Bluesound Vault 2i, Cocktail Audio X40 or ??????????

Benchmark DAC 3B and I use my wife for blind testing. I know it is not a perfect test but if she asks why it sounds so much better then it works for me. 

The Benchmark doesn't unfold MQA but it does play MQA in 24/96. 

Thanks. Nice test procedure. No arguing there :-)

You can stream Pandora through bluetooth to the Vault or Node. My advice is buy the Vault and rip the CDs directly.

The Node 2i and Node 2 are akin to the Swiss Army knife of the audio world. Lots of choices for audio streamers, dacs, servers devices but not too many that do as many varied tasks, with as much versatility as the Nodes. With the Vault it’s like a Swiss Army Deluxe because you add the ripping of your CD collection and proper tagging and metadata. Heck one could even spend an entire year by going to the local library and borrowing CDs to rip! You might have a huge library over time. What I like even more about Bluesound is the commitment to customer service, which I have used many times and the guys are awesome and the budget prices, since both of these devices are under $1200. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.