Thank you for the detailed comparison! Much appreciated.

My pleasure, sir. The forum has been supremely helpful to me. I’m trying to pay it forward. 

if you were the one inquiring about whether to trade in the Core for the Node 2i in your BL50 system, I would give the Node 2i a try because the Core is incapable of delivering 192/24 to your BL50s. If you can hear the difference and it’s an improvement, keep it. If not, then perhaps keep the Core and return the Bode 2i?

I am thinking about, but based on your testing I am doubtful I would notice a difference.

Curly wrote:

After going back and forth on two songs I know well for probably 45 minutes... the answer appears to be no

Hi

a) Could you develop that a little more?

I understand that one song is a Tidal "quality" CD and the other is a Tidal MQA, right?

Comparison is a very delicate exercise: the smallest difference in the complete chain can distort the result, but it can also be more realistic, closer to what you do in real life...

--> Have you tried to compare the playback of a “solid state” CD and a Tidal MQA stream?

b) What you can also try (it works, in my own experience with BL5): listen to MQA #only# for a certain time (several days), then switch to CD quality stream only. Stop swapping between the two, get your ears used to MQA first.

c) You wrote, "This is one of the reasons we have such incredibly capable speakers, isn't it?"

Do you really include the BL17s in this category?

Hmmm, I also have a pair, and yes they are good, but these are just small 2-way speakers, so don't expect miracles either...

d) Whatever the speakers used, the difference you’ll ear may also not please you!

More is not always a synonym of better.

I am not surprised - I did mention on the other thread that the Node, while seemingly better than a Sonos Connect, is not really a high end streamer.

The other difficulty is that with active speakers like BeoLabs, if you connect via RCA you are sending it an analogue signal, which the BLs' convert to digital to apply some processing, and then back to analogue for output.   Its a different chain than if you were using passive speakers. This matters to the extent that if you are experimenting with other things (DACs, streamers etc) earlier in the chain, then its a bit clearer what changes are having an effect with the passive speaker setup (in my opinion).

Also, BL17s I doubt will expose the difference between a Core and Node, and may do little with something like an Auralic.  If I had 50s/90s, I would be a bit more confident that those speakers can tease out differences.

The frustration with B&O is that their Core should natively support Tidal and Qobuzz, I completely agree.

But more than that, the B&O app offers a pretty uninspiring music UI experience, especially when using NAS stored music.  

If I had 50s/90s (I have 18s/19 for music) I would get something like an Auralic, in part because of the assumed for quality and in part because its own music browsing app is pretty good. It also allows Roon to work using its own streaming protocol, so the Roon experience would be excellent. I'd then just get on with enjoying my music, with a good app experience and be happy that I'm not short changing the 50s/90s.

As it is I only have 18s/19 for music, and understand that they have their limitations, so am just left thinking about was to improve the music listening experience with a better app etc for both streaming and my NAS music.

 

Sandyb wrote:

As it is I only have 18s/19 for music, and understand that they have their limitations, so am just left thinking about was to improve the music listening experience with a better app etc for both streaming and my NAS music.

Same here, but I’m close to the goal of my initial quest for the best music listening experience which was partially filled by the BS Moment until they stopped using Gracenote which killed the MoodWheel feature I was enjoying.

For my NAS content, PLEX server & their client apps have drastically enhanced my music listening experience over B&O app (not hard I know). The day PLEX introduces a DLNA controller in their client apps (requested years ago by the PLEX community), then I’ll be even happier. For Tidal users, PLEX it is also a good choice as from the same interface you can control both local and internet contents, like the BS Moment does with local and Deezer contents.

For internet music streaming, Deezer app does the job very well too, specially the HiFi subscription combined with the gapless (real) feature. Listening to albums is now really really really enjoyable.

But for all these apps I need to use AirPlay or Chromecast which I was reluctant initially ....

