Thank you Mike.

Thanks for showcasing this great product..  Enjoy and take care

Didn't know they had something of a heritage. Stepping up their build quality.

I absolutely need a visual satisfaction from my equipment. Your T-shirt is spot on. I need to see meters moving with my music. Not much different than the music making you want to get up and dance. I however can’t dance. So I depend on those big bright dancing meters.

Geez, that’s a gorgeous stack. Almost worth buying just on looks alone.

Nice review. Someone just shared it in our discord just now and I like your style. 😊❤

Thanks for sharing.

Love this unit. It replaced a standard Moon by Simaudio 260 CD in my system. The SACD element if you have more than a few is pretty unique at this price point - particularly the output via I2S in full DSD mode (with the adjustable pin out) Mine goes into a PSA DSD512 DAC and this works very well. Couple of things to be aware of - DSD does not support completely gapless playback on the unit. You can tweak the value to almost gapless but on SACDs like Vangelis's Bladerunner - the momentary switchover is audible - but no big deal. The cover and puck mechanism is very robust and accurate with the clamping of the disc and the quality of the transport - I have had the unit play discs that other units have struggled with. Overall a bargain buy. Be aware too that the company has an interesting approach to warranty - "the warranty for our products is covered by the dealers and local distributors. So if anything happens to your unit, your first point of contact would be the dealer you purchased from. They might process it directly or forward it to the local distributor, depending on which country you are in. For Warranty length, this depends on local laws and policy of the dealer; it differs across the world. If you purchased from online Chinese seller, you have no warranty." That shouldn't put folks off as suggested in the video the unit is very well built and packaged

Its a good video.
The RS520's amplifier is clean / transparent so it wouldn't color the sound from the DAC.  The downside is that Rose didn't put XLR inputs on the RS520.   You could have used the RA280 instead which is also a very clean GaN amp.  

Out of curiosity... did you try running the CD playing directly to the Rose using a TosLink conection? (Or USB=B)
It would have been interesting to compare the two DACs.  Albeit the RS520 has the older ESS Pro chips.

I have Spotify lossless and I have listened to different songs, side by side, streaming vs CD, and as expected, I have not been able to hear any difference. I have a WIIM AMP Pro, two ELACs debut 2.0 and a sealed subwoofer.

spinning cd always sounds better than 99% of any stream except for Grimm MU1 or MU2

Save your money, rip your cds losslessly in Itunes and output them via HDMI or coaxial digital to your amp/avr. Identical to CD, the only variable will be the quality of the dac in your amp/avr compared to that in your cd player.

Listening is not JUST listening… it is an EXPERIENCE that is very subjective… as is value… I suspect most folks who have deep enough pockets to spend this kind of money on components no longer have the hearing to really differentiate between this and, let's say, your typical used Sony player so they are paying for the experience as much as for the sound…  which could probably be had for 1/10th the price and could be all in one box, or add a separate DAC if you must.  But the ownership experience would be different.  BTW, I would argue in favor of the Sony anyway… as it might well have multichannel output, which is a huge reason to spend the extra on SACD, and might also play other formats like DVD-A, Blu-ray, DVD, etc… but different strokes for different folks.   Does the Onyx player output multichannel DSD via its digital output?