Going from computer audio to dedicated streamer


A few days ago I purchased a Bluesound Node 2. Immediately after hooking it up I noticed a more relaxed less digital sound than I was getting from my Mac mini into my Wyred 4 Sound Dac-2. My hookup for the Mac was via a good usb cable into a Musical Fidelity Vlink192 coax into the Wyred 4 Sound. It is every bit as detailed as streaming Tidal through the Mac but is more "musical" and relaxed. An example would be on high dynamic contrasts the Mac could sound harsh and a little piercing in the highs. This was with every speaker I have owned. Not that it sounded bad overall, actually sounded quite good but I am loving this upgrade so far. No more messing with Amarra or Audirvana for me and dealing with the associated crashes etc.   
I am curious of others experiences good or bad moving away from computer audio to something else.
Also is anyone running an external hard drive with their music collection and running though the Bluesound or similar device and how is that working out?   
mofojo

Showing 1 response by 2psyop

I am using a Western Digital MyCloud 3TB HDD which contains some 14K songs ripped with Itunes from my own CDs. I have a Western Digital Passport HDD as a backup. The Bluesound Node 2 finds the MyCloud database just fine. This setup works much better than I thought it would, but it took some time to tweak.

I have a Schiit Bifrost Uber as an external DAC for the Node 2. I might try the internal Node 2 DAC for comparison to the Bifrost Uber. As it stands now, it sounds great with AIFF files.