IMHO

My niece once bought herself a Maserati Ghibli. My word, what a beautiful car ... long and low, faster than all get-out, tricked out with all kinds of super-luxury goodies including white leather interior. A real head-turned of a car.

That spent most of its time in the shop. Ghiblis break down frequently, and getting parts for repairs is a major headache since they have to come from long distances. Sure, it was all covered in warranty, but for those long periods that the damn thing was at the dealer's, my niece didn't have her car. Since it was a Maserati dealer and not some fly-by-night place, they gave her a loaner. Still, it wasn't her car. Her car didn't work. Again.

This is where 'in my humble opinion' comes into play, because IMHO nothing in this world is worth buying if it's unreliable. I don't care how fancy the car is. If it can't carry out its most basic function -- i.e., to roll around under its own power -- then who cares if it has white leather seats?

This is also where I draw the line with sound equipment. I haven't any patience for audio gear that doesn't work correctly. Back in the 1980s I bought an integrated amplifier by SAE audio, part of their "SAE Two" series. It was a very handsome item indeed. But the thing started breaking down practically the minute I took it out of the box. I was younger then and less assertive, so I let the dealer try spraying some shit into the contacts and other ineffective dodges. Nowadays I would march in there with it all boxed up and demand my full money back.

Which is what I did recently with a HiFi Rose RS130, a piece of gear I really shouldn't have bought in the first place. It's a very fancy gizmo that does very little; its entire brief is to take an audio stream off one's home network (either via Ethernet or WiFi) and then send that stream to an external digital-to-audio converter (DAC) via a suitable digital output such as Coax, USB, Toslink, or the like. I knew I didn't really need it. I got it as an upgrade to a Bluesound Node that handled that basic duty perfectly. The RS 130 is a big, heavy piece of gear that sports a super-duper fancy screen covering the entire front of the unit, and it includes built-in software for accessing Tidal, Qobuz, and some other services. Since it runs on Android, it's possible to download new apps. Its specs are impressive when it comes to things like galvanic isolation and fancy-schmanzy digital timing – although none of those should really be anything much to worry about. The DAC will filter out any electronic noise and it handles its own digital timing.

Whether you can actually hear the difference between an RS130 and, say, a $50 Raspberry Pi with appropriate software, or an inexpensive network streamer like a Wiim Pro or a Bluesound Node, remains moot. There are those who say they can hear a difference. I'm certainly not among those. For one thing, I'm just too old. At 71 my hearing ain't what it was. I'm blessed with better discernment to be sure, but my ears poop out above about 11.5kHz. Nor does my hearing apparatus have the quick response speeds that you might need to have to spot a difference between one streamer and another. But there's also the simple fact that I know enough about basic digital audio to know that there can't be any difference that would be audible.

The only fundamental thing these devices do is convert TCP/IP network packets to a digital stream that can be output to a DAC, without screwing up the data in the process. If they can do that – and they can all do that – then any perceived differences between them must have some non-audible cause, such as the fact that an RS 130 looks really cool and a Wiim Pro is just a little black box. But the RS 130 costs $5200 and the Wiim Pro $150. That's a lot to pay for bling.

Anyway: my fancy new RS 130 died after two weeks. At this point in life I'm not about to fart around with a non-performing piece of equipment. Back it went to Crutchfield for the full refund, including tax. I returned my Bluesound Node to duty, and it's streaming digits along merrily and reliably. If there were any difference between the sound of my system with the RS 130 and with the Bluesound Node, I can't hear it. More to the point, I don't have to worry about my network streamer. It works, and it will continue to work. Bluesound products may be relatively inexpensive, but they are high-quality gear, and they're made to last.

There was an episode on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show when Mary had a date with a high-end restaurant and wine critic from New York. They went to the finest restaurant in Minneapolis. Mary loved the food and the wine, but the critic guy was relentlessly negative about all of it. He absolutely ruined Mary's dinner with his snobbery. The writers dropped lots of hints that he was just being an asshole for sake of being an asshole and didn't really know the difference between one wine and another.

Audiophiles can be like that. They'll start picking apart something that I frankly cannot hear and don't care about. So it's best to do without them. The chance that any given audiophile is going to be an utter jerk is actually pretty high.

I posted an entry to the HiFi Rose board about having to send the RS 130 back, and how I really couldn't hear any difference in the system after I put the Bluesound Node back in place. The first response was snooty and denigrating, but it was followed by people who had shared my experience. And then it quickly descended into a lot of name-calling and trash-talking, all of it directed at each other and not me. I read some of it in disgust, never posted again, and got out of there.

But IMHO it all comes down to this: I would have happily kept the RS 130 despite my certainty that it made no audible improvement to me in my system, just because it looks so utterly and completely cool with its fancy big screen that puts up the jacket art and track info and your choice of a bunch of cool clocks or working VA meters. White leather seats, in other words. But it died two weeks after initial unboxing, and one thing I found out by asking around is a lot of RS 130s die young. My experience wasn't an anomaly.

So there was my niece with her hardly-ever-working Ghibli, and there I was with my always-working Toyota Camry XLE, not as fancy-pants, but still well equipped, comfortable and quiet, surprisingly maneuverable for its size, and most importantly of all, utterly reliable. I've kept the Camry for eleven years so far. She kept the Ghibli for less than a year.