Digital music questions

OP,

There are lots of long discussions on the 0’s and 1’s thing. It kept me from buying a good streamer for many years. Then you get one and your jaw drops and you stop worrying about the theory, it’s just true. But, a good streamer will cashe the bitstream, and the re-time it, it will isolates noise from the source… controls vibration. These things drop the noise floor phenomenally and increase the detail and dynamics.

Subject to the rest of your components, absolutely a Aurender is worth the cost in excess of a Bluesound. I have used PCs, MacBooks, iPads, inexpensive streamers… then $3.5K, $5K, $10K, $13K (extensively auditioned in my system), and $22K streamers. At each level I carefully chose the best… not just random only spending money. And at each level the sound was much better and worthy of the investment to someone who cares about sound.

If you listen to Classical, you might want to test out another streaming service -- Idagio. They don't provide hi-res, but their CD quality stream often gives Qobuz hi-rez a run for its money.  The Idagio honchos possess some fine sets of ears, and their library is truly vast. Yeah, I've mentioned it a dozen times, but even this former Tower Classics employee is impressed by the sheer amount of material they put at their customers' fingertips. Getting a little too jaded for Beethoven and Von Karajan? Go to Idagio and cue up a Busoni violin concerto featuring violinist Alexander Vedernikov and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana.

“I was hoping to be in the $1000 range, for instance, or maybe a little higher, but the Aurender N200 is quite costly!!”

You may look for a ‘used’ bargain on Aurender N150 here and on US Audio Mart. Also look into Innuos Pulse Mini over Node 2. The sound and app experience (iPad recommended) with these two would be vastly superior to your MacBook and Node 2.

I started with a Bluesound to get into streaming: simple to hook/set up, use and operate. The built in DAC is fine, although you can in the future hook up an outboard one to the Bluesound to upgrade the sound.

I myself have moved on to a Aurender N200, but unless you plan to have digital files you want to store, it's overkill for just streaming. 

There are many great streamers for $1,000 or less that are all going to sound better then a laptop/PC. 

There are endless options, but as others have said you will have a much better experience moving on from your PC, I started with Bluesound  and now use a DCS Bartok. The point I would make is that the Bartok is really good in my opinion but also really expensive. While it's much better than the Bluesound, as you would expect given the price difference, that doesn't mean the Bluesound is bad, in fact, I always thought it's a great bargain for what you get. Decent streamer and DAC and very easy to use for not a ton of money. 
 

not a bad way to start and miles better than PC. From there, there are many, many choices at every price point and I suspect you'll be on the upgrade path at some point but nothing wrong with an affordable start like the Bluesound- you'll appreciate the improvement. Would also highly recommend going with Qobuz or Tidal- I think you'll find that an appreciable improvement for the dollars invested. I prefer Qobuz but both are good