Bluesound Node Icon

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!

Thanks for the response that is great information !