Fully empathise with the OP. I have owned and used Bluesound speakers and streamers over a 5 year period. Initially had Sonos (connect / play 1,5 etc) then replaced with Flex 2 / Node 2 before selling it all to move back to Sonos and then back to the later gen of Bluesound: Node 2i and Flex 2i. Overall I prefer the sound of Bluesound but recognise that the Sonos sound flavour feels to me a bit more dynamic. Bluesound has been very buggy when I owned the non 'I' versions, especially when I used it with Roon. They suffered a very well documented 'out of sync' bug that took about 18 months to resolve. The customer service experience was borderline traumatic with endless requests for the same logs, responses that had nothing to do with what was asked and 3-6 days wait time between each response. At the time Bluesound was denying the existence of the problem and was blaming Roon for everything. Roon customer support was more open in recognising there was a bug that was being worked on in collaboration with Bluesound. Bluesound denied this consistently.
3 months of back and forth and I can safely say I felt like a Ping Pong ball... and not in a good way.
Fast forward to today, the 2i versions work a lot better but I agree with comments above regarding the flakiness with WiFi. What is more, I find that problems increase when using multiple blue sound units. Many users I see commenting in forums have only one Bluesound unit, usually the Node 2i or the Powernode 2i. My problems with WiFi increased significantly as moved from using a Node 2i alone to then adding 2 x Flex 2i speakers. Drop outs, speakers disappearing from the app and then coming back, volume slider freezing etc. Contacting customer support brought back the terrible experience: 5-7 days wait for each response to email, repeated requests of the same thing (despite providing the info asked), responses to questions I never asked (almost like mixing support tickets) and a by default denial of any recognition that there might be a bug. It almost felt like gaslighting and I just stopped engaging. I think that is what they hoped anyway.
While I love the sound of the Node 2i and Flex 2i with Roon especially, I would like to scale up to multiple speakers in the house. Having experienced the above over the years, no way I can take the risk. I may have to compromise and go back to Sonos for a more reliable experience (with necessary sound quality compromise).
I recognise this is just one person's experience but still...
3 months of back and forth and I can safely say I felt like a Ping Pong ball... and not in a good way.
Fast forward to today, the 2i versions work a lot better but I agree with comments above regarding the flakiness with WiFi. What is more, I find that problems increase when using multiple blue sound units. Many users I see commenting in forums have only one Bluesound unit, usually the Node 2i or the Powernode 2i. My problems with WiFi increased significantly as moved from using a Node 2i alone to then adding 2 x Flex 2i speakers. Drop outs, speakers disappearing from the app and then coming back, volume slider freezing etc. Contacting customer support brought back the terrible experience: 5-7 days wait for each response to email, repeated requests of the same thing (despite providing the info asked), responses to questions I never asked (almost like mixing support tickets) and a by default denial of any recognition that there might be a bug. It almost felt like gaslighting and I just stopped engaging. I think that is what they hoped anyway.
While I love the sound of the Node 2i and Flex 2i with Roon especially, I would like to scale up to multiple speakers in the house. Having experienced the above over the years, no way I can take the risk. I may have to compromise and go back to Sonos for a more reliable experience (with necessary sound quality compromise).
I recognise this is just one person's experience but still...