Bluesound Node Wireless Multi-Room High Resolution Music Streamer - Black

I had a much more expensive streamer that was too quirky. This blows it away and sounds amazing. It looks weird, but cool. Didn't think I'd have much use for the buttons but I use them all the time because the radio stations are great and sound phenomenal. I use android and Amazon music HD. The Bluesound has no compatability issues whatsoever and was super easy (and fun) setting up. I've had it for 2 months now and use it every day because it's so easy and convenient. I may not have audiophile ears, but the dac is incredibly good sounding. It does have a few clunky issues to get used to, but for the money it's amazing.Pros: small footprint, excellent sound quality, easy compatibility to all known streaming svcs, great free radio stations from all over the world to explore, Radio Paradise is a great built-in feature no commercials and and let's you skip songs. Sound leveling feature ensures all tracks from your playlist and radio are equal volume. Save innumerable presets and assign your favorite 5 to the buttons.Cons: No power on/off switch, sometimes player can't be found d (have to restart node to connect) Amazon Music app not quite as friendly as the native app. No balanced outputs (RCA only)I use an integrated stereo amp and excellent quality source units - turntable, FM tuner, CD player. This is the cheapest source in my rig, but gets used the most because it's easy, fun, accessible, and sounds great. Really enjoying it. Oh, and their web site has very good support run by Bluesound people so no rude jerkoffs like in public forums. They're always polite and happy to help inexperienced people like me.April 2, 2024: 12 month updt.Still happy with trouble-free usage. bluesound updated the Amazon Music app, works really well. I bought a standalone DAC to improve. It is now slightly more refined, but honestly the built in DAC is really good. The Node is very stable and predictable. I don't see myself having to upgrade anytime soon.Happy listening.

I am very pleased with this purchase! It can be difficult to figure out how to improve sound or resolve issues when your audio equipment is a little old but not so old that it makes sense to just replace it. The Node turned out to be the solution I was looking for. I'll walk thru the steps I took in case it helps someone else in a similar situation.I have wireless Yamaha MusicCast speakers . . . specifically the MusicCast 50 and some older generation wx-030 speakers. You can access several of the major streaming services using the MusicCast software and the speakers alone. However due to some issues with the MusicCast software, I had switched to using MusicCast app on my android phone and transmitting to the speakers via bluetooth for my SiriusXM subscription. The older speakers use a very old version of bluetooth and there were occasional dropouts but I had mostly resolved that problem with some tweaks to my router settings. Also, playing any files already downloaded to my phone to any of the yamaha speakers worked fine with Bluetooth -- it was only streaming that was an issue.Then I subscribed to a streaming service called IDAGIO which is a very good service for classical music only. It provides a large library for on-demand streaming and a high-quality file stream. IDAGIO is far superior to the limited classical offerings on SiriusXM which is not really aimed at classical music listeners. MusicCast software doesn't support IDAGIO but you can run app on an android phone and transmit via bluetooth just as I had done for SiriusXM. Unfortunately the higher-quality stream was generating regular dropouts in the audio from my speakers. I wasn't sure if the problem was my phone or in the version of bluetooth supported by the yamaha speakers but after a brief experiment with connecting my phone to the MusicCast 50 via a cable from the phone's headphone jack, I decided to look for a device that could pull the stream from the internet and connect to the MusicCast 50 via either analog or digital cables. The Bluesound Node was listed on the IDAGIO site so I thought I'd give it a try.The dropouts disappeared when using the Node. The sound quality is very good. Also, the Blueos app supports a very long list of streaming services if I want to experiment with any other services in the future. The cable connection to the MusicCast 50 means that audio never drops out and using wifi (instead of bluetooth) from the 50 to send music to the older wx-030 speakers means no dropouts there either. Also, the stream from the Node to my Bluetooth headphones (Bose Quiet Comfort 35 ii) sounds very good.People like me who use wireless speakers can't really throw around pretentious descriptions of audio quality but this sound just fine to me. I don't need high volume or a thumping base line -- I would just like to hear the quality of the voices and instruments as accurately as possible without trying to run cables all over the house. This product was just what I wanted.

This streamer has been a game changer for me. The software is world class and havent encountered any troubleshooting. The bluos interface is snappy and easy to understand. The included DAC is not gonna blow anyone away (its fine just not great), but you shouldt expect it to, given the price. I personally use it with the optical output directly into my NAD C389 Integrated Amplifier with excellent results (bypasssing the Node's internal DAC).My only gripe with this product is that the sound quality does take a noticeable hit when using it as a digital preamp. My recomendation would be to use it with fixed volume output and use your integrated amplifier o preampflifer to adjust the volume. Of course its handy to be able to control the volume directly on your smartphone or tablet, but if your system is revealing enough you will notice that it does sound flatter and macro and micro dynamics are also affected.Just use it a streamer and nothing else and the results are spectacular.Personally i bought it with 50% discount, so around 350 bucks, at that price its amazing value. At the retail price, its kind of a hard sell, specially now that Bluseound has released newer models.