BluesoundNode N130 High Resolution Music Streamer (White)

Did a lot of research on streaming devices and narrowed it down to two: Node and Cambridge Audio CXN V2. Although the CXN is a higher quality than the Node (and more expensive), what swung it was that the Node supports Amazon Music whereas the Cambridge Audio does not at the present time.the Node was easy to set up and I am using it to drive my trusty old Cambridge Audio A300 into Kef Q1s. Immediately the change to the sound quality was remarkable with clearer high end and enhanced lower frequency response.The diverse number of inputs is excellent including a HDMI ARC socket to play my TV through my HiFi system. Haven't tried the Optical input yet.I was a bit dubious about the App. due to some poor reviews but it seems to work well on my PC and android phone. bit clunky with Amazon Music in that it will only play music from the library and switching to Bluetooth headphones is not always seamless but these are minor gripes.All in all this is an excellent little box.

I have a complicated fairly high end system. For streaming I use a large Synology server and for years have used Sonos as a multi-room solution. It’s great, but the chronic lack of support for hires files means I can’t use it for serious listening. I bought a Cyrus Stream-X some 9 years ago which is probably the worst piece of kit I have ever had the misfortune to own. When it worked it was terrific but the network connection was so unreliable as to be utterly unusable. Cyrus - who I used to respect - were completely unhelpful. They repeatedly blamed my network set up. Over the years my network has been progressively upgraded and is now unifi enterprise grade kit. Still the Stream-X refused to connect reliably on the wired connection. I put a wireless AP right over the HiFi and tried to connect to that. No luck until I unplugged the Ethernet cable (which apparently disables the WiFi) then… it worked! Well for a week it worked, then back to buffering even on lowres files. The Cadence app is rubbish and hasn’t been updated in 4 years.Anyway this week I binned the pile of junk (nearly £2k of sunk cost) and bought this for a fraction of the price. What a difference!Dead easy to set up. Connected first time on WiFi and indexed my huge Synology FLAC music library including album art in less than an hour. Sound quality is great - I’m not using the onboard dac but from the coax out I reckon this sounds as good as the Stream-X on a good day and with none of the pain. It plays 24 bit 192kHz perfectly and the quality difference between these and a CD quality rip is huge. My Sondek is about to get used a lot less!The app is slick and intuitive. As long as this is still working as well in a year I’ll be delighted!

