MEASUREMENTS

I measured the HiFi Rose RS250 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It¹), repeating some tests with the magazine’s more recent Audio Precision APx500 analyzer.

I first looked at the RS250’s performance as a D/A processor. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the HiFi Rose as “RS250-DAC” from “HiFi ROSE.” The USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode, and Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that the RS250 accepted 16-, 24-, and 32-bit integer data via USB sampled at all rates from 44.1kHz to 768kHz. The coaxial and TosLink S/PDIF inputs accepted data sampled at rates up to 192kHz from my MacBook Pro’s optical output, but the optical input was limited to sample rates of 96kHz and below when connected to the APx500’s TosLink output. Peculiarly, the RS250’s S/PDIF inputs would only lock to data sampled