Bluesound Node Icon


I currently use Bluesound products because of their multiroom capabilities. 

In my main system I have a bluesound node N130 hooked up to a Mcintosh D1100 preamp dac.

Thinking about buying the new Node Icon but I would be by-passing the built in dual dacs so I am not sure if there is any reason to upgrade to the ICON?

If anyone knows the new ICON and can give me some advice I would appreciate it.

efoo

I don’t have the Icon but have the standard N130 Node. Idk what happened to the BluOS software in recent months but some functions, like pulling up my Favorites through Qobuz, have become incredibly slow. I now favor the WiiM Ultra in almost every regard. It’s funny, the WiiM was originally the slower of the two, but following more recent firmware updates on both devices, the Node is the slower one by far. 
 

I would be surprised if the processing speed of the Icon is any different from the N130. 
 

 

I found this in an article on Hifi pig.com. if I understand it right bringing in an INNUOS can work with your other stuff  


In Standalone mode it also allows the Pulse to be a UPNP/DNLA controller so, for example, I can assign my Hegel 190 or even my dining room Sonos speakers or LG TV as streaming endpoints and run it all from the Innuos Sense app. Various UPNP profiles are offered in the app as needed and it worked for me without any problems.

I have no experience with the new Bluesound product and therefore cannot directly answer the OP.

  Doesn’t NAD make more expensive streamers than the Node, and still use the Bluesound OS?  If so I would perhaps investigate that if I were the OP

NAD makes one stand alone streamer and it is not high end.

They do have a dac pre streamer - the M66 - that has the same streamer as the Node.

I’m currently testing node n130, node n130+ Teddy Pardo LPS, and node Icon. Icon has about 300hrs of run time. Everything is going into my Michi X3 (gen1), then to Goldenear triton 2+. Icons performance sits right in the middle(as a transport). I’m a bit disappointed. N130+Teddy sounds more textured, less congested and has a way more 3D soundstage. Icon sounds flat and boring in comparison. Using the dac in the Icon sounds very similar to the dac in Michi, but not better. That’s not great considering that the dac in the Michi is considered its weakness by most reviews. I’ve heard the Michi dac compared to a $500 dac by one YouTube guy (I think it was Steve Huff). Stock N130 vs Icon using the dac…probably still worth the upgrade. I’m returning the Icon and will buy another LPS for my stock n130. You do notice the outstanding SNR of the Icon, but I don’t really care since the overall experience of listening to music is not better. Dirac and headphone amp also don’t matter to me. The screen looks nice, but I sit about 9ft away and I can’t read anything. You can change the display to album art only, which at least looks cool even if you can’t read it. I hope this helps in some way!