Bluesound node 2i

@howardlander I purchased a Node 2i about 2 months ago and have really been enjoying it along with a Qobuz subscription. I have Cat5e cable run throughout my home by me when our home was being built a few years ago going to my network closet, so I had a wall outlet where my system is located. We live in a rural area, homes are spread out in farm country so wifi is pretty sparse, but I feel it sounds better, more open with the ethernet. I tried both the 5ghz wifi and ethernet, and I have a brand new ASUS hi-end router. I have a AQ Cinnamon ethernet cable going from the wall to the Node, probably overkill but it sounds great. I also picked up a Nordost Purple Flare power cord for the Node. Now tonight, I added a Chord Qutest DAC and Oh my, a whole new exciting world. 

Making the switch from wifi to ethernet made mega-differences in my Node2i. Do it now. Even a cr-ppy ethernet cable will make a big difference. 

Wireless connections or Ethernet cables won’t have a “sound”. It’s all digital data being transferred via tcp packets on the wire, then reassembled and passed on to the next layer in the OS. Send, receive ack. Either the data gets there or it’s resent. You may have excessive resend packets on a bad network port or NIC, but the sound will remain the same. If the node2i firmware drops music quality if the bandwidth is limited, there’s a problem that will impact sound. The node2i isn’t going to fill gaps in the missing packet data with best guess. This is all handled on a lower layer. (Been reading packet data professionally since ARCNET). 
High end cables are suspicious.  Think the copper cables used in your electronics are special?  Or even inside your loudspeakers?  Nope. Funny seeing someone hook up $2k speaker wire to a speaker that just uses a simple 16 gauge copper wire internally for the drivers/crossovers. Or the $1k power cable that’s plugged into a $3 wall socket that’s wired with the cheapest copper that home builder could buy. Buy a quality shielded interconnects with sufficient gauge for the distance between components. The same with speaker wire. 

Weird flex on an old post.......

Might as well throw in some cable nonsense at the same time!  

My Vault2, which I use like a Node in a secondary system, is audibly “hiccuping “ about every 30 seconds, on all source inputs.  Other streamers in the house by other manufacturers do not do this.  Rebooting the Vault2 and modem did not help.  The dealer is out of business, and no reply from Bluesound after a week.  Has anyone else had this issue?