A lovely looking, really well-made piece of kit that does so much, but crucially does it sound good? Hmm, yeah? Kinda.Ok, so I've recently upgraded many aspects of my old hi-fi and stumbled across the concept of streamers, which, being somewhat out of date, I never knew existed until recently. I'd actually been doing something similar by plugging an old Echo Dot into my amp via the 3.5mm jack output and connecting my MacBook or phone via Bluetooth and it was fine for me. That is until I got the upgrade bug and decided to rework my system from the ground up. For reference, my setup now is fairly modest in audiophile terms. I have a Rega Brio amp, Rega Planar 2 turntable, and everything connected with QED Performance interconnects and QED XT25 speaker cable. Not shabby at all, but pretty low-mid, entry-level stuff. My speakers are Rega Kytes, but I actually got this Bluesound Node at the time I was demoing a pair of B&W 607 S2, so I have tried this with the same system on both sets of speakers pretty extensively.First up, the build quality and look are top-notch. In pictures I thought this looked kind of cheap and plastic-y compared with some of the more old-school hi-fi gear, I figured this is the future and naff plastics are the new brushed chrome. It's really not the case, however. In-person this actually looks and feels really nice. It has a good weight and heft to it and the glass top and small LEDs actually look very high-end. The unboxing experience in itself was really nice and plugging it all in I actually got a lot more excited about it as a whole. The capacitive touchscreen glass is an especially slick touch and does set the whole thing off nicely with its proximity effect sensor that turns it on or off depending on if you are moving your hand to touch it.Once we were plugged in, I very quickly realised that streamers live and die off the back of their software. The Blesound Node uses the company's BluOS to connect and control your Bluesound devices. I used it on my Macbook, PC, iPad, and iPhone and the experience was basically the same across all platforms and felt smooth and well planned out. Set up was actually a breeze. After plugging it in and selecting the unit it began installing everything and upgrading the firmware automatically. This did take a bit of time, about half-hour in total which I felt was surprisingly long, but I basically just sat down and had a cup of tea whilst the bars crept up. Once it was fired up, I connected all my accounts, Tidal (this supports Tidals highest quality, MQA files), Spotify, Amazon Music, favorited a bunch of radio stations, and got ready to actually listen!Sound quality is obviously very subjective and I'll forego the usual nonsense of "wide soundstages" and "fast, transparent sound" blah blah blah. The Bluesound to me sounds good. Does it sound considerably better than Bluetooth streaming to my Echo Dot? Yes, for sure, undoubtedly it does, but honestly, I'm not convinced it sounds £550 better. In even a modestly decent system, this will stream music at a level of quality that will make muggles quiver as they magically bounce a song from their phone via Spotify connect and realise that this is what music *actually* sounds like. If you find yourself being particularly sensitive to Bluetooth compression or, in fact, any digital compression then you'll appreciate what the Bluesound Node is doing instantly. If your ears are a bit more like mine and have been battered by abuse for the past 20 something years, then maybe you'll be less impressed. I think this sounds excellent, but I really don't think it sounds that much better than cheaper options. As a stepping stone between the Dot and this, I also tried an ifi Zen Blue Bluetooth receiver and to my ears, I couldn't really tell a great deal of difference between the Dot, the ifi, and this. It was there, but to me at least, it was relatively small. Ultimately, what the Bluesound offers is another step in your upgrade chain, with the real value, for me at least, being in its versatile usage. The ifi Zen Blue, for example, is purely a Bluetooth receiver, whereas the Bluesound Node is so, so much more, and that, I believe is where the real value lies. If you listen to any internet radio, for example, then I'm happy to report that even relatively low bitrate streams sound excellent through this. Multi-room streaming? Absolutely, it's somewhat clunky unless you use other Bluesound devices, but it works, I can connect to my Bluetooth speaker in my kitchen and continue listening to my music whilst I'm cooking. Need a headphone amp? This basically has you covered via its 3.5mm jack and Bluetooth capabilities. I can even stream my record deck to my Bluetooth headphones or to my bedroom Bluetooth speaker. Ridiculous.There are some downsides, however. Weirdly, with all the different services, the integration is sort of all over the shop. This isn't really Bluesounds fault, as it relies on what the company's want to do RE allowing third parties to connect and use their software APIs etc. Basically, Tidal integrated perfect with the BluOS system and everything was usable in the BluOS app itself, which was perfect, but at the same time, Spotify won't allow for that and so you actually have to jump to the Spotify app and play music on the Node through Spotify Connect. This isn't a problem at all, but it just feels clunky and makes the BluOS software seem redundant and half-baked. Again, this isn't actually Bluesounds fault, but it's just my feelings on the matter when actually using it. Some people might even prefer this if they are particularly happy with the Spotify app, for example, but for me, it would have been amazing to have all music services consolidated into one, perfectly integrated system, but that is wishing far too much of a bunch of companies, all with their own interests at heart.My second gripe is once again not so much with Bluesound, but with the integrated radio and the silly UK laws that forced the wonders of global, internet radio into a closed box due to copyright laws, forcing apps like TuneIn to remove or make unavailable thousands of foreign radio stations. What this essentially means is that if you have a particular station you like, but it's not British, then the chances are, it won't be integrated into the Bluesound Node, as it won't be available through TuneIn. There is a way around this, as you can create a custom favourite and use a URL to stream the station directly from the internet, but it's sad that you have to do this and for many, they just won't have the savvy or the technical know-how to think to seek a workaround in the first place. It's such a backward, inward way of dealing with a medium that was so wonderfully open and global in the past. As I say, this isn't really Bluesounds fault though.So they are my two big gripes and neither is really a very big mark against the Bluesound Node itself, which I suppose, is actually quite impressive. As a unit, it's a lovely little thing to look at and feels well made and solid. The software is a touch clunky, but overall quite easy to use and feels good across multiple platforms and devices. As far as features, this thing is actually mental. My partner asked me what it was and what it can do, and when I explained all of its features, how it streams music from the internet, plays the TV through its DAC, streams my vinyl player to the bluetooth speakers in the kitchen, works as a headphone amp for both a wired set of speakers and my Airpoids Max, etc. etc. She was honestly shocked and for probably the first time ever seemed genuinely impressed at my silly Hi-Fi tinkering. So overall, is it worth your money? I think so yes. Actually, I really think this is quite well priced when you do consider everything it can actually do. The sound quality is excellent, I wasn't as bowled over as I thought I was going to be but then, as Hi-Fi enthusiasts, when are we ever bowled over really? Everything is such small, iterative steps in an ever-evolving chain of upgrades that slowly improves the overall sound and once you hit that point of diminishing returns within your system, you're really just min-maxing for tiny gains, but somehow it's all still worth it. I would say that's doubly true for the Bluesound Node, as when you're sitting back and listening to music, flicking through your various services on your phone, essentially using it as a remote, and enjoying seriously high quality sounding music in probably the most comfortable and easy to use way imaginable, it's hard to knock it really and very quickly makes you wonder how you coped without it until now. If you're on the fence and can afford it, I would say pull the trigger, I really don't think you'll regret your decision.I hope you find this review helpful, I appreciate it's long-winded, but I'm just hoping to help out others like myself, normal people who like to pour over the details and read a lot before making their hi-fi purchases!

