Because of course you know anything about either my gear, or my hearing. Oh, wait, you’re just an audiophile idiot who hadn’t heard anything above 12KHz for the past 40 years and believes that electricity is little electrons running in circles from the power station to his house and back.
The quality of timing, noise floor, and signal integrity differs drastically. With resolving DACs and amps, the RS130 will feed a cleaner, more stable signal, and that does translate into audible improvements in dynamics, imaging, and tonal purity. Bits are bits, until jitter, EMI, PSU noise, and clock stability walk into the room. Then suddenly the cheap streamer shows its price tag.
But if they all sound the same, then I guess all wine tastes the same once it’s in the glass.
If you want to use some smart-sounding words, you should at least learn what they mean. There’s no “noise floor” in digital 130, and timing is determined by DAC’s clock, unless you are doing something particularly insane.
If I wanted to hear marketspeak about words that mean absolutely nothing, like “resolving” I might as well tune in to Uncle Paul or a similar crook. At least he’s entertaining.
Or maybe just use a decent DAC"? None of the things you mention affect the output of any DAC that was not designed by blind monkeys. Physics does not care how much money you’ve wasted.
There is no jitter in asynchronous connections. And even S/PDIF has been reclocked by any decent DAC for ages now.
The only clock that matters is the clock in the DAC.
Yes, it must be quite embarrassing to see that a $300 Wiim surpasses your $6000 system in every parameter.
You do (well, probably not…) that while “resolving” means absolutely nothing, “noise floor” or “distortion” do have definitions and can be measured, do you? Maybe you should look at the results, they might be quite enlightening, if slightly embarrassing and causing regrets about spending money on useless things ibstead of… music or something.
Oh, yes, the final audiophile coup de grace, a bad analogy, just to underscore that you just do not understand anything.
And speaking of wine, there are quite a few true tests where professional sommeliers (to say nothing of lay people) were served 3-buck Chuck in fancy glasses, and told that it came from a $200 bottle. They all rated it extremely highly.
That, children, has been what a “resolving” system sounds like.
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You’ve been on this forum for months, and the pattern never changes:
Someone shares their experience.
You show up, declare them wrong, and sprinkle in some insults about wallets, monkeys, and how physics is apparently on your side.
The funny thing is, none of that changes the reality that people here actually listen to their gear. They don’t sit behind a keyboard trying to convince themselves that music only exists if it passes their personal purity test.
Your whole stance boils down to this: “Everything sounds the same, unless it’s cheap enough for me to approve.” That’s not science, that’s just insecurity dressed up with equations.
If the RS130 really is nothing more than a waste of money, then why spend so much time arguing with people who enjoy it? If you’re right, then it should be the easiest thing in the world to ignore us and enjoy your Node or Wiim.
But you don’t. You keep circling back, post after post, hammering the same lines, as if repeating “the DAC fixes everything” often enough will finally make you feel like you’ve won the debate.
Here’s the difference between you and the people you’re mocking: we actually sit down, play music, and listen. That’s why we bought the gear in the first place. You can keep trying to talk people out of hearing what they hear, but it only makes your posts sound more jitter, ahum excuse me, bitter, than any DAC I’ve ever owned.
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Oh and another thing wiseguy,
If clocks upstream don’t matter, why do high-end transports and DACs include external word clock inputs? Are all those engineers wasting their time, or is it just you who knows better than the entire industry?
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Years.
As a wise man said, you are entitled to your opinions (even as wrong as these). You are not entitled to your own facts. Or, for that matter, your own laws of physics.
Dunno… I listen to music. Audiophiles do listen to gear, but lacking any kind of intellectual background they can not distinguish the difference between a real difference in sound and psychological effects of having downed a bit too much moonshine.
Nope. You may want to learn some reading comprehension. Some equipment does sound different. For example, PS Audio DACs, which are incapable of outputting a sinewave that looks like a sinewave, do sound significantly less accurate that e.g. a Wiim.
Of course you are not equipped, either intellectually or ethically, with understanding of why the truth matters. Today you demand the right to say that a streamer affects the sound. Tomorrow you decide that you are, really, a girl. Next day you go and shoot up a school.
Nope. You keep swapping cables, complaining about differences between software versions, and engaging in a circle jerk as to who can describe differences between brands of fiber in most flowery language. Music? What’s that? Have you even heard anything other than Diana Krall?
Eh, are you saying that Wadax employs engineers?!
