HiFi Rose THE ONLY REALLY HONEST RS150 REVIEW of the High End Music Streamer DAC

0:00 a while back i reviewed the extremely feature-rich cocktail x45 pro streamer which showed us that when vendors try to do everything it can be hard to do it all well i had a little to complain about in terms of its sound and connectivity flexibility and value for money but the user software experience had some holes in it here comes a competing product also from korea the brand is called hi-fi rose and this is their top of the line model the 4 000 euro rs 150 that brings some fresh thinking to the concept or at least that's how it looks on the outside i'm here to give you a independent review

0:47 which i actually think is much needed got curious then hang on for the ride and find out if the rs150 is the answer to your streaming dreams or not remember that these full reviews always have a chapter index so you can navigate to what is most important to you as quickly as possible this independent review is made possible by custom audio in denmark that has provided this review sample find out more about custom audio in the description below [Music] the hi-fi rose rs 150 is a full-size high-end hi-fi component trying to cover all your digital music playback and deck

1:33 needs coming from a family of hi-fi rose devices based on the same android software concept the huge screen brings a whole new dimension to any hifi rack with a component like that sitting in it and when it's in standby mode it can act like a big date and time display it is meant to be able to take care of all your digital music and internet radio playback duties it will play video too from title and other sources the hi-fi rose will lock directly into several high quality music services like tidal and kobas that can be operated directly from the display it also does spotify connect and airplay it

2:18 can rip and store cds on an internal or external drive and it's also possible to connect a micro sd card usb sticks and so on as a dac there is a massive amount of connectivity available including balanced analog and digital options as well as usb it even has external i2s ports which is something that is extremely rare as it's actually the internal interface transport bus used in digital audio equipment for control data and audio i haven't tested the products that actually use that interface externally before so i had no way of playing around with it the rs 150 is a unique and well built device the casing

3:06 feels really upper class so it won't be ashamed in company with higher end premium audio gear in your rack everything can be done by touch or via the app called rose connect [Music] i have now used the rs 150 for a month but i have not been able to fall in love with it at all i think it's awesome for everything that does not require interaction with the touch display like using it for spotify connect or as we do here as a roon endpoint but the the big display is both the party piece and the pain the response of the touch display is not very satisfying compared to any quality

3:52 tablet or automotive touch display meaning that you really don't feel connected to the device and the basic navigation feels rather clumsy and gimmicky with too many layers that you have to plow through i think the level of love really depends on how you want to use it and what you expect from it then there's the remote navigation with it feels rather inconsistent with some buttons being dedicated and other simply being soft buttons where you move around using a joystick like in navigation then there's also the rose controller app that is quite an unfocused mess to work with it does not necessarily follow

4:39 the logic of the device itself worst problems is the lack of ability to hide all the stuff you don't want to use in the app and the lack of title connect meaning that the only way you can stream title in full quality is using the messy rose connect app in short if all you want to do is using it as a roon endpoint with a nice display and occasionally jumping a track from the display like this then you won't be missing a thing but if you want to interact with the numerous features and discover your music in new ways on the device you are left with a very hollow experience where

5:25 you wonder if the guys and girls designing this apparatus actually even tried it themselves sorry that's the old man talking so what is actually the good stuff let's start with that [Music] the hi-fi rose is a software driven device built on android so depending on the ambitions of its makers the purchase can become better and better over time via software updates it looks great in any hi-fi rack with that huge screen digital music really misses exactly this you have direct use of music services

6:12 it can be used as a standalone browser and player logged into tidal and cobus spotify connect is great too with roon it's a fantastic endpoint which i reckon is the way that most music enthusiasts will actually end up using it just as an endpoint looking good right there in the rack ripping compact discs is very fast and can be stored on any connected drive in lossless flag format lossy flag format or a uncompressed wave format hi-fi rose has their own river drive that you can buy but i tested it with this pioneer slim drive and it was totally flawless i was

6:58 actually pleasantly surprised by the multitasking skills of the rs 150 it will happily rip cds while you play whatever you want at the same time this is something you will really appreciate if you're ripping a large collection and you would like to hear some music while you're doing it this is something the cocktail x45 pro can't do next great thing is connectivity the hi-fi rose has everything except bnc style connectors and the way inputs can be enabled and settings can be changed is really smart by displaying the back panel as a graphic in the front with all the settings available in each section

7:43 that makes for a pretty genius and very cool deck the rs150 will also be able to play well with any gain standard as the analog outputs can be adjusted to meet all standards really impressive i also like very much that it's actually possible to combine file playback and streaming into a single playlist queue thus unifying the two much better this is also a point where the rs150 beats the x45 pro that has everything kind of siloed the other really useful features is the always on display showing a big date and time clock with different designs available making the rs150 a

