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.
lg1

Showing 1 response by natsound401

Mytek Liberty DAC for $1K adds a noticeably sharper focus to the analog out from Node2i in my system...not jaw dropping to me, but it also preserves the MQA advantage.  Since the Mytek has a linear PS and Node an SMPS, that may account for my improvement as much as the DAC chip.  You can upgrade the Node itself to LPS, for example:
https://pd-cf.com/product/bluesound-node-2-2i-upgrade-kit-low-noise-psu-interface-smpsu/
That;s a budget friendly place to start.