HiFi Rose RS520 Streaming Amplifier Review

The front panel touchscreen runs the Android OS but can be used in conjunction with an Apple device too. It’s built like a tank with four sides made from a single aluminum billet. You can connect the RS520 to a network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable. With only four small buttons on top, everything can be accessed through the included Bluetooth remote, touchscreen, or the RoseConnect Premium app for Apple and Android devices. It includes music services by Qobuz, Spotify, and Tidal and it’s Roon Ready. You can rip your CD collection to it as well, but more on that later. Having reviewed the NAD M10 V2 streamer earlier last year, I’ll give some thoughtful comparisons, too.

HiFi Rose is a relatively new audiophile company, founded in 2017 in South Korea. They are a subsidiary of Citech, a company that has been making public kiosk touchscreens for many years. From what I have gleaned, over 70% of the designers of the RS520 are actual engineers. Give a group of engineers enough time and resources and they come up with this “dream stream machine”. The RS520 is simple to use and has many interesting and fun features built in. When you power it up for the first time, you can’t help but be impressed with the build quality and clean design. The 12.6-inch LCD touchscreen is large and responsive. It takes up almost the entire front panel. Even the IR sensor for the remote is connected to the back of the unit with a wire and can be placed where you’d like without taking up real estate on the front panel. The user interface is intuitive and within a few minutes, I was able to navigate through many of the menu options. Upon its initial startup, it notified me that a software update was available, and I uploaded it in about five minutes. Nice touch!

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The remote control is basic but fully functional for day-to-day use. An IR dongle for the remote plugs into the back and can be placed unobtrusively in your audio rack. The RS520 can be connected to your network via LAN cable or wirelessly (with the included WiFi dongle antennae). Both worked equally well as my wireless router was in the same room. Though the RS520 itself worked well right out of the box, I downloaded the RoseConnect Premium App, but never got it to work right on my iPhone 15. A pop-up blocked a key sign-in spot on my iPhone and I could not work around it. It could be me, the Luddite. After a while, I just went back to my trusted MConnect App and had Qobuz playing in no time. Between my iPhone and the remote, I didn’t feel the need to use anything else, but YMMV.

Though the RS520 runs cool, it has six chamfered vents cut into the top of the unit and four buttons for basic operation. Once I got it set up, I rarely used the buttons. I hooked the RS520 to two different speaker pairs that I had on hand, one being the Sonus faber Sonetto V and the other being the newly released GoldenEar T66. The back panel has two RCA line inputs, two coaxial digital, an optical in/out, USB 3.0b and Ethernet inputs, three more USB 3.0 inputs, an HDMI eARC input, and HDMI 2.0 out, plus preamp outs should you want to plug into a processor or amplifier of your choice, an IR input and two trigger outs. It also has a ground if you want to connect a turntable.

Internally, there are the ESS ES9038PRO DACs that offer some of the very best sonics in the market. They provide a low noise floor and low jitter and support PCM up to 768kHz and DSD512. The design is fully balanced as well. The amp section is Class AD, which uses gallium nitride (GaN). This uniquely designed FET gives the Class D amp section quicker switching time than standard Class D, making the RS520 sound like a Class AB amplifier. The big advantage of Class D is its efficiency, which allows for a smaller footprint (the RS520 is 17 inches wide) and cool operation.

The included software goodies on the front panel are icons for Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, Rose Radio, and others. It also has YouTube, which can be played on the front screen or your HDTV while listening to hi-res music videos over your speakers. It includes Rose EQ which allows you to select from several pre-designed EQ settings as well as customizing to your liking.

A few things that you may miss are no room correction, like on a receiver. But the RS520 allows for some EQing of peaks and dips if you use Room EQ Wizard software. Also, there is no headphone jack or subwoofer output. I also noticed that when streaming classical pieces like Stravinsky’s Firebird suite, where one track flows into the next, the RS520 would pause, display a spinning wheel, and then reconnect and continue. It really disrupted the continuity of the piece. I played the same music on my PS Audio DirectStream DAC, and it was completely gapless. Now, depending on what you listen to, it may never be an issue, but I think the tech people at Rose should be able to patch it with a software update.

As much as I wanted to rip CDs into the RS520, I would have to purchase the CD ripper drive and an SSD drive that can plug in underneath the RS520. Both would be expenses I am unwilling to undertake for this review. That said, If I were to purchase this unit, I almost certainly would! Too bad it will not rip SACD as well, but we can’t always get everything we want.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the customizable screen. It can display VU meters in several styles and colors to match the aesthetics of your system. You can also display the music info on the screen with a large scrolling font or by track numbers and other various ways. Yes, you can dim the screen or even turn it off (but why?). It’s remarkable all the things you get to play with. With music, it offers other selections of music you may like based on what you are currently playing. While the music plays, the sample and bit rates are displayed.

The album cover becomes the screen backdrop and the title of the track slowly scrolls across the screen. It is very easy to read this from across a large room. In the upper right-hand corner are icons that take you to the EQ screen and home screen with a simple tap. All in all, you’ll have fun exploring all the features the RS520 has to offer. I do not doubt that after several weeks of use, I did not explore every nook and cranny… because I just settled in and listened to music!

If you are like me, you will probably start using the RS520 before reading the instruction book. You will be glad to hear that you can get it to work up to 95% of its capabilities on your own just by exploring the touch screen. This is where having a bunch of engineers designing as a team pays off. The whole user interface experience is a joy to use and as deep as the menu system is, it never seemed too complex and offers a way to back out quickly if you feel you are going too far down the rabbit hole. Though the remote is fine, I controlled the RS520 with MConnect and played lots of music in high resolution through my Qobuz app. I could easily see my scrolling bar timeline, the title of the track, bit depth/sample rate. I could have cast the display to my LG OLED TV, but I usually reserved that option for music videos on YouTube, as the static display was somewhat redundant.

Connecting the RS520 to my Wi-Fi network was quick and easy and within 15 minutes of unboxing, I was listening to music. I know that some are asking if the sound was as good as the NAD M10, but my acoustic memory will not allow me to make an acute comparison. Suffice it to say that the RS520 had a dynamic, rich analog sound that really made the music it played sound wonderful. Where I give the edge to the RS520 is its remarkable flexibility over the M10. I decided not to add any EQ for evaluation and take a more purist approach. Still, it’s nice to have EQ choices and the ability to make some room corrections if you are familiar with the Room EQ Wizard software. With the stereo pre-outs, you can run the RS520 into another device, like a receiver, and apply room correction that way as well.

The HiFi Rose RS520 is a premium amplifier, streamer, and video player wrapped up in an easy-to-use package that easily meets hardened audiophile standards.

It has been a while since I reviewed a fun product. The RS520 is not only a solidly built audio component, but a versatile music player that is designed to be easy to use, customizable, and full of fun-to-explore features. If I were looking for a single component to showcase my full range speakers, the RS520 checked off almost all the boxes I have… and some boxes I didn’t know I had! All other amplifier streamers I review in the future will be measured against the benchmark of the HiFi Rose RS520.