You may be able to find a Bryston BDP-2 for around $1K used. This is definitely a step up from the Node 2i if you are feeding an external DAC and are running Roon. I've got a BDP-2, as well as several Node 2is which I use for different zones around the house.
I don't think the Bryston software is as good as BlueOS if you are relying on this to control your music, but the Roon support works great. The BDP-2 also has AES/EBU which works better than SPDIF and USB for many DACs (don't know about the benchmark).
I don't think the Bryston software is as good as BlueOS if you are relying on this to control your music, but the Roon support works great. The BDP-2 also has AES/EBU which works better than SPDIF and USB for many DACs (don't know about the benchmark).