Sadly, I have no way to demo equipment before playing it, both because of my location, thousands of miles from any stereo shop, and because of my personal physical constraints. However, I did recently have a HiFi Rose RS250A DAC/streamer inhouse for a few weeks.
I've heard so many contradictory statements about HFR gear. Some very knowledgable people rave about its sonic quality; others consider it laughable. HFR boasts about its build quality, and most reviews praise HFR gear's solid construction. But I've read multiple accounts of infant failures and, in fact, the 250 I had inhouse was itself defective. Many have criticized the HFR software as being buggy, but I found it to be quite solid, easy to use, and feature-rich. (I configured the component to automatically download software updates, & maybe that made a difference.) So the bottom line on all these issues is not clear.
As far as the user interface and connectivity goes, however, the only streamers I found to be in the same class were the much lower-priced Eversols DMP DAC/streamers.
The Eversolos duplicate about 80% of the HFR's superb iPad/phone-like graphical touchscreen interface. But that missing 20% includes features that I was especially fond of, like the ability to stream 4K video from sources like YouTube to an HDMI-attached TV or monitor. So Eversolo didn't make the cut.
As for sonics, the 250A had more detail and a more holographic presentation than any of my current DACs. But that's a low threshold. I'm only now starting to move from physical media to streaming content, so my DACs are old & mid-fi -- think Oppo BDP-105.
So the choice came down to either the HFR $2700 RS250A, which includes a DAC, or HFR's top-of-the-line $5200 RS130, which is a streaming transport, no DAC.
When you factor in the cost of an outboard DAC and cabling, the price difference could easily exceed $5000. But what that buys you with the RS130 is likely a much better-sounding streamer. In addition to a better power supply & noise rejection, the RS130 has a unique higher-frequency, temperature-compensating clock, as well as the ability to sync to an external clock. The 250A's streaming circuitry is very quite, but overall much more vanilla. And most likely more susceptible to jitter.
So what to do? Since the Ayre's built-in DAC has garnered such high praise -- and is a mere $1300 option -- I finally decided to go with the RS250A and Ayre DAC.
I've never had much confidence in the internal modules of any integrated component, upgradable or not. But in this case, given that I expect the Ayre DAC to be far superior to the 250A DAC, a conservative solution would be to live with the EX-8 / 250A combo for a while, using the HFR solely as a streamer.
That would let me compare the two DACs to my existing DACs (as well as to my analog legacy sources), if only to gain a point of reference. At that point, if I still love the HFR UI but am disappointed with both DACs' sound quality, I could still upgrade to the RS130 and a higher-end outboard DAC, maybe an Aurender.
But for now, this seems like the most intelligent way to go -- and at a mere $14,000 (less cables).
I can't wait to write the check.