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Not streaming yet and considering Bluesound Node 2i? What you need to know.

Two months ago question marks were orbiting my aching head. Now I have the 2i and an MHDT Orchid DAC. My real interest was getting decent radio over WiFi because my ethernet is on the wrong floor. The 2i one box budget solution was appealing. I got the 2i. Happy Days! I found the 2i playing Tunein radio over 5G WiFi decent. At least it beat my Sangean WFT-1 up pretty good. Adding the Orchid was stunning. How could free radio sound so good? Defined lows, vivid mids, nothing special up top but so coherent, musical and it swings - I could listen all day. Hey now, Music Streaming Services. How good could that be? Qobuz trial time. Hmm. The BluOS app acts as a remote control for the 2i telling it to stream and decode Tunein radio or Spotify directly from WiFi or Ethernet. Here’s the problem. The Node 2i can’t direct stream any music services except Spotify. You can only Bluetooth cast Qobuz (and others) to the Node from the BluOS app even if the Node is hardwired to ethernet and, believe me, the quality suffers. You can USB or Toslink to the 2i but then you don’t need the 2i at all if you’ve got a DAC. This is just an fyi, food for thought for the potential buyer. I’m quite pleased with Tunein Radio and the BluOS app is fun. Would do it again.
wlutke
wlutke OP
728 posts
 
Could be but Tunein Radio uses the Orchid without a problem.  The only difference between that and Qobuz is the stream source.  The hardware chain is identical.  My system is quite sensitive to cables and front end so I'm going with that.  It's like Qobuz is throwing detail at me instead of presenting it in a coherent manner.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
4,992 posts
 
I'm pretty sure that TuneIn uses MP3 streams.  No way this can sound better than Qobuz...no way.  Unless you are so used to MP3 that the much added detail of Qobuz, (or Tidal or Deezer) seems "tipped up" to you?  It's not.
wlutke OP
728 posts
 
I'm used to vinyl, CD and radio.  They're all coherent and tonally balanced.  I tried Joplin, Traffic, Canned Heat, Quicksilver Messinger Service, Beatles and Portishead that I have on vinyl and Qobuz got thumped soundly.   I know tipped up from ambience and true detail.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
4,992 posts
 
I agree with big_greg, something is amiss.  It should be pretty difficult to tell the difference between the CD album and the same album on Qobuz?

If you want to spend the time, completely reset your Node 2i to factory/out-of-the-box status and try again.
hsussman's avatar
hsussman
2 posts
 
It seems that you may be Overlooking the most important reason to buy the 2i. You’re using it as if it was just a Sonos device. The 2i has MQA built in which enables much higher resolution streaming. Couple that together with Tidal, and the quality of the sound is far superior to the way you are using the 2i currently. The only challenge with the 2i is you must use its internal DAC to take advantage of MQA. You need to go from the 2i directly into your Pre though and bypass your external DAC. Try it and you will hear a significant difference. 
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