[rnrmf1971]

Originally Posted by JDCheek

While I’m not new to digital streaming, a lot of things have changed since my Squeezebox days in 2007. While I enjoy vinyl and R2R recordings, the world is at your fingertips when streaming endless possibilities with a lot of streaming service options. I have had higher end DACs(MDA 1000), but as I venture back into streaming, I want to make sure my components are working together and I’d like to reduce the number of boxes in my system. Right now I am streaming both Qobuz and Tidal from a Bluesound node 2i Into my C-2200. My desire is to make sure I am able to get MQA quality streams since that is now available. The Node says it decodes MQA, and it has a built in DAC, but that seems easy for the small investment of the Node. I have a C-2700 on order that replaces the C-2200, and it has a well regarded DAC built in and upgradeable. But it doesn’t do MQA. I doesn’t seem correct that the Nodes DAC does, the Mc DAC does not. So does that mean that my stream gets dumbed down if I run it through the C-2700? That doesn’t seem correct. So what am I getting wrong? And btw, the node was really an attempt to get my system back up and going. I’ve been looking at other devices such as Auralic and Lumin.

I have a Node 2i but I've since switched to Qobuz because I thought it sounded better than Tidal.
If I'm not mistaken, even if you use the coax digital output (which sounds better than the optical), the Node 2i can still "unwrap" the file to either 96/24 or 88/24; what you miss out on is the software manipulation in the form of upsampling and filtering which is the second part of the MQA chain as I recall.
But you might be able to set up the dac in the 2700 to upsample and choose a filter that you like the sound of - not the MQA way but perhaps satisfying. Or you might just enjoy the 96/24 or 88/24 file decoded as is.