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Bluesound Node 2 as a preamp?

Source: Bluesound Node 2
Amp: Belles Aria Integrated
Speakers: Vandersteen 2ce Sig II’s

Prior to last night I had been taking the analog outputs of the Node 2 and plugging them into 1 of the 3 stereo inputs on the Belles. I had read a thread here about bypassing the preamp and plugging the Node 2 directly into your amp. I did that last night by using the Bypass input on the Belles, using the volume control on the Bluesound OS app to conrol volume.

I don’t know if it’s expectation bias or some other phenomenon, but I swear my system has never sounded sweeter. More bass extension, more defined sound stage, better detail.

Has anyone else tried this experiment? What were your findings? Am I losing it?

Thanks!
Joe

128x128audionoobie

Showing 2 responses by kalali

kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 
I have tried it in my system but I have separates and my results were quite opposite. Putting my tube preamp in between Node 2 and my amplifier profoundly improved the sound quality, in particular the soundstage depth/width was much more pronounced and of course the added lush midrange from the tubes. There are a few threads about folks going directly to amplifiers from DACs and the results are very mixed and highly system dependent. In your case it sounds like the preamp section of the Aria is not contributing to the sound quality.
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 
peter_s, I have compared the analog and the digital outputs of Node2 using two different DACs; Schiit Modi Multibit and DACmagic Plus. These DACs didn't seem to add much to the quality of the sound as compared with the analog output, in my system. The Schiit sounded just a tad better but only if you really paid attention. Based on what I've read here and elsewhere, a much higher quality DAC like an Ayre Codex or Benchmark DAC will improve the sound but it ultimately boils down to the system and whether or not the rest of the system is capable of delivering that incremental improvement.
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