New- HiFi ROSE RS130 Ultimate Network Transport

I just received a new RS130 a few days ago so here are my impressions.

First off, this thing is very cool. I’ve made many upgrades to my system over the years and all for better sound. This is the first “upgrade” I made for something fun/interesting and the RS130 delivers in that regard. The front face can be changed from Now Playing to a dozen different VU meters, a dozen clocks with/without weather, an old school Receiver, etc. The HDMI out to my TV is really cool, and although the YT audio isn’t up to the level of Qobuz or local files it’s good enough and there is an endless supply of videos, very enjoyable to watch.

I’ll reserve judgement on the sound for now except to say it is certainly not worse than my Innuos Zen MK 3. After a few more days of running it in I will compare to the Zen directly.
I’ve used several different software interfaces over the years:

Roon is far and away the best I have used.
Innuos Sense is next best, and I used that because it was free and because it sounded better than Roon (that was several years ago)
I put the Rose Connect app in the same category as WiiM, Spotify, Qobuz; Somewhat cumbersome and takes some getting used to but in each I can get the software to do pretty much everything I need it to do. I was playing music 10 minutes after opening the box. 

I upgraded from an Innuos Zenith mk2 and Phoenix USB to the Rose 130. The Innuos has a bottom up sound while the 130 is more neutral. One thing that stands out is the 130 does a great job with imaging. 

I heard no discernible difference between the RS130 and the Lumin U2, they perform basically the same when paired with the AM Toubadour V and the Okto DAC8

I've read the RS130 caches the file for playback. I would imagine that it would be more immune to the network?

may not be a great pair with the RS130 all PCM design, considering I will not be able to do a direct DSD source to DAC

@dhungana, I’m not sure if I’m reading this correctly. The RS130 does do native DSD out if configured to do so.

@tonyptony I stand corrected. The RS130 can do DSD when using I2S. But not through AES/EBU or USB. At least not with the curent firmware. Maybe it gets fixed and you can do DSD through USB soon as well.