Fortunately I had an iPad not doing much that I have now dedicated to run PLEX & Deezer apps as they both offer many different enjoyable way of listening to my music contents, equal or superior to what Moodwheel was offering. If PLEX could integrate Deezer like they have done with Tidal, this would be the graal for me.

From a sound quality perspective, to be honest, my old ears hardly make the difference between the DLNA stream of a 96 kHz / 24 bits track and its streaming over AP2 after down sampling to CD rate, there is no « waw » effect I could measure and the sound is very good in both cases. Only Vinyle listening put my hairs up!

Great detailed comparison. In my case, I used to have a BluSound Node 2i and then got the Core. Both connected to BL 2 and BL 8002. To me for equivalent content on AirPlay 2 the Core sounded better and was also the case for my wife (who fancies herself as bit of an audiophile ). So I kept the Core. The DAC quality and implementation of the Core seems really good to me.

Just for reference, I also pitted the Core against a Topping D70 DAC and the Core came out on top. 

My 2 cents worth.

Greetings!

a) I have gone completely digital streaming at this point. I ripped all my CDs to my computer and recycled them so I no longer own physical discs. Frankly, I thought I was doing myself a favor by reducing clutter and ushering myself into the better-than-CD-quality high-rez journey.

b) Indeed, I can try that. In fact, perhaps I will! But on the other hand, if I have to "listen critically" (i.e., sit in a room alone, with the door closed and concentrate on discerning differences between the same song or album played in two formats), then I believe I have my answer. That is not how I, personally, tend to listen to music. I wanted it to be very clearly a better sound in a more casual listening environment, which it has not yet proven to be.

c) Yes and perhaps this is foolish. I expected the BL17 (and my BL18) to be sufficiently high-quality so as to allow the difference between the high-rez streams and redbook CD quality streams to be immediately and obviously apparent. I was wrong--either because the BL17s are simply not fancy enough, as you suggest, or because the difference in the music isn't as large as I hoped/expected. Or because the digital voodoo the BL17s are doing on the CD quality music is so magical, I can't really tell the difference between that and the higher-rez version when they both hit my ears.

d) Indeed! "Different" does not always mean "improvement". It could merely mean "dissimilar". It could also mean "worse".

 

If I had BL50, perhaps the differences between CD quality and higher-rez would be more apparent. Evidently it costs at least USD$40,000 to be able to appreciate higher than CD quality music streams on B&O equipment? :)

But seriously, if I had the 50s or 90s, I would try the Node 2i or an Auralic, if I felt like spending the money. From the reviews I've seen online, I would be surprised if the Auralic sounded very obviously miles better than the Node 2i. As noted below, the hardware within our speakers is likely performing a bit of magic with the input signal and I think the output from both devices likely isn't too dissimilar AND I think our hardware would treat those signals similarly such that the apparent differences would be subtle at best.

I don't have a bad ear. I don't have Geoff's ear. So I suppose I have fairly average ears. But given the quality of my equipment I hoped there would be very obvious benefits to the higher-than-CD high-rez formats but apparently--at least on first blush--it's all the same to me. I will keep auditioning and remain open minded but I am leaning towards returning the Node 2i and living with the Core. The BluOS interface is FAR superior but if I can't hear the difference anyway, then I am leaning towards not spending any more money (on the Node 2i or fancy RCA cables I would require) and just living with streaming redbook CD quality via Airplay to my Core, using my existing (i.e., sunk cost) Toslink cables and hoping B&O incorporates native support for TIDAL and Qobuz into their app. If I had BL50/90, I would try again, however, as I know they can process full 192/24, which BL/17/18/20 cannot.

This has been very fun, exciting for me and really a great learning opportunity. I am grateful to all of you for your participation in the discussion.

 

PS a review by John Darko on Auralic vs Node 2. He says the Auralic is indeed much better sounding than the Node 2 (note, this is not a comment on the current gen Node 2i). As it should be for ~4x the price.

I’m not going to spend $2k+ on a streamer but when I eventually get some BL50s, maybe I would!