The ’little piercing in the highs’ is digital noise. This noise is found only in playback. A professional recording engineer would never allow that distortion to be laid down on a master track. With playback, a digital source pollutes not only the signal but the power of the entire playback system. It injects artifacts both upstream and downstream. The cure is to clean up the power supply at the digital source. It appears that Bluesound has developed a good filtration system to handle the digital noise. I’m still using an older Windows 7 laptop for my source. Zero digititus.
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?
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?