They include clock inputs for the same reason low to lower-middle class equipment includes I2S inputs. Because stupid people pay for it. None ever demonstrate what kind of difference it makes, because it doesn’t.
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You just couldn’t resist adding your name to the list of stupid people, could you?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but when they told you that you are a special snowflake, and your opinions are as good as anyone else’s, they lied to you. All you are is a mindless little sheep, perfectly trained to do a dance on its hind legs and bleat “baaa, baaa, take my money!” as soon as a marketer says some nonsense about “jitter” and “external clocks” without having any idea what any of those words mean.
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When some less than scrupulous dealer claims that a digital streamer has “a sound” it is at least understandable – of course they’d much rather you don’t realize that a Wiim Ultra or Node Icon, thanks to built-in bass management and room correction (state of the art in case of Icon) will, in any real world system and without any excessive jumping through hoops, sound much better than any combination of Rose products (well, same goes for all the similar pseudo-high-end brands like Matrix, Lumin, etc. etc.). How are they going to sell you a streamer, and a DAC, and a whole bunch of cables to connect them. and a clock, and some magic crystals to put on top, and… and…
It is quite amusing to see the sheeple being so well-trained that as soon as the vendor (ypu know, someone who is literally trying to sell you something for profit) goes “nudge-nudge, wink-wink, of course you, Mr. Baa-baa Sheep, are so much smarter than any of them eggheads who only study this stuff for living. And of course your golden ears are far more sensitive than any lab equipment. Baaa. Baa. Now give me your money” our sheeple immediately pay up.
Really, you people aren’t just stupid you are so spectacularly and militantly stupid that I am sticking around for entomological interest alone. Just how brain-dead can a person be, and still manage to post their drivel online? Do your wives have to smack you every day so you stop trying to stick a fork in the wall socket?
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I own an RS130 and I am not personally offended by anything Boris has written. In fact I find him to be knowledgeable, consistent, coherent and often amusing. Who here doesn’t enjoy amusement from time to time? Abrasive at times, sure, but if you can’t handle that, don’t post.
I never expected the RS130 to sound like anything, I didn’t want it to sound like anything, but I did expect it to work right out of the box and be faithful to the stream. It has built in cache memory, how could it not be? There is the capacity for buffered content to play with. Surely I can wait a few seconds for the music to start, but once it starts, I want it to play as if I am listening to vinyl or CD…that is, continuous and without odd interruptions. The RS130 didn’t and still doesn’t several software updates later.
I chose it because it is well-built. It has a lovely display. You can load your library on an internal hard drive. It connects to a network.You can hook up an external drive. It is compatible with Apple Music and Qobuz. It plays video. It has every output imaginable. I thought it ideal for my theater that has separate multichannel and two channel capabilities. At its price, there really was no competitor, at least with the (limited) research that I had done. I saw it in person last August at Audio Advice live and liked it. Every review that I read or watched was positive.
I have two DACs, one in my Trinnov and one in my McIntosh preamp which I use for the RS130 and my universal disc player. I fully expect to get an additional two channel DAC in the future and buying a network transport such as the RS130 allowed me to delay that decision until I found the one I wanted. To me it was a harmless purchase, expensive but harmless.
And then I bought it. I can honestly say that is the only component in my system that I regret purchasing.
Its biggest failing is its software, and I am not breaking new ground with this statement. I grew up listening to records, cassettes, CDs and my digital library on my Mac. Even 8 track tapes. It all just worked. Streaming was to be the pinnacle in convenience. Rent, don’t buy, the content. Listen to whatever you want. Float between genres, experience new stuff. 192/24. With the RS130, my playback problems started right away. First I blamed myself for not understanding. I eventually became inured and indifferent while I work towards finding a replacement. I skipped right over indignation. It sent me right back to vinyl and my CDs which I still thoroughly enjoy. And Atmos music on Blu-ray Disc.
I will solve this conundrum eventually, but I hope HiFi Rose does it before I list this thing on eBay. Honestly they should have a Red Team working on rebuilding the software from scratch. I have completely given up on this thing ever passing Dolby Atmos content even though it is fully capable. Maybe the RS131 will, but I won’t buy it even if I watch a hundred positive YouTube Reviews.
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Hello @Eleven
Hats off, finally someone who’s honest and not just deceiving themselves! 
It’s always interesting when people here report what kind of “nice, expensive cables or gold-plated fuses” etc. they buy (which, by the way, have to be plugged in by moonlight) to hear the angels sing.
So, I listen to music, and it’s fun, and it makes me smile because every day while I listen to music, everything works as it should.
