WiFi System Upgrades

Roon costs $120.00/yr. (Not exactly free but a good value compared to the cost of a decent DAC)

When I installed Roon during my free trial, I had it playing over my Apple TVs within ten minutes of the download. It doesn’t modify your system or your iTunes library or metadata at all and, when you’re done, delete the app and you’re back at square one. Also, Roon reminds you when the trial is about to expire so you can cancel.

Upsampling can be beneficial in some cases but a chain of multiple upsampling/resampling seems like inviting opportunities for quantization errors. Whether I can actually hear/detect such errors I can’t say.

+1 to Airport Express. Has a Toslink out. Plays like Airplay. I am pretty sure it Airplay doesn’t upsample 44k samples to 48k when transmitting to Airport Express.

Yesterday, I purchased a Bluesound powernode 2, mainly so my wife can access our music library easily.

My streaming system often fails and the reasons vary, but most are related to iMac OS upgrades. Fixing problems can be tricky and way beyond my wife's skillset.

Bluesound has got it right...top marks for...
- easy setup - mine uses ethernet
- intuitive control interface, mine is android based
- excellent sound quality
- basic manual controls on top of case - very nice feature
- clean design

This unit has left me wanting a Node 2 for my audio system.

It's  not prerfect, but by comparison to my imac, it's bloody marvelous

Instant access to tons of free radio stations and many popular streaming services

The Node 2 will replace my iMac and v-link192, but will still work with my Bifrost 😊

I'm a convert 😃

Regards
 

@williewonka 

I've had my Node 2 for about three months. You are correct in your assessment of Bluesound. The Node 2 is the main source of my system. The whole family loves it. I use its DAC and it sounds fantastic. I've felt no need to use my external DAC (Arcam rDAC), although I'm sure down the line I will do a comparison, which is always interesting and sometimes fun to do. 

The BluOS ap is very good and a pleasure to use, build quality is great and customer service is outstanding. I do hope you try the Node 2; I would love to hear your impressions of it in your system. If you have the time or inclination report your thoughts on a comparison of the Node 2 DAC and your Bifrost, please.

Cheers,

Scott

Scott, it may take a couple of months to get round to the purchase, since I'm moving house, but I'll  post my  findings here, stay tuned 😊

Cheers

Scott - a question from a Bluesound neophyte - Yesterday everything was pretty straightforward, but today I went to the Bluesound interface and it would appear that the link was lost overnight and there is no bluesound player to select.on the network

I've verified the NAS library is online and accessible, however it did go to "sleep" overnight - but it canstill be viewed on the network from other computer(s) via a file manager

The Bluesound interface only displays the following items
- My Playlists
- My Presets
- My Favourites
- Settings
- Help
- Add a player

I then selected the "house" icon (top right) and found the power node in the "My Players" list 

After a while the list above has had a "Library" item added together with  and on selecting it, a list of albums or songs or artists, etc can be displayed.

When I try to access a track I get a message stating the track cannot be found - I assume because the index has old data?

So my questions 
- do I have to re-index each time i start a listening session?
- can the index be saved somehow?

Moving onwards - I selected "Radio Paradise from the list and now the "Library" menu item has been removed

Any Ideas?

Thanks - I'm sure its just learning curve