Can a Bluesound Node's Streamer Be Bypassed and be used as an External Dac?

"Just wondering,  what DAC are you using?"

A vintage Sony DAS-703 ..... circa 1985!  Yep,1985!  It's temporary until I find a replacement for it. Though, I was hoping to bypass the streamer side of Bluesound and use its dac to confirm in fact the vintage DAC is causing my ear fatigue and not the Aurrender N200.

For what it's worth, the vintage dac sounded fine when used with the Bluesound Node.  I could listen to the pair for hours without ear fatigue.

So are you using a format that is only 16/44k?   Most of those early DACs were not even capable of a full 16 bits of resolution anyway.   Digital has come a long way, if you are auditioning the N200 and can exchange it for an A200 I am sure you would find that is sounded great with Qobuz or Tidal

The N200 is worthy of a great DAC so if you pair a modern DAC with it I am pretty sure you will like it 

I went from a Vault to the N200 and thought it was a nice upgrade.   

You need to upgrade to a new DAC.

I’d buy a cheap reasonable Dac like an Ifi, Schitt, Topping or something off Amazon that you can get ASAP for under $200 to give you something listenable as you search for a suitable good Dac.