Unfortunately, penis sizes are measured here in cables, SFP modules, gold-plated fuses, and HDMI cables, instead of focusing on the essentials:
The joy of listening to music!
That’s why we’re here, and we have good equipment.
Many people here in the forum buy useless stuff that doesn’t always (or doesn’t) improve the sound, cheating themselves to justify the high expenditures that might only bring a marginal change, if any at all.
A lot of things are just imaginary: Psychoacoustics!!!
If you’d like to test it yourself, you can try it here. (Please turn on the translator).
Don’t switch off right away, try the tests.
But everyone is the architect of their own destiny!
If they, they, or it, think they have to pocket the money of the HiFi & High End mafia, that’s their problem. For me, there’s no help for such people.
Let’s take the RS520…everything in one device, the wiring and circuit boards are so close together that you don’t need expensive cables, of course, it’s all-in-one.
@BorisM, you’ve already debunked so much technical nonsense that has been and is being posted here, and if you actually read a bit, people would actually realize that a lot of what they buy is nonsense.
The most important thing in a system is speakers, followed by a good amplifier or all-in-one.
Then, very important for me is room calibration.
I’m currently playing from the Lyngdorf TDAI 3400, and it has everything you can imagine in terms of room calibration.
I use Roon without Muse, since everything is done in my Lyngdorf.
And about Rose:
Lyngdorf released an update for Qobuz Connect in May, and the update is still current. Tidal Connect has been integrated into the Lyngdorf system for a long time.
How long did it take for Rose to finally get Qobuz Connect working without issues? But I have to be fair to Rose. These are devices with many apps and complex software, and it can happen that the daylight saving time setting crashes Qobuz Connect.
I also understand the numerous people here who repeatedly report that after one of the many updates, something that worked has become worse.
I’ve posted about it here several times before. Yes, I too was magically drawn to the beautiful display and bought a Rose device. It sounds good, but without room calibration like Lyngdort’s RoomPerfect™, Rose is unfortunately no longer my favorite.
Display and good technology (Rose) notwithstanding. If Rose doesn’t include a standard room calibration in its portfolio for you soon, Rose won’t remain competitive.
But Rose wouldn’t be Rose if they didn’t already have something like that planned.
I’m 54 and have to get a hearing test every five years (to renew my truck license) in Germany. I always ask my occupational health doctor if she can print out the chart for the hearing test. I couldn’t hear anything from just under 14 kHz on the chart. My next license renewal is next year. We’ll see what I can still hear.
That’s why I don’t understand a lot of people here! If you can’t hear it anymore anyway, why buy HDMI cables for $500 or gold fuses for $200?
Well, as I wrote above…everyone does what they think is right.
Thanks 
As anyone who had actually been around for a while knows I have been Rose’s biggest defender against unreasonable demands from people who have no clue about software – Rose is using a wrong Android version, we want Tidal connect yesterday, we pull every band in the EQ up and are surprised there’s clipping etc. etc.
But you have to be realistic. The company does not know not even how to program, but how to run a proper software development project.
I would not be holding my breath here. Rose has come out officially saying that they aren’t even enabling PEQ in their “flagship” products because “something, something, audiophiles, something.” And that’s for a functionality they already have coded in Rose OS. Why would you think they’d spend either time (and knowing their software team, universe will collapse upon itself long before they release any kind of a working DRC) or money to license it from someone. And why would they spend money, when they can release a cheaper product (replacing a network adapter with SFP is cheaper…), charge more money for it, and their target market will eat it up.
Because you get to say that you bought a $500 cable.
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@Eleven, couldn’t agree more. After 6 months with the RS130, I decided to sell it. I recovered most of what I paid for it. I never had any issues with my unit in the 6 months I used it. I sold it in May 2025. In August, I got an email from the buyer letting me know that the unit would no longer power on. He asked if the unit was purchased less than 2 years ago since the 2-year warranty was transferrable. I provided him with the original receipt as it was purchased on 11/22/2024 and would still be covered.
This is very reason I shy away from pre-owned equipment myself. The software killed the experience for me. I’m using a different brand now as a streaming DAC as I discovered that I don’t like the internal DAC in my preamp. I have my new unit connected via balanced analogue connectors using the DAC of the streamer.
If you sell your unit, just keep your receipt on hand if it’s less than 2 years old as it will be covered by failure after you sell it since the warranty stays with the unit. I sold mine on usaudiomart.com as eBay is way too expensive in fees.