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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
2psyop's avatar
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2psyop
1,503 posts
 
That is an impossible question to ask. We cannot tell you that what you hear with the Node 2i will be better or worse than what you have. Those are your ears, your brain and psychology. But the Node 2i is considered a budget component, therefore you can buy it, listen to it, compare it to your Aries and Metrum and report back to all of us. You can tell us what your ears told you!
I have the Node 2 and having experimented by connecting it to my Benchmark DAC and the Bifrost Uber DAC. Both routes sound stellar, but when playing MQA albums on the Node 2 with it’t internal DAC, it sounds the best to my ears. Others here do not hear any kind of improved sound with MQA. So it has to be your ears to decide for you.
mahler123
3,086 posts
 
The OP poses an interesting question.  I won’t be able to fully answer it but perhaps he may benefit from my experience.
  I have the Node2 and the Vault2.  The weak link in both is the DAC and for both I use external DACs.  None of my DACs do MQA.  When Bluesound added MQA I tried a few recordings via a 10 day Tidal membership.  I limited myself to recordings that were already in my collection.  My DACs are the Bryston DAC 3 and Mytek Manhatten I.  For MQA I used the DAC in the Vault2.
   The MQA albums that listened to were compared both to CDs played on an Oppo transport with SPDIF out into my DACs and CDs that had been burned into the Vault2.  I preferred listening non MQA
with either the Oppo or the Vault2 as a transport.
  When I compared ripped CDs from the Vault2 via the Internal DAC compared with MQA from Tidal via the Vault2 the results were inconsistent.  Sometimes it was a marginal improvement, but not always, and in some cases the plain vanilla from the Vault2 was better.  In every case I preferred my non MQA DACs by a wide margin.
  The OP seems more taken with MQA than I was.  My advice would be to stop worrying about the links in the chain if the end result sounds good.  Perhaps try the Node 2i (which is supposed to have a better DAC than my current Bluesound components) but hang on to the Aries (is it upgradeable via firmware updates) in case they embrace MQA.
gdnrbob
4,417 posts
 
+1 Mahler.
I think MQA is just another gimmick to make us buy an unnecessary product. A well recorded high rez recording holds up against MQA.
As others have said the Node DAC is good, but at least you can bypass it to a DAC of you own choice.
I use an Ayre Codex and have nothing bad to say about this combination.
B 
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