Love my node! I spent a lot of time looking for an all in one streamer solution that would do everything I wanted. The node was the winner.I use it with Tidal and Amazon music hd. The tidal integration is best with tidal connect meaning it can be used from the tidal app and the node has full mqa decoding. Amazon integration isn't as good due to amazon's decisions and this has to be accessed through the Bluesound app. However, in my opinion it works well. I don't use it with local files but have it connected to the TV through the optical input. Haven't tried hdmi yet since I only use it with movies or music on TV.Sound. To my ears it sounds great. I'm not obsessed so won't go into audiophile buzzword bingo. All I'll say is that my music has never sounded better. For info it is used with a Marantz PM6007 integrated amp and Q Acoustics 3030i speakers. Really nice bits of kit but by no means top level audiophile.I'd highly recommend this for anyone looking for a great way to stream your music in the highest quality. Also, check out paradise radio on the Bluesound app.

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.

I bought this to replace a Sonos Connect I bought a few years ago. Sonos came out with a replacement model and immediately stopped supporting the Connect and wanted to sell me an upgrade. I’ll never buy a Sonos product again.I read the app for the blue sound is good , I was also looking for a sound improvement.The app is very good, very sensible and has run perfect.I’m very happy with a much bigger improvement in sound quality than I expected. The sound is more clear. If I listen to music with several instruments playing, it’s noticeably easier to pick out and listen to a single instrument. Similarly the sound stage is more defined, I can hear front to back depth much better.In hi-fi, you get to a point where your system is really good and you need to sped a lot more to get progressively smaller improvements. I think the Bluesound Node is near the top end of where you get a good improvement without getting to that esoteric level.

La app es muy lenta en mi Iphone, y la aplicacion en mi laptop no se pudo cargar, estoy esperando si en alguna actualizacion que hagan las cosas mejoran, ahora solo lo utilizo con el airplay.

Il m'a fallu du temps et tester 3 appareils différents avant de trouver le bon (merci Amazon).Le Bluesound Node est ultra facile d’utilisation et de connexion, il délivre un son fabuleux !Le son est cristallin, rond et puissant, je le recommande.

Wer ein tolles Klangerlebnis für einen verhältnismäßig guten Preis sucht, landet zwangsläufig beim Bluesound Node. Meine Bewertung bezieht sich ausschließlich auf das Streaming von Hi-Res über Netzwerk an meiner HiFi-Anlage.Ich suchte einen audiophilen Netzwerkplayer für meine HiFi-Anlage bestehend aus Rotel A14 MKII,CD11 Tribute und B&W CM9 S2. Es ging mir nur um das Streaming von Tidal Master über Netzwerk. Ich möchte wegen der verlustfreien Wiedergabe weder Bluetooth noch AirPlay 2 benutzen, obwohl der Bluesound auch das unterstützt. Dabei kam es mir hauptsächlich auf die Klangqualität an. Habe mehrere Netzwerkplayer zum Test bestellt und Klang sowie Bedienung für meine Ansprüche verglichen. U.a. Cambridge CXN V2 und WIIM Pro, umd alle erschwinglichen Preisklassen abzudecken. Der Node konnte in allen Belangen überzeugen. Er ist hochwertig verarbeitet, bietet Klanglich dank hochwertiger DAC eine breite Bühne und sorgte beim Probehören oftmals für ein breites Lächeln bei mir. Wohlgemerkt mit meiner HiFi- Kette. Die Bedienung und Einrichtung über die Blu-Os-App war spielend einfach. Es sind sämtliche Streamingdienste vertreten. Somit muss man sich über den Netzwerkplayer keine Gedanken machen, möchte man mal den Anbieter wechseln bzw. wenn man auch mehrere Anbieter nutzt. Ebenso ist ein Netzwerktuner mit unzähligen Lokalen und Internationalen Radiosendern integriert, die hochauflösend übertragen.Habe nur 2 kleine Kritikpunkte.1. Es könnte die integrierte Tidal-App etwas Benutzerfreundlicher sein.2. Ich würde ich mir wünschen, den Player separat ausschalten zu könnenKlar gibt es Netzwerkplayer, die das alles in dieser Qualität auch oder noch eine Nuance besser können. Die Kosten jedoch auch mindestens das doppelte. Habe beispielsweise einen Cambridge CXN V2 gegen den Node verglichen.Der Unterschied war für meine Ohren so gering, das ich nicht bereit war, das doppelte zu investieren. Der WIIM Pro spielte einfach nur Flach, egal welche Klangeinstellung ich gewählt hatte. Dem war der Node haushoch überlegen.Abschließend kann ich nur sagen, mich hat der Node begeistert.Ein zur Zeit Unschlagbares Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis.Korrektur: Den Player kann man ausschalten, indem man die Play-Taste auf dem Touchpad 5 Sekunden gedrückt hält.Für Amazon-Musik Nutzer: Die Bedienung des in Blue-Os integrierten Dienstes ist die reine Katastrophe.Ha,be den Bluesound jetzt mit einem hochwertigen Cinchkabel verbunden. Nochmals eine kleine Klangverbesserung.Bin nach mehreren Wochen Benutzung nach wie vor von dem Bluesound begeistert.