Glad to save you some cash!

Happy to help!

Yea on the back of your BlueNode you’ll see two RCA outputs. Those are analog outputs (meaning the digital has already been converted). Plug those RCA outputs into your amp and you’re good to go!

Okay so you’re question of MQA…

• If you stream the BlueSound 100% you get MQA.

• If you go through eARC… I’m not 100% sure on this one. The limiting factor I believe is the TV (not eARC). Meaning the TV might not play nice with MQA and instead only allow Tidal lossless. Again not 100% sure on this.

I had Tidal for ~6 months before stopping. IMO MQA improved only some songs compared to Tidal losses. There didn’t seem to be any regularity (ie it wasn’t a genre/album/artist that was better) - some songs just song sound improved with the codec, others I couldn’t tell even after months of comparing.

I even have some good audio friends who think some songs sound worse with MQA! And that makes sense! It’s a different way of encoding the data - so shouldn’t expect everything to be a uniform improvement. Any change is going to effects both for good and bad.

So even if eARC doesn’t allow MQA honestly I wouldn’t be worried at all!

Drop reply tomorrow with the install results! And I want to know what this local audio company has to say! $20 says they give some BS about how the Chord will “open up the sonic soundstage and improve fidelity” haha!

That Chord was about $1500? Probably costs less than $400 to manufacture and the difference between it and the BlueNode DAC will be less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent and need to be measured with precise lab equipment.

The Chord is redundant and if you can I’d recommend returning.

The BlueSound is an amazing DAC and truthfully about the limit of what DAC technology can do (it’s a pretty simple circuit that’s been well established for decades).

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Music Videos

Okay this is slightly more complicated simply b/c now we have a video component. So the BlueSound Node has an HDMI eARC port on the back.

Your TV should also have an ARC/eARC label next to one of the HDMI ports.

ARC stands for audio return channel (or eARC enhanced auto return channel for object based sound like DTS:X and Dolby Atoms). ARC/eARC does not care about what format the audio is in and simply transports. It will not affect the audio in any way.

Plug an HDMI cable between the TV and BlueNode. Then on the TV go to settings and select the ARC/eARC as the audio output. Now any media on TV (no matter where it comes from) will output to the BlueNode.

Note: HDMI cable also must support eARC/ARC but chances are unless your cable is really old you’re probably good as this feature was rolled out some time ago

Okay some basics:

When you stream music the app is just a controller. You are not sending sound from your MacBook to the BlueSound Node. You’re just using the MacBook as a glorified remote control (so feel free to use your phone) b/c the BlueNode is going to talk to Tidal servers to get the music.

While on the same WiFi, on the Tidal app/web browser you can then select the BlueSound Node and Steam music to it.

No need to cast. Don’t use Bluetooth.

Now to the bad news:

The Chord DAC does not support Tidal MQA so while that DAC is used, that feature will be disabled. If you however remove it, MQA will be restored as the BlueSound Node has its own DAC that support the MQA format.

Not even an argument: speakers.

In the basement I’ve got about ~$10,000 worth of audio gear and another ~$500 in the living room.

The basement systems sounds a hell of a lot better streaming YouTube or SoundCloud than the living room streaming lossless.

any system is only as good as the weakest link

This sounds good on paper but over simplified the issues. It’s not valid to assume that every link in the system holds equal weight.

If you were cooking a steak dinner, are the brussels sprouts really as important as the Ribeye its self? Speaker are the meat here.

The difference between entry level speakers and end-game speakers is grand-cannon sized gap. Whereas, most folks struggle to pick out lossless. And I’d challenge you to take a blind test to see how you do!

To add another point, just b/c headphones can play to 38kHz does not mean it will be used. I’m not sure of a lot of context that even is mixed to include frequencies so high.