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Dead Bluesound Node 2

I have a Bluesound Node 2 that died recently and I'm wondering what I should do next. 
First off, it was only 3 years old.  I got conflicting reports from customer service as to what went wrong, but either way, it was working fine one day and the next day it would not respond and it would not re-set.  I have been round and round with customer service and as far as they are concerned, it is out of warranty, so tough toenails; they will not take it back for a repair.  They offered to sell me a new unit at a reduced price or a refurbished unit at an even lower price but somehow that doesn't sit right with me. 

My habit has always been to buy reasonably good gear and keep it for a long time.  It's also my habit not to reward a manufacturer with additional purchases once they have done me wrong.  I have never had a piece of gear fail so quickly.  I have never had a manufacturer tell me they would not repair or service a component.  This little guy was not abused, and barely moved from the time I plugged it in, so I don't think I did anything wrong. 

Now I know a lot of you folks love your Nodes.  Admittedly, I did too.  I used it almost every day, created dozens of playlists (which are presumably gone forever) and I even added a Qobuz subscription about 6 months ago.  I can't tell you how many friends I demonstrated this set-up for.  I was actually considering adding a 2nd unit for my primary system.  Basically, I was all in.  Now I'm just stuck. 

That's my tale of woe, so here's what I'd like to know:
Were my expectations for this component too high?  I understand that computer products have can have a short lifespan, but this seems a bit extreme.  So should I pony up for another unit?  Or do I try to save up for something more upscale and presumably better built (or better supported)?  Cambridge Audio has a streamer I think might work, but I heard not all streamers can handle 30k+ files.  I have actually heard several really nice units like the Aurender (at AXPONA) but that's probably out of my league.  So what affordable alternatives are there, that also sound decent? 

This is my first post/discussion thread here on A-gon, so go easy on me : )
Thanks for listening. 

WoofMan74
woofman74

Showing 5 responses by mahler123

mahler123
3,625 posts
 
Welcome aboard.
I had a Pulse Mini die on me just past the warranty date a couple of years ago.  It died trying to do an update.  It cost about the same as the Node.  Bluesound said I was SOL but my dealer, whom I had been buying gear from for decades, prevailed upon them ,after several months of kvetching, to fix it.  We used it in the kitchen primarily to listen to Internet radio.  I also have a Vault2 and two Node2, so perhaps they factored that into their decision.  Meanwhile 
I had given up on them and purchased the Apple Home Pod to use in the kitchen, which interfaces with an Apple TV in another room in the house.  The repaired Pulse has been sitting on a storage shelf since it’s return.
   I am assuming that you tried the Factory reset option?  That will wipe out your playlists for sure but if you haven’t give it a go.
mahler123
3,625 posts
 
I am surprised that the Bluesound support didn’t mention factory reset, and Big Greg has shown the OP how to do this.  If the OP were to investigate posts from about 2 years ago he would see that I and others had problems with the units where they get hung up trying to do updates.  In fact, I now refuse to do Updates 
mahler123
3,625 posts
 
Corelli
  I agree with you, I prefer silver discs to streaming for a multitude of reasons, one of which is ease of use.  Yes, CDPs can break, but I have had very few of them develop an issue, and when they did it was after years of heavy use.  Streaming resembles my IT system at work, where I might have to reboot my computer several times a day.  Actually, compared to that, my home streaming audio equipment seems remarkably reliable...
  so why did I get involved in streaming?  First, using a service such as Qobuz is a great way to sample new recordings.  I read many Classical Music review magazines and my shelves are jammed with CDs that were impulse purchases that I have listened to perhaps twice and now gather dust.  Now if a disc strikes my fancy I stream it first, and if I really like it I buy it.  Secondly, I live in a 3 story house with a system on each floor, and instead of having to run upstairs to fetch a CD I pull out my phone and stream it, if I have burned it to my NAS.  I have had two surgeries in the past 4 years, and will have knee surgery after the Holidays.  In each case I am confined to one level of my home for a few days and it’s nice to be able to access my music from anywhere.  And finally, one day I might have to abandon the home as to difficult to manage and I won’t be moving to a space that can accommodate 10,000 CDs
mahler123
3,625 posts
 
HeyCorelli and OP
  I started with Spotify at about $10/ month, now paying about $15 for Qobuz. 
mahler123
3,625 posts
 
I agree with the above poster that the streaming industry isn’t mature yet.  Yes, it’s been around for 20 years, give or take, but it isn’t plug and play.  I listen to Classical Music and I haven’t encountered a classification system yet that makes sense.  I have better luck walking to my crowded CD shelves and finding a disc than finding it on the Bluesound App or the app of my other streamer, the Bryston BDP3.  Even when I edit the metadata to try to accommodate my own system, the apps tend to ignore all the input and revert to their own system (score one for itunes, at least that worked).    I have had streamers fail (Bluesound);  thousands of files uploaded to the cloud without my consent and corrupted (iTunes); and the Bryston, while it sounds amazing, has a music management system that is virtually unusable (more than half the time that I use it, I wind up listening to something else than what I am looking for, because I can’t find what I want).  Do any disc spinners issues compare to this?  A laser or transport that goes bad after several thousand hours of use is pretty forgivable in comparison.
  So perhaps as IT advances, in the next decades all this will be solved.  However, as I review all of the issues that I have had with attempting to master streaming, even Vinyl, with all of it’s rituals, starts to look easy by comparison.
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