Streaming

..... and I even said "Nearly".

Honestly, a decent laptop, a good digital coax or toslink cable, good pair of analog interconnects, a good usb cable, and the musical fidelity vdac 90 is all you need for very good results. I’ve streamed this way for a year now and it sounds fine to me. But I must confess, I am a dedicated vinyl/ analog guy, so your preference and or results and needs may vary. I generally use streaming as a way to discover new music. I don't use it for my serious listening. I’d rather spend my money elsewhere, as in acquiring more physical media, as in lp’s, cd’s, and cassettes.

gelle24
I'm using a Pure Audio Lotus 5 DAC

jw944ts

"Lossy" refers to music files like mp3 which discard some details from the encoded soundwaves to save space. These files are 5 times smaller than FLAC files which are lossless, and which sound better on recordings which have a lot of important detail. Tidal's MQA is also lossy and sounds worse than FLAC on eg. piano music. Personally I stick with HiRes or CD quality material from Qobuz or Tidal.
Bluesound Node 2i is great indeed; I've been using it connected to WiFi. There should be no difference WiFi or wired if your WiFi works well. Say you are streaming FLAC from Qobuz. Wired or WiFi, you will be getting the same, and lossless, file.  You can also put FLAC files on a disk and connect the disk to Node 2i with USB.
Node 2i has nice applications that let you connect services like Qobuz and then select music to play.
So what does Node 2i do with this FLAC? Well, you can let it decode FLAC to analog with its internal very decent DAC; then connect Node 2i's analog RCA output to your amplifier.  That's how I listened to music since October 2019 to January 2020. And it was very good.
Then I improved the system by getting an external, dedicated DAC (RME ADI-2 DAC FS). I no longer use Node 2i's internal DAC. Just use Node 2i for its streamer function and pass on FLAC files that it gets from Qobuz via a digital link to the DAC's digital input. Now the external DAC generates analog output from FLAC. In addition to RCA, it has balanced outputs, which I use to pass the analog signal to the amp. Perfect sound and I am done with upgrades.
Your experience will then strongly depend on amp/speakers/room.

excellent, ghjuvanni, thanks for your time!
J