Streamer Upgrade

Depending on how much you want to invest, it could be a huge leap in improvement. I went from a whole Bluesound house to in the end having one with a power supply upgrade, moving to a NAD M50.2 streamer which is now discontinued, but was leaps ahead. I’ve tried a number of better streamers, from  Innuos, Laufer Teknik, Auralic, and Aurender (in full disclosure I am an authorized dealer for Aurender) as well as many home-baked PC servers. 

While the modded node is very good for its price, the power supply upgrade is just piece, and overall the Node is not protecting itself from any noise. Once you upgrade to a streamer that cares deeply about isolation, clocking, caching and all, you will realize how much more clarity and information you get with less fatigue.

Awesome post. Thanks @blisshifi. I'm assuming that you are using a Aurender currently?

@willg1985 Yes I am. Using the N30SA, which is their reference streamer. I came a long way in the last 10 years or so. Upgrading to it made a bigger difference in sound quality than spending even more on a DAC upgrade. After buying the N30SA I slimmer my vinyl collection a bit and sold about 200 records in two months. Now I listen primarily to local files and streaming. I still have 600 vinyl records or so and listen to them less than 10% or the time.

What I would say is that the cost for entry to great streaming is very expensive. If your budget is less than that, definitely seek guidance and do research on the best solution for yourself. If you want to share what you’re considering and/or budget you want to invest, you might get some good guidance from the community.