Setup and First listening impressions of the Bluesound Node 2i:
Setup was a breeze. The iPhone app immediately found the Node 2i, which I had plugged into the same network that my wireless access point resides on. After applying updates the unit came to life and I added my Tidal account. Strangely, there wasn’t a menu option to choose Tidal MQA.
I found menu navigation in the iPhone app fairly inorganic. There didn’t appear to be a way to jump between music playing sessions and individual device tweaks without navigating all the way to the root menu. There should be a simpler way.
Sound quality seemed good on a non-critical listening session with a pair of Yamaha powered studio monitors connected. I am unclear about the symbology I’m the track list: on the right side of the list, the second last column shows a grey circle with a squiggly line, perhaps the intent was to look like an oscilloscope display of an audio signal. Does that have any bearing over whether the stream is MQA or not?