Bluesound installed DAC - music killer?

@sjeesjie

@three_easy_payments the old Sonos connect for just 250,-? Does everything the bluesound does but is just a little bit less premium finish.

 I haven't looked at the Sonos platform in some time but I didn't think it supported hi-res audio.  I could be wrong but if I'm not that's a massive difference.

Like @jmphotography I too bought a chord qutest.... Can't recommend enough. As he said the most musical presentation I have heard. Also did an upgrade on the bluesound 2i with new board and power supply. So good that it trumped my linn klimax streamer that I sold it which paid for the bluesound and upgrade and qutest twice over. 

Interesting TAS take.  MQA is a proprietary format not distinguishable in the real world. Of course it can't be compared to DSD cuz it don't play on the BluSound. All I know for sure is that the BluSound sounds much better on a better DAC. Common sense. And if you're gonna do that just spend a lil more and get a Pro-Ject S2 Ultra. It plays DSD and every other file type you have without the crappy BluOS persistent queue.

fuzztones, what are you referring to when you mention "the crappy BluOS persistent queue."?

I had a Node 2 and was fairly happy with it for several years.  Certainly not like a sheet over my speakers. Make sure you are not blue-toothing to it. Even though I had my Node connected to Ethernet from the get go it took me a bit to realize that I was sending the signal via Bluetooth and it made a big difference when I started streaming via Ethernet.  Overall my biggest complaint was some loss of definition in the upper mids in complicated passages. 
In April I bought a Mytek Manhattan II DAC w/ network card. I had planned to use the Node streamer into the Manhattan DAC but Mytek happened to come out with a discount price plus a free network card about the time I was ordering. I tried the Node into the Manhattan and it was a huge improvement in all ways over the Node DAC. I then tried out the Mytek network card and found that to be an improvement over the Node streamer but not nearly as significant as the DAC upgrade. 
Since then, I have found myself learning lyrics that I’d been hearing for years (think REM) and counting the number of backing vocalists, etc. Both the top and especially the bottom are greatly improved.  Overall just a much more involving and satisfying experience. 
I’d rather not go back, but the Node 2 brought me lots of enjoyment in the time I used it. I’ll probably pass it on to my 18 year old son soon.