8:29 useful appliance when not playing music and showing cover art you can also enable the clock display manually when playing music from the app only the startup time is another positive it takes under five seconds for the main screen to be ready from the normal standby mode the rs150 is also very fast if initiated by roon from standby to music playback only 5 seconds this is not even possible with the cocktail x45 pro that has to be manually booted before roon playback is even possible sound wise the rose has definitely been built with high-end sound in mind using a high-end dac chip

9:14 that supports evens the highest sample rate formats including dsd [Music] i had two different listening sessions with sound engineer tim harris doing head to head comparisons with the x45 pro and at first listening using the balanced analog outputs it sounded very focused open and a bit more to the natural side while the x45 pro sounds a bit softer and more laid back tim described the rs 150 in his first analytical listen as having a bit deeper sense of perspective a slightly warmer fuller bass and a greater sense of openness while being

10:00 slightly more natural sounding i definitely agree but after listening for extended period of time i found the x45 pro to be a more balanced match with my reference sbr1 speakers and the new prime evolution amps as a reality check tim and i also conducted a analog blind abc comparison between a oppo udp 205 the x45 pro and the hi-fi rose rs 150 all grouped as room endpoints and switched through the yamaha c5000 analog preamp while not knowing what was what this revealed a rs

10:45 150 that especially shines with a big greater sense of depth and insight but at the price of sounding a bit more analytical and on the toes on my system the softer silkier and more laid back sound of the x45 pro brings a better balance to my reference setup where both speakers and amps are very natural fast and open sounding the oppo udp 205 was supposed to be used for a reality jack proving noticeably a better sound in the expensive streamers but it really surprised us by presenting a very mature and musical smoothness that sounded very high-end in fact we

11:31 ended up liking it more than the other two that day with the music we played sound is just so subjective and it can translate differently uh on a multiple of factors from your mood and to the weather outside and whether if you had a bad section just it goes to show that it is really worth experimenting with your combinations yeah i've completely lost track of which is intuitive yeah so what what do you feel now number one i'm still not a big fan of number two i like that one because it's a nice balance between a more full base but it has a slightly fuller rounder low mid tones yeah the number three doesn't have so much oven number three

12:17 becomes a little bit brittle again a bit too a bit too not scratchy that's so interesting because number three is the hi-fi rose now so the brittley thing you recognize even with the balanced output and the number two is the oppo and it actually to me just sitting here you i i feel the same it's a rounder it's actually more pleasing right that's right and it has more information about the voice yeah yeah yeah it to me it sounds more expensive but it's it's the cheapest one there the upper okay [Music] never assume something must be worse just due to the price that is why i always say just listen so

13:05 to sum up all the good if using the rs 150 as an endpoint for your existing music streaming service like title or cubase ripping and browsing your cd rips in a simple way while looking at big cover art clocks or old school video meters is your thing then you won't be missing anything on the rose that will deliver high-end sound in spades on top and come on let's just admit it that display brings a whole new level of presence to your music that you probably have been missing for a very long time with streaming [Music] old man rant coming up

13:51 let's start with the features the rose is missing when compared to the x45 pro the most important ones with the current software i would say is the missing dlna client functionality correct cd data lookup and metadata fields recording and editing capability a music database allowing you to rediscover and mix your own ripped high resolution files by mood a real fm or dab radio a phono stage input and more so let's talk about the missing dlna client first to play music from a network server you must log in to the network server using

14:36 user credentials and the smb protocol that is a pretty nasty security risk and annoyance on a consumer device that also requires an account with the vendor when we have things like dlna and universal plug-and-play to make it user-friendly to access network media so in the current form network playback from media servers is simply not practical or safe the best option is to move the files to a local drive which i naturally did just to reveal another pile of bugs in metadata editing search cover art and music look up even when ripping your own cds on the rs 150 itself you will end up with metadata in

15:24 the wrong fields and for that i think it's simply sloppy software work and it really shows in many places sorry then there's the display while the display is really impressive in size it's a bit disappointing quality wise at this price point in my opinion i was expecting something like a automotive quality touch display the display has a decent color precision but it has a limited viewing angle and it looks washed out when viewing from the top or from the side the touch position and sensitivity is not very good either especially if you are used to quality tablets and modern card displays or similar playing

16:11 video is achieved using vlc but unfortunately all output will be converted to a single pre-selected frame rate that you choose but also there's no support for true playback of hdr color spaces or native 24p frame rates meaning that video playback is kind of useless for film interestingly with vlc it will happily play back all kinds of video formats including the bitstream audio but it will be the pre-selected frame rate and resolution only clearly the intention is that it can be used for music video playback the likes of which you find on title but it will play almost anything

