2. digital
  3. 141712-17758

How much would I lose going to a Bluesound Node 2i

I'm considering going a much simpler route for digital. I play to a lot of vinyl on my Lenco TT and Era V phonostage, and so digital comprises 30-40% of what we typically listen to. My current setup is running Roon on a Synology NAS that connects wirelessly to an Auralic Aries LE, then connected to connected to my Metrum Octave DAC via Curious USB Cable and Audiophillio 2. That's a lot of links in the chain, thus the desire to simplify with a single box solution if I can.

I have really enjoyed what I've heard from MQA so far, even though I'm not getting all the goodness yet. My Aries will decode MQA but my Metrum Octave does not support MQA, so I'm not getting the full monty. I am using ROON DSP to convert streams to 96kHz and 176kHz when possible. 192kHz is not supported on the Octave.
It's my understanding that the Bluesound will provide Full Decoder support for MQA and that the internal DAC punches well above its weight, especially compared to the Node 2. So my question is whether I should expect MQA to sound better on the Bluesound than it does on my current setup, and how much Redbook will sound degraded, if at all.

I'm tempted to buy a Node 2i to compare for myself but before I do, I thought I would garner some opinions here.
Thanks!
smccull

Showing 1 response by fastfreight

fastfreight
671 posts
 
Hi,  While I owned the Bluesound Node 2 (not 2i), I too was interested in comparing the internal DAC with my new Stellar Gain Pre / DAC from PS.

I first used the internal Bluesound DAC, then compared with both Coax and Optical connections into the Stellar Gain. To be clear, I did use cheap RCA connectors for the analoge out of the Node. The difference was impressive, with the Stellar Gain DAC sounding much better.  I have since ordered the Direct Stream Junior.  Can't believe the 2i will outperform what I heard, and am excited to hear the DSJ. Also the DSJ is Roon / MQA.
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