You may have either a defective unit or the settings are wrong and it’s something for the Bluesound support folks. There are other streamers that sound better that are more expensive, but the difference should be that the others have better SQ not that the NODE sounds bad in an obvious way such as you describe.
BTW, to NODE detractors, as a DAC/streamer it’s SQ can be much improved by changing out the PSU module and using an L PSU (such as the Fidelity Audio PSU module & LPSU). That worked really well for me.
And now that I’m using an external DAC (Gustard X26 Pro) via usb, it is working great as a streamer in my system.