16:57 [Music] hi-fi rose has managed to add layers and layers of complexity and many things simply seems unfinished or works in progress to serve the feature checklist more than the end user let's try to do some simple things to give you a sense of what i'm talking about here the main screen is a row of icons some of which can be removed if you don't use a certain service it's endless scroll full of not very useful things making it hard to actually find what you're looking for let's try to play radio this is done by selecting radio from the front and from here you can select a

17:44 country that will give you some random choices there's no station icons there's no genres just some random stations i was not able to find any of the stations i listened to and wonder what tuning service is used here if any comically there's both a user channel and a favorites menu the user channel is where you store the channels you put in yourself with custom links and there are still no options to add icons or rearrange the radio stations in any way it stands in very strong contrast to the fully featured internet radio browser in the cocktail audio x45 pro which has even the smallest local stations listed

18:29 back at the main menu you can't help but wonder why this page doesn't allow you to add the things you actually use the most like your favorite radio station or your favorite playlist and and so on the same goes for the implementation of the queue-based playback system where every service has its own queue that is combined into a total queue why you would ever want to access the individual queues is a mystery to me and it just adds more complexity and confusion in all the interfaces and even worse in the app and this is just a little tip of the iceberg of bad choices in the category of stupid stuff the rose fm

19:15 tuna an even more annoying way to get random internet radio it has nothing to do with the fm tuner just something that was done because they could i guess it's just that gimmick you will use one time and go hahahaha and then it will take up space over here in the main menu hi-fi rose also divides radio searches into regions consisting currently of korea the uk us and switzerland in general this means that it's even harder if not impossible to find any useful application for this fm radio there's also a variable output

20:01 if you dare but i will advise against trying to use this as a preamp as the this volume control is simply not precise enough don't think of the rose connect app as a sanctuary from the cumbersome user interface on the unit itself it's a really busy app that gets in the way of what you want to do most of the time comically i heard a few reviewers say that the rose app is like a rune-like experience um let me tell you that people saying something like that rose connect has nothing in common with roon at all after old man grumping i can finally come to [Music] when everything the rs 150

20:47 currently does not do very well is removed what is left is a kick ass deck a very competent streaming endpoint a preamplifier a clock and cover art display for your rack with the possibility to get even better over time through software updates use like that the only big flaw is the lack of tidal connect support in my opinion i could go on for hours and hours about how hi-fi rose is currently missing out on the huge potential of this great concept that in my opinion has lost its way completely in a vortex of bad and unfinished ideas so much that the actual functionality of features

21:32 offered and daily uses a much better experience on the cocktail x45 pro where the quality of the individual features are much higher than the current version of this hifi rose i think that most users will just be using it as a good looking endpoint providing much needed cover art in the hifi rack while being a brilliant high-end deck an a.d and maybe even a preamp but this is not a great resting place for your cd collection as it will give you no advantage in its current form this is where the cocktail competition really shines with its mood-based rediscovery and shuffle features for your rip files if you're

22:18 using roon for music playback you won't care about all the flaky navigation and cd lookup and so on you could even use it to rip and stall your cd collection while using roon to enrich the experience with precise metadata and tons of discovery options while having a great big transport in the rack and a big clock display when not in use in short use within the boundaries of what it does well you will love it and hopefully it can get even better over time depending on how ambitious hi-fi rose really is you can check with their website they have a very fine forum to judge the progress in this area if you're looking

23:06 for a streaming endpoint and a very focused sounding deck that can occasionally do something else and lightens up your rack with the high-end vibes the rs 150 should be at the top of your list of stuff to check out alternatives in this quality and and category is fine between to my knowledge there's only the 5000 euro cocktail x45 pro that offers more functionality and better general quality in some of the features it is clearly more expensive and its display is not as nearly as appealing in the rack thinking out of the box if you are a title or room user and you really don't care so much about missing out on that beautiful display i

23:51 just can't help to think how much more you can get for a little more like for example the linked off tdy 3400 this comes loaded with rock solid software that even adds tidal connect the world re-owned room correction system room perfect voicings insane sound tuning flexibility and lots of connectivity and a very very simple daily use all in a big amplifier powerhouse package it will even play rip file from network servers or usb drives thank you to hifi and home theater specialists custom audio in denmark for providing the review sample

24:37 find link to their website in the description below if you like full and honest reviews like this be sure to like and subscribe it helps a lot growing the channel [Music] you