First of all, I would just listen to your Bluesound for a couple of months, break it in and see what it’s all about. Whether an outboard dac will sound better to you depends on the resolving power of your system and what musical traits you value. IMO, the better digital products may have a truer musical tone on acoustic instruments with less of the feeling that your music is being electronically reproduced. This may or may not be important to you. A lot of products offer a return policy, so you can try and hear for yourself whether you value the difference. Whether it is subtle or "jaw-dropping" will depend only on your own ears. But do get used to what you have before moving on. Really.
Jaw Dropping Improvement?
60-something, intermittent earner here (Read “mostly starving-artist with the rare, unexpected windfall here and there.”) who has just acquired a Bluesound Node 2i. I’d be very interested to hear what external DAC, in your experience-and-opinion gave such a dramatic improvement in SQ over that of a stock Bluesound streaming device as to be jaw dropping...an absolute game changer. Does such an animal exist for less than $2000 U.S. or are improvements at this price point more in the nature of subtleties? Somewhere in between? To be sure these things are subjective but your take on this would give me a running start on researching things here with a fairly tight budget being considered — If subtle-to-low/moderate level “tweaks” to SQ are all I can expect from, say, a Qutest or Gungnir Multibit, I’ll probably stay with just the streamer and be happy.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks in advance.