Thoughts and suggestions please


I only stream and have spent 3 years building my playlist. I have recently been thinking about purchasing my playlist on Qobuz in the event something happens (they go out of business or some major crash) that would lose what I have spent so much time building. Is this a concern for others as well? If I do decide to purchase my list I would need a new streamer with storage capacity. I am looking for suggestions for streamers. I have an N130 node now with Teddy Pardo LPS. I like the BluOS app and am considering a new Node with storage but with all the positive feedback with Innuous and Aurrender I will strongly consider those too. Do their apps compare favorably with the BluOS app? I’d like to stay in the 3-5k cost range.  Thank you for your thoughts. 
 

Ron 
 

 

 

ronboco

Showing 7 responses by knownothing

@goodlistening64 
Thanks for clarifying that you are talking about the Node Icon.  I did not know all other versions of the Node are operating in synchronous mode only when accepting data via USB.  My hope is that there would be zero or close to it jitter from the SSD drive connected to the Node, that the Node functioning as a server would add little jitter to the signal before transferring it to the Chord Qutest DAC, and that using quality USB and coax cables along with the the ultra low noise Teddy Pardo power supply would add little extra noise.  I can say removing the Node N130’s internal switching power supply and replacing with the external Pardo made a big improvement in sound quality for serving files to my Chord DAC.

Reviewers of Node products have noted that they perform much better as streamers/servers only, and that the DACs in older models are not that good, and this has been my experience. Overall, I find the BluOS software very good, especially the latest update, and the Node can serve all my digital files or stream to any other BluOS devices in my house, all controlled by the app on my phone or iPad - convenient.

I should note that the DAC in a new Node Nano set up in my office system is qualitatively better than the DAC in my N130.  But even that is improved when running toslink out to a Chord Mojo2, bypassing the Nano’s internal DAC.  In any case, I would expect the Node Icon is as good as reviewers are saying it is (except Amir, but that is a whole other topic).

kn

@goodlistening64

Thanks for sharing that experience.  I have compared a coax (pricy The Chord Company Signature Super ARAY - from the N130) with good DHLabs USB (from computer) and toslink (from the N130) cables with Qutest.  In my system the result to my ear was coax>USB>toslink, but the difference was a bit disappointingly small given the much higher cost of the coax cable I am using, even purchased used.  Nevertheless, in my system and with my equipment, coax is slightly better sounding, and I put that down to the Qutest excellent jitter handling capabilities and the terrifically quiet Chord Company coax cable I am using.  I tried a bunch of different cables, and there is a big and noticeable range of performance among them.

With my older Chord QuteHD DAC, USB from the computer sounded better - but that was before the power supply upgrade for the Node N130 - go figure.  FWIW, I seem to recall Rob Watts, the designer of the Qutest, recommends using toslink with that DAC, but that might just be an Internet rumor.

YMMV,

kn

“Bluesound will not honor the warranty on a Node if you use anything other than their power supply.”  This is correct, if they actually bother to check that you opened the box.  But for me, the low initial entry cost of their devices generally and the performance gain make the risk/reward calculation an easy decision.  Just make sure you get a quality after market power supply that provides adequate current and the correct voltage - and hope your streamer wasn’t a factory lemon.

The Node Icon supposedly has a beefier built-in switching power supply, commensurate with greater cost.  But replacement supplies are available from Teddy Pardo and others for it as well.  For this pricier Node, the financial risk is of course higher, and I do not have any experience with it, but the sound quality reward for replacing the stock supply in the N130 for me was high.

Adding a power supply with a switch also has the advantage of saving electricity, reducing your power use (however for replaced switching supplies this is small), reducing the number of lights glaring from your rack when not listening to digital music, and reducing the potential electrical fields and interference in your rack if you also have a vinyl setup.  For serious listening, I turn everything off in my rack except for the source I am using at that moment.

kn
 

@goodlistening64

Thanks for your thoughts on this.  

I did not know that the USB C cable connection is not asynchronous.  Is that generally true for that format, or only as implemented to connect a storage device to a Node N130?  (My cable is actually USB C from the SSD to USB A at the Node.)

I am not sure it matters anyway in my situation because I am using a Chord Qutest as my DAC connected to the Node via coax cable, so not asynchronous. This seems to work fine with a quality USB cable from the SSD to the Node and a very good coax from the Node to the Qutest.  Both the Node and the Qutest are driven by an external Teddy Pardo power supply, and the end result of all if this optimization is very good to my ear.

I did a blind shootout of coax cables with a previously owned Chord DAC and the Node N130 with another experienced listener, and we both agreed that the more expensive cables generally sounded noticeably better. Unfortunately.

As for adding a jitterbug, I have two of them sitting unused in a drawer and find they negatively color the sound and lay a blanket over the presentation in any application I have tried them in from the front end of a AQ Dragonfly to any of the stand alone DACs I’ve had.  The jitter handling capability of the Qutest is light years ahead of the jitterbug.

Here is link to my system page so you can see how my digital front end is implemented:

https://www.audiogon.com/systems/6241

kn

 

@dynacohum - I was thinking the same thing - just purchase the playlist you care And are concerned the most about and store on a hard drive connected to your Node - easy peasy.

But what you use for physical media matters, at least for a Node N130.  Here was my experience, YMMV.

I compared at least four different designs of USB powered hard drives from a USB stick, to an external solid state SSD drive, to USB drives with a physical disk that must be powered with via the bus. My experience is that there is a difference in sound quality, with the physical HDD disks sounding “flat”, “dull” and “slow” compared to solid state and flash drives when used with a Bluesound Node functioning as music server. I discovered this because when I first got the Node, the only music I had on disk that wasn’t on my computer was on a small flash drive. I bought a cheap external USB bus powered HDD hard drive and I was disappointed with the sound compared with the flash drive - same files, same format, same cuts. Just dull and flat sounding. Yuk. I tried a different brand bus powered HDD hard drive, a little better. I tried a SSD drive, sounds much closer to the 16GB flash drive. Now I use the 2TB SSD drive for serving music and the hard drives for file backup. One of the drives tested was a WD Elements HDD 2TB external drive. The worst sounding to me. One was a Seagate One Touch 2TB external drive, slightly better sounding to me. One was a ScanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD, noticeably better sounding. One was a 16GB flash drive from Target, slightly better sounding to me than the ScanDisk SSD. The Western Digital and Seagate HDDs use the same USB 3.0 connection and the ScanDisk SSD uses a USB C cable. For the two HDD drives I used the same stock cable that came with one of them. For the SSD, I used the stock USB C cable that came with it. The two HDD and the SSD drives are all external drives, in their own case and connected with a cable to the Node. 

My theory for why there is a difference in sound quality has to do with the drive drawing current from the Node to operate - the greater the current demand, the greater the impact on sound quality.  This may also be why I experienced in big upgrade in sound quality (perceived) using the Node as a streamer when adding and external linear power supply.

kn

“This may also be why I experienced in big upgrade in sound quality (perceived) using the Node as a streamer when adding an external linear power supply.”

Correction: using the Node as a server - not as a streamer.

kn