HiFi Rose RS520 Streaming Amplifier – First Look

All Image Credit: HiFi Rose

The Korean brand HiFi Rose recently released the RS520, a high performance audiophile, streaming device, DAC, preamp and power amplifier. In many ways it is the offspring of merging HiFi Rose’s RA180 GaN FET class-D integrated amplifier and the RS250A network streamer. With its 12.6″ 1920×515 touch front panel screen, it is versatile and quite full-featured hardware. However it does lack; a headphone output, subwoofer output, balanced ins and outs and a phono stage.

Milled from a block of aluminum, the RS520’s casework is sleek and understated, coming in silver or black. Along the top front edge, are four narrow silver buttons supporting Mute/Unmute, Volume Down, Volume Up and power on/off that, with a long press, lets you turn off just the screen while keeping the streamer fully active.

The front panel 12.6″ 1920×515 TFT LCD capacitive touch screen not only displays 4K P60 video, album art and system data, but provides overall system management together with the RoseConnect Premium app for Apple and Android devices and/or the included Bluetooth remote. The screen can even mimic a Nixie clock, the fascia of an FM tuner and when streaming audio can display virtual VU meters.

The RS520 is designed around the HiFi Rose operating system and a new 32bit stereo ES9028 PRO Saber DAC chip which claims –120dB THD+N and a dynamic range of 129dB. Utilizing the advantages of new discrete op-amp technology with the DAC; it supports hi-res audio files up to 32-bit/768KHz PCM and Native DSD512 (22.5792MHz), with the analog and digital circuits mounted on separate boards to prevent digital noise from affecting analog signals. A switched mode power supply is used in order to achieve high power use efficiencies and includes active power factor correction (PFC) in order to achieve up to 95% efficiency, while supporting an auto-ranging AC voltage input of 80-265volts.

The RS520 supports Rose operating system apps for TIDAL (full MQA decoding), Qobuz and Apple Music, with music videos from TIDAL, Bugs Video and RoseTube etc. being displayed on the 12.6″ screen or via the HDMI 2.0 output. It is Roon Ready and supports both Spotify Connect and AirPlay. Music and video files can be played from a local storage device or on your home network with a DLNA connection to any NAS drives or other storage devices. You can add additional internal SSD storage (2.5″) in an internal bay found on the units bottom surface. USB storage devices are compatible up to 10TB and SATA (recommended SSD) storage devices up to 4TB.

Ample Class AD power is avilable from the GaN (Gallium Nitride) FET Class-AD integrated power amplifier that provides up to 250W of two channel continuos power into 8 or 4 ohms. The A in Class AD is said by HiFi Rose to indicate that the use of GaN devices rather than Silicon FET devices produces a more “analog-like” sound.

A feature of the RS520 is its equalizer. This five band parametric equalizer includes several pre-sets and allows for the selection of frequency, bandwidth and Q providing up to 10dB boost or cut.

Extensive digital and analog connectivity is available on the rear panel making the RS250A more it than just a streaming amplifier, being compatible with multiple sources such as; TV’s (eARC), PC’s, power amplifiers, active/passive speakers, CD player and CD-Rom drives for ripping. All taking advantage of the audiophile DAC performance.

Finally, the RS520 can handle virtually any A/V digital format. Audio formats include; MQA, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, WMA, MP3, OGG, APE, DFF, AAC, CDA, AMR, APE, EC3, E-EC3, MID, MPL, MP2, MPC, MPGA, M4A, ALAC, PCM and Native DSD. While video formats include; ASF, AVI, MKV, MP4, WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, H.265, VC-1, VP8, VP9, MVC, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC.