The Bluenode 2i with a good dac plays way above its price. It is not entry level at all paired with a good dac. I use mine with a Benchmark Dac 2 into Ayre preamp and Mark Levinson amp and it sounds great. My Levinson dealer sells quite a few high end lines and raves about the Bluesound. Benchmarks are great for making even CD or Redbook quality sound excellent, though you wont get full MQA with this setup , only 24/96 when streaming Tidal MQA.
Need DAC/Streaming Advice
I currently own a Bryston BDP-2 digital player that I run through a Bryston DAC. As far as playing high resolution files via a thumb drive or other external drive, the BDP-2 sounds great. The streaming part leaves a lot to be desired. I can stream Tidal but it is extremely slow and the IPad controller is pretty lousy. I can listen to Sonos through the DAC into my main system but obviously there is no hi-Rez via Sonos. I would like to find a better solution and am willing to start over (I can move the Bryston components to my secondary system). What I would like to find is a higher end streamer for my main system that would allow me to stream Tidal, Spotify and Deezer if possible while also playing digital files via thumb drive etc. I have no idea if that can be done in a one box solution or if I would need a separate streamer and DAC. I would very much appreciate any and all thoughts. Thanks in advance.