Which DAC is better?

In my experience most modern DACs sound very similar.. It's definitely worth the price of a cable to see if you can tell them apart.

"well - on second thought - maybe the statement IS correct - it may be as a good as ’A’ $700 DAC... that would be a somewhat poor sounding one though"

That's funny, and appreciated.  Agree, you buy the Node for the streamer and Bluesound OS.  Use the dac until you can upgrade, and OP already has a superior option in his integrated amp.

We have the new node it’s DAC is not bad and certainly better than 2i however we use a coax cable (DIG 3 Morrow) and we found that the DAC in our Anthem AVM 70, in our opinion), larger sound stage and a slightly cleaner sound. It’s so subjective, though your ears can decide which it’s sound. 

I would suggest don't ask for opinions do a blind test an convince yourself. Your room does have a different room acoustics (than the people you are asking for advice) which is atleast for 60% responsible for your precieved sound.

Hello,
That is totally true about the room acoustics. When I did the tests I was doing near field listening to try to take the room out of it. Also, to give those DACs a chance I worked up to $1k worth of cables on the separate DACs and kept the BlueSound stock using a modest $100 stereo RCA cables. I have listened to the BlueSound Node 2i on several expensive DACs all the way up to $14k. It sounded awesome and they did not support MQA. The one that I thought sounded the best was the Ayre QX-8. It sounded the most real to me. This is still a $5k DAC but it kept up with and surpassed much more expensive DACs. I wonder if you upgrade to a linear power supply would it surpass a $700 DAC? Since the new NODE might have USB out I would rather upgrade to a NODE and the LPS in it since it would require a different power supply model.