any suggestions on what to replace Bluesound Node 2i with

@jjss49 - looking at your profile, I’m assuming you use the Morpheus for your primary dac. Just curious, is that night and day better than the dac in the hegel h160? Does the h160 have the most recent of hegel’s dac’s, do you know?

hegel’s h160 is 1.5, almost 2 generations old now (2015 roll-out)... current h190 improves mostly on the quality of the dac... even then, a top outboard dac in the $1500-2000 range will handily outperform the hegel h190 onboard dac if heard on a good system -- i often recommend the h160 to those looking for truly outstanding amplification at reasonable cost, but also suggest they don’t use the internal dac for serious listening

as for my own use of dacs, yes i use the morpheus more than most others (and the metrum jade before it) - it to me is middle of the road tonally, highly transparent, very pure timbre, suitably full bodied and rich sounding - it also has an excellent integral remote volume control, so i can go direct into power amps when i am carefully evaluating those (seems i do that a lot these days...)

if we treat the morpheus as the baseline, and at the midpoint of tonality (other dacs in this group include the ayre codex, jolida fx tube, auris d1d), from there, i can go to other dacs either for more air/more treble energy/more incisiveness (chord scaler/qutest/tt2, mf trivista, ps audio d-link...) or for more solidity/warmth/fullness of tone (audio mirror, mhdt, ava fet topp... )

@axeis1 

scaler ---> tt2 is outstanding!  👌👌👌

once again, op

you replace the node with the lumin, sound will improve... i think you will get some additional treble and midband energy, better detail, and more openness in the sound, as the node through its dac rca outputs sounds dark, slow, a little slurred, and closed in

for a ht setup, there is not very real stereo imaging anyways but you should still hear a tilt in the frequency balance and some more openess as per the above

whether this is worth 2x 5x or 10x in cost to you relative to the node, only you can decide

i will tell you in standard 2 channel applications so many people use the node 2i as a streamer and they take its digital output and feed it into a nice sounding outboard dac like a denafrips, mhdt, chord, metrum, audio mirror, holo etc etc ... and for about $2 grand total they have a streaming from end that equals one box units from lumin, auralic, mytek that cost 2-3-4x more... of course they have will have 2 boxes and some cabling in between...

Can you really here a difference!  Even if you do a blind test.  A dealer told me a Belcanto sounds better, but no one talks about Bellanto.  If so what causes the sound difference?  Is it clock speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJIj0Acq99o&t=245s

the raspberry pi is used here as the case study but the general points answer your query

this is sounding like a node aftermarket power supply cars and coffee morning

so the op evidently wants a new combo streamer/dac unit in a single box, as the lumin units are just that...

entry level lumin d2 runs a pair of wolfson bitstream dac chips and uses a solid state analog output driver stage... iirc the d2 is not transformer coupled like the higher lumin units

next up t2 runs ess sabre 9028 bitstream dac chip, has adjustable volume control (nice feature), and i believe the output stage is transformer coupled at the xlr outs so nice smoothing of the sound there...

either should be a fairly decent sonic upgrade over the sound of the node 2i heard at its rather murky analog outputs (albeit at fairly significant add’l expense)

op needs to be more precise... is he replacing the node 2i being used as streamer and dac (e.g. using its analog rca outputs) or is he seeking just a streamer upgrade only...

case 1 makes sense, maybe get a better outboard dac put it downstream of the node

case 2 may be $ spent with limited sq upgrade