My friends at Harmonia Distribution sent me a little challenge package—2 Bluesound NODEs (N130), one stock and one with the Sbooster AIB Connection Kit and matching Sbooster ECO Power Supply.
The challenge: listen and compare—stock NODE versus Sbooster-endowed NODE.
The parts:
Bluesound NODE (N130): $599
Sbooster AIB Bluesound NODE Connection Kit: $144.50
Sbooster BOTW P&P ECO MKII Power Supply: $379.00
Total Cost: $1122.50
First, a little NODE history. The first Bluesound NODE came out in 2013 and it has seen a number of revisions over the last decade+. The NODE is a streaming DAC offering Ethernet or WiFi to connect to your network and the world beyond, and analog RCA outputs along with digital outs (Coax, Toslink, USB) if you choose to bypass the NODE’s internal DAC and use it as just a streamer.
The version in for the challenge are the NODE N130 (2021), identical models using the same firmware version, which are powered by a Quad-Core 1.8GHz ARM Cortex A53 processor while employing a Texas Instruments PCM5242 32-bit/384kHz DAC for D to A conversion. Bluesound recently revamped the NODE lineup, adding 2 more NODEs for a total of 3—NODE NANO ($299), NODE ($549), and NODE ICON ($999). I will say Bluesound has called the NODE by a number of names that all at least started with “NODE”, but a number of older NODEs were just called a NODE. Like the new NODE, making it kinda confusing to know which NODE is which. Harrumph!
I still have my old NODE 2i, the third NODE iteration dating from 2020, mostly for sentimental reasons—while the NODE has always been a great-for-the-price streaming DAC, and streamer, its limits in terms of sound quality have relegated mine to a display shelf.
The Sbooster BOTW P&P ECO MKII Power Supply, now that’s a mouthful, is “a highly optimized, heavily shielded linear power supply with noise filtration.”
Features (from Sbooster):
- High-quality PCB with double sided 2oz. copper, and a gold-plated finish
- Better and thicker heatsink from the previous model
- Upgraded internal wiring with high-quality silver plated copper and PTFE insulation
- Heavy transformer with electrostatic shielding and HF magnetic shielding
- Upgraded bulk capacitors
- Improved reference-circuit
- Next generation split-current unit
- New DC-output cable with additional shielding, sleeve and gold plated connector pins
- Custom-made DC-plugs
The Sbooster is about 9” deep and weighs 4 lbs. and that’s all I’m going to say about the potential benefits of linear power supplies. The proof lies in the trying. While the Sbooster stayed on top of my rack for this review, I would keep it out of the way for real world use.
The Sbooster AIB Bluesound NODE Connection Kit fits inside the NODE, replacing its internal switch mode power supply. While the review unit came ready to roll, the “installation is easy and reversible, involving only a screwdriver” according to Harmonia Distribution.
Which brings us to the challenge, in more ways than one. For this review that is actually a comparison, I’m going to focus on a single song to highlight the obvious differences I heard from these two NODEs—the stock NODE and the henceforth so dubbed Sbooster NODE.
I started my listening with the stock NODE as streaming DAC fed from a length of AudioQuest Diamond Ethernet cable, with a pair of AQ FireBird interconnects leashing it to the review Fern & Roby Amp No. 2 integrated amp (more info) driving the Barn resident DeVore Fidelity O/96 (review). If you think it’s kinda odd to use cables that cost more than the source, way more, my thinking goes I’m testing the NODEs and the AQ Firebird ICs offer the clearest view onto what the attached gear is doing than any other ICs I’ve tried so it makes sense, in this context, to use ‘em. That said, don’t try this at home as I recommend putting the bulk of one’s budget into speakers and components. I used Roon, throughout, to control playback.
I sat both NODEs, stock and Sbooster NODE, and the Sbooster PSU on top of my Box Furniture ‘Fallen A’ rack and simply moved the Ethernet cable and interconnects from one NODE to the other for A/B purposes. A process that took all of a few seconds.
The song—“Love Letter” from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album And No More Shall We Part, released in 2001 but the version I used for this comparison is from the 2011 remaster.
And part of the challenge that isn’t part of the challenge is the stock NODE sounds fine, which is a nice way of saying it leaves out a lot of music information when sending the converted bits on to the rest of the system. It’s no exaggeration to say that much of what Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and guests are doing musically is buried in what I suspect to be the stock NODE’s noise floor. To be fair, the associated system in play is not, at least to my mind, a sensible place for a Bluesound NODE to reside as this system reveals, all too obviously, the NODE’s shortcomings. In the past I have sung the NODE’s praises when situated in more sensible price / performance system settings.
“Love Letter” has been on my Test Track playlist for many years so I know it all too well and the all-important inflections in Cave’s vocals are muddled, effectively graying out their emotive impact, and the supporting cast that includes strings, drums, piano and backing vocals by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, sound as if they were recorded with socks covering the mics. Thick socks. No, I am not exaggerating.
The lyrics in “Love Letter”, about which author Jonathan Lethem opined are “worthy of Shakespeare”, tell the saddest and oldest of stories:
A wicked wind whips up the hill
A handful of hopeful words
I love her and I always will
The sky is ready to burst
Said something I did not mean to say
Said something I did not mean to say
Said something I did not mean to say
It all came out the wrong way
The protagonist, who I’m assuming is Nick Cave but I suppose could be Othello, who am I to argue with Lethem, sends his love letter in the hopes of righting his wrong.
I hold this letter in my hand
A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer
I hope it does as I have planned
Losing her again is more than I can bear
I’ve listened to this song countless times on countless systems and I admit it nearly never fails to elicit an emotional response. Even with the stock NODE’s rather heavy handed editing, which add a gray cloudy day over every sound, I still felt pulled into Cave’s suffering. And hope. Yes, I’m a sucker, too.
Switching to the Sbooster NODE parted the clouds. No, I’m not being overly dramatic because I could once again hear the swell of strings lifting Cave’s opening lines as a swell of strings and not a blob of sound, his piano ringing out truer to form, and his voice forcing out his plea. As the song progresses, Cave shifts his tone and tenor, lifted by the hope contained in his letter, “go get her, go get her,” and I could hear much more clearly Cave shift his voice, sounding less strained for the hopeful bits which was all but smoothed over through the stock NODE. Not erased but smudged.
When Cave allows himself to imagine his lover’s return, “Rain your kisses down upon me”, Jim Sclavunos’ drums join in and with the Sbooster NODE his snare and cymbals have a nice amount of texture and sparkle that is all but absent through the stock NODE that effectively puts a blanket over the kit.
Come back to me
Come back to me
O baby please come back to me
The McGarrigle sisters join in here, sweetening his final plea, in perfect three part harmony. The end.
I think as reviewers who write we run the risk of burying the importance of music and its message in matters of sounds and sound quality as if emotions, memories, and basic humanness have nothing to do with evaluating the quality of reproduction—when they are all that really matter, in my humble opinion. And when the quality of reproduction is improved, and in this case dramatically so by the Sbooster add-ons to the stock Bluesound NODE, it allows for a closer connection to the music. It allows us to not only hear more of what’s actually captured by the recording, but it allows deeper entry into the workings of the music and its makers.
I spent more time just listening to music with the Sbooster NODE, over more days, more songs, and more albums, and it proved to offer performance that largely stayed out of the way of the music and its message. Switching back to the stock NODE, albeit briefly, reinforced the obvious and important improvements gained by adding the Sbooster Connection Kit and Power Supply.
Company Website: Harmonia Distribution
