Thoughts and suggestions please

@dynacohum - I was thinking the same thing - just purchase the playlist you care And are concerned the most about and store on a hard drive connected to your Node - easy peasy.

But what you use for physical media matters, at least for a Node N130.  Here was my experience, YMMV.

I compared at least four different designs of USB powered hard drives from a USB stick, to an external solid state SSD drive, to USB drives with a physical disk that must be powered with via the bus. My experience is that there is a difference in sound quality, with the physical HDD disks sounding “flat”, “dull” and “slow” compared to solid state and flash drives when used with a Bluesound Node functioning as music server. I discovered this because when I first got the Node, the only music I had on disk that wasn’t on my computer was on a small flash drive. I bought a cheap external USB bus powered HDD hard drive and I was disappointed with the sound compared with the flash drive - same files, same format, same cuts. Just dull and flat sounding. Yuk. I tried a different brand bus powered HDD hard drive, a little better. I tried a SSD drive, sounds much closer to the 16GB flash drive. Now I use the 2TB SSD drive for serving music and the hard drives for file backup. One of the drives tested was a WD Elements HDD 2TB external drive. The worst sounding to me. One was a Seagate One Touch 2TB external drive, slightly better sounding to me. One was a ScanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD, noticeably better sounding. One was a 16GB flash drive from Target, slightly better sounding to me than the ScanDisk SSD. The Western Digital and Seagate HDDs use the same USB 3.0 connection and the ScanDisk SSD uses a USB C cable. For the two HDD drives I used the same stock cable that came with one of them. For the SSD, I used the stock USB C cable that came with it. The two HDD and the SSD drives are all external drives, in their own case and connected with a cable to the Node. 

My theory for why there is a difference in sound quality has to do with the drive drawing current from the Node to operate - the greater the current demand, the greater the impact on sound quality.  This may also be why I experienced in big upgrade in sound quality (perceived) using the Node as a streamer when adding and external linear power supply.

kn

“This may also be why I experienced in big upgrade in sound quality (perceived) using the Node as a streamer when adding an external linear power supply.”

Correction: using the Node as a server - not as a streamer.

kn

........Hmmmmm  ....." Owning music is going away '' .......not so sure on that just ask the people buying Vinyl. Very myopic view of our hobby and the industry. Just saying ...... 

@knownothing 

My theory for why there is a difference in sound quality has to do with the drive drawing current from the Node to operate

It is possible that the external drives you are using are older and "underpowered". In that case, a USB power hub may remedy that. 

However, note that when you are connecting the Bluesound to an external drive via a USB-C cable, you are using a synchronous USB transfer which prevents the clocking of one component to match up with the other, which will cause, "jitter".  

You can remedy this via an inexpensive AudioQuest Jitterbug ($30). However, you will be left with the stock cable you have been using which may also degrade the sound. There are good upgrades to those cables, available for about $150, so figure $180 and you will hear a difference using any or all of the drives you mentioned. IMHO, all would sound relatively the same after such an upgrade. 

However, you could, of course, purchase a better DAC which would provide you with asynchronous USB support:

• Asynchronous USB in a DAC means that the DAC's internal clock governs the timing of the audio data transfer from the computer, rather than relying on the computer's potentially less accurate clock. This helps in reducing jitter and improving overall sound quality. 

Using a powered external hard drive is akin to using a computer. Both require the clocks to match up with the DAC to prevent jitter. 

Yes, your Bluesound (ICON) does have asynchronous sound internally, but not when it is connected to a separate USB drive. Connected via USB or COAX to a DAC capable of asynchronous transfer is your best case scenario. Depending on the DAC, you may find the better connection to your bluesound using COAX vs. the USB port, but YMMV. 

@goodlistening64

Thanks for your thoughts on this.  

I did not know that the USB C cable connection is not asynchronous.  Is that generally true for that format, or only as implemented to connect a storage device to a Node N130?  (My cable is actually USB C from the SSD to USB A at the Node.)

I am not sure it matters anyway in my situation because I am using a Chord Qutest as my DAC connected to the Node via coax cable, so not asynchronous. This seems to work fine with a quality USB cable from the SSD to the Node and a very good coax from the Node to the Qutest.  Both the Node and the Qutest are driven by an external Teddy Pardo power supply, and the end result of all if this optimization is very good to my ear.

I did a blind shootout of coax cables with a previously owned Chord DAC and the Node N130 with another experienced listener, and we both agreed that the more expensive cables generally sounded noticeably better. Unfortunately.

As for adding a jitterbug, I have two of them sitting unused in a drawer and find they negatively color the sound and lay a blanket over the presentation in any application I have tried them in from the front end of a AQ Dragonfly to any of the stand alone DACs I’ve had.  The jitter handling capability of the Qutest is light years ahead of the jitterbug.

Here is link to my system page so you can see how my digital front end is implemented:

https://www.audiogon.com/systems/6241

kn