New Bluesound Node and Powernode

[Anonamemouse]

Ever since my node2 caught on fire I'll kindly skip anything NAD related.

[Anonamemouse]

I know of at least one other that caught fire. 

I actually was lucky to be home, things could have ended up VERY bad. A friend of mine (he modifies all sorts of audio equipment) did some surgery on it after and he told me that it had the cheapest of the cheapest components inside. If you go through their forum there are quite a few posts complaining about the caps they use, but there's more wrong with it. 
I am beyond happy with my Aurender.

[Anonamemouse]

2 hours ago, Calvin & Hobbes said:

Good to know. Thanks for sharing this. I know that getting to a specific price point sometimes requires compromises.

 

Just out of curiosity, do you hear a sound quality improvement with your Aurender  vs the Node. If so, what improvements have you heard?

 

My friend estimated the material value at around 25 to 30 euros. This of course does not include any additional cost.

 

I have always used my node with external DACs, first a Schitt Gungnir, later a Benchmark DAC 3. The Gungnir was definitely an improvement over the internal DAC, the Benchmark another improvement over the Schitt. 

There was a gap of about 6 weeks between the node and the Aurender, so I never was able to do a direct comparison. But with the node I always had a "close, but no cigar" feeling, which I have never felt with my Aurender. So there definitely is a difference.