B.S. Node 2i brick (yet another one)


Mine died after 3 years, like so many others, ordered and replaced the caps (they looked fine) and still doesn't turn on. My problem is a bit different - no red light at all on the top, although I may have disabled led's in the setup, and I'm not sure if that setting carries over to bootup.. Anyway, its dead, does nothing, no lights, no network lights at the cable when I plug it into ethernet.

 

This POS BS company will discount me a whopping $75 on a REFURBISHED unit. This is pathetic service for a $600 piece of equipment. I'll never buy another piece of hardware from Bluesound. Audiophile gear priced like that should last 20 years imo. 

What would you guys do? Try and find a full power supply, or do the aftermarket upgrade? My worry is that my power board is fine and its the main board that's bad. I'm not sure how to test this. I did some high level probing on the power board with an electrical engineer, and it looked ok.. Is there a way to hard reset it via usb or something? Does the service button at the back provide any function?

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My BS Node 2i has been running continuously since December 2019.

Haven't hit the alleged, infamous 3 year mark, but so far it's been great!

@2psyop Oh wow, I'm really grateful for that! I've sent you a PM. I'm very interested to see if its just the power supply that's to blame, or if the unit itself (in my case) is defunct. You are awesome!

BTW, did you guys know NAD made the power supply? Their logo is on it. I don't know much about who developed the hardware, but I was surprised to see that on there, and a bit wary to buy modern NAD gear now too.

@larry5729 I actually didn't call them. They are local and very nice, but I know they are just going to tell me its out of warranty and to call BS. 

@jjss49 I hear you.. I don't know if mine is considered an early one, but its a 2i, so its newer than the 2. If it were true that they sold hundreds of thousands of players and only .07% were bad, then they would be fixing them for free (or charging reasonably) to avoid the negative press. I mean, when you look at the board inside, you can see that at $600 a pop, they have huge profit in this device, and the power supply, a totally separate board made of common components, cant possibly cost more than $25-50 to them. I think the storm is coming - the lifetime of the power supply seems to be 2-3 years so all the folks that bought them a couple years ago will be posting a message just like this one in a year. :) 

The real reason I'm ok with lambasting BS online is the terrible support I received. They really don't care to retain customers - the kiss of death in the high end audio world. A $75 discount on a refurbished 2i is not support, that's a "go away customer" response. I believe in early years of the company they were receptive, but now service appears have gone to India, and we all know how that goes.

@roxy54 Oh, no worries! Thanks. I agree with you that $600 isn't a lot of money for audio gear. I have high end stuff in my main system, but $600 certainly isn't cheap for a mini streamer like this. I rationalized paying the premium to get a quality unit. :)

I've got one vault over the 3 year mark and 4 nodes that have been flawless. I bought a couple of the nodes on eBay a couple of years ago so I'm not sure of the age of those units.