I am thinking of getting a Bluesound Vault 2i to store my ripped CD’s and also to access TIDAL and Qobuz. The Bluesound products have an excellent UI for TIDAL and Qobuz, so that is another reason I like them.
What are some thoughts on getting the Vault 2i and connecting it to the DS via toslink or coax and bypassing it’s internal DAC and using the DAC of the DS? How would MQA from TIDAL be handled in a case like this?
Josh
Just a few opinions here. The 2i includes a drive for ripping CDs. It sounds like you already have your library ripped so that may be redundant. I can’t tell if you have a Bridge2 or not on your DS but MQA is handled through the Bridge only on the DS, all other inputs will not decode MQA.
This is from Bluesound:
"Bluesound Players are a full MQA playback solution. They will decode and render MQA playback up to 24/192. If however you are connecting an external DAC, the maximum output will be 24/96 and MQA processing is not happening in the DAC.
If you have an external DAC that is certified by MQA, you may bypass Bluesound’s MQA rendering process in the Bluesound NODE 2 or VAULT 2 and send the pure untouched music bits directly via TOSLink Optical or Digital COAX output for processing by your external DAC."
So if MQA is what your primary goal is then the 2i is not what you want.
Josh,
This is doable as I use a node 2 as a source for my GCD. However, there are higher quality (always are right!), better sounding sources to consider for similar pricing. For example, I use a SOtM-sMS-200 streamer with Matrix running Audirvana and it sounds very noticeably better. Just a consideration. I too like the user interface of the bluesound systems and still use it as well via coax to my GCD for the dac-ing, but when I’m doing serious listening the aforementioned set up sounds so much better.
Thank You for both replies fellas
You’re welcome! Hope it helps a little.