Can a Bluesound Node's Streamer Be Bypassed and be used as an External Dac?

I have my tv going into the mini optical of the Bluesound node 2i and sending the digital signal through to my Denafrips Ares II dac. If I want to listen to qobuz I just open the app and select something to listen to and the audio switches to music from anything you select whether is radio paradise, qobuz, etc. If I want to switch back to tv all I do is go to the "hamburger button" in the Bluesound menu and select optical input (tv) and it goes to the tv signal and sends it to the dac. Now if my tv is off and I turn it on, the Bluesound will automatically pick up the signal and play tv audio, and if there's music playing with the tv off, it will automatically switch to tv audio. Now this works very well for us as far as switching the digital signal back and forth, but I would also like to think that it would still do the same internally using the Bluesound dac as well. It's really late right now so I hope that I explained this well. Any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.

     Leo 

Also, the best part of this auto switching to tv audio when the tv is turned on is that I don't have to worry about what the node was playing prior when my wife goes to watch tv. It might glitch once in a bluesound moon😜, but it's very rare.

"Just wondering,  what DAC are you using?"

A vintage Sony DAS-703 ..... circa 1985!  Yep,1985!  It's temporary until I find a replacement for it. Though, I was hoping to bypass the streamer side of Bluesound and use its dac to confirm in fact the vintage DAC is causing my ear fatigue and not the Aurrender N200.

For what it's worth, the vintage dac sounded fine when used with the Bluesound Node.  I could listen to the pair for hours without ear fatigue.

So are you using a format that is only 16/44k?   Most of those early DACs were not even capable of a full 16 bits of resolution anyway.   Digital has come a long way, if you are auditioning the N200 and can exchange it for an A200 I am sure you would find that is sounded great with Qobuz or Tidal

The N200 is worthy of a great DAC so if you pair a modern DAC with it I am pretty sure you will like it 

I went from a Vault to the N200 and thought it was a nice upgrade.