Jaw Dropping Improvement?

@lg1 

to your initial post... you should specify what type of sonic improvements you are seeking

the notion of 'jaw dropping' is relative and depends on where you are coming from and what you want to change

your system is pretty good but the jbl's are not the most resolving speakers, though they sound very nice, easy to listen to... so once again, hard to calibrate what will be 'jaw dropping' to you...

@lg1

your add’l comments are helpful

i would suggest you try a chord dac... a qutest or a 2qute... reasons being:

- your system is only moderately revealing in the midrange and treble but has good bass response
- the onboard dac in the node 2i is voiced to sound innocuous... meaning it is smoothed over at the expense of detail, clarity, transient response, and incisiveness - ultimately it is a lens that is cloudy and substantially dulls the image of the real thing
- the chords (along with the rme-adi2 and better toppings) have great clarity, speed, slam and ’air’ in their sound character
- the chords are somewhat better than the rme and topping d90 in they have more subtlety and refinement while providing great clarity, lend more ambient 'air', and throw a more well defined, larger stereo image

qutest used is $1300-1400, 2qute is $800 -- both are excellent, and i would venture to say if you keep your current system with the jbl’s, you will not hear much (or any) difference between the two... but the improvement will be significant and immediately noticeable going from the dac of the node 2i -- whether it is 'jaw dropping' you will have to tell us :)

good luck

i run the node 2i, very familiar with reclockers, which can be transformative of some jittery transports/streamers... but i did not feel the rca spdif output of the node 2i needed it if one uses a good digital cable