly enjoy the sound quality with it driving a pair of LS3/5A’s
The functionality of the touch screen on the unit is OK most of the time if just doing simple things. I am not a great fan of the app but its useable and better than some.
The remote is just OK.
Some of the complaints on here seem to be from people who didn’t check out the functionality before they bought it which is their problem and not the units.
I wish I could use it as a server and I wish it had Tidal Connect but I bought it knowing it didn’t have these functions.
I say a thank you to HiFi Rose for giving me a piece of equipment thats sounds great and is fun to use.