What are you streaming tonight?

@reubent 

Like @big_greg I too prefer Qobuz, sonically Hi-Res is preferable to me over MQA "Masters" -- you can find a lot of discussion on this comparison. A bunch of highly respected makers of DACs don't even support MQA, and explain that they are not going to. That said, sometimes music I am looking for is missing from the Qobuz catalogue, but is available on Tidal.
Where I disagree with @big_greg is that you need something better than Node 2i. In my opinion, you don't. But... Node's internal DAC is indeed very much entry-level. I had used it at first, but then upgraded to RME ADI-2 DAC FS. Now my Node 2i feeds digital signal over optical or coax cable to the RME, and the latter is the sound maker. The solution costs $1,850 in today's list prices, and I don't know why anyone would pay more.

@ghjuvanni I think many people delude themselves into believing that the streamer itself doesn't matter and that adding a DAC to an entry level streamer will give a big improvement in sound quality. Adding a better DAC to the Bluesound can improve sound quality, but will only take it so far. 

In my experience, buying a better streamer/DAC sounded much better than adding a DAC to the Bluesound.

@big_greg I am an electronics engineer turned software engineer. In fact, I played a lot with audio (and image) formats. For folks getting into digital music it makes sense to educate themselves about the basics of digital audio: what is PCM, FLAC, etc. On Wikipedia and elsewhere. I don't want to go into voluminous explanations in this forum. It is the DAC that 'makes' the analog 'music' not the streamer etc. The latter can differ on ergonomics, but if it is not broken, and if if feeds the bytes to the DAC, it doesn't matter what it is. There is a lot of misinformation floating around, created by folks who want to sell some 'better' (and more expensive) equipment. @reubent will need to form his own opinion eventually, based in part on input from folks like us, Reddit forums, and best of all -- personal experience. 

I'll go with "personal experience". But I am frugal by nature, so I will not over-spend if I don't hear a difference.

@ghjuvanni I agree with going with personal experience.  Mine has been different than yours. 

So in effect, you're saying that the input into the DAC makes no difference whatsoever - a computer, a Raspberry Pi, a high-end standalone streamer, ethernet, USB, coax, BNC, optical, I2S, etc. other than the bit rates they are capable of transmitting.