I received my Node Icon this past Friday. Implementation in terms of set up wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be, but certainly everything was functional for all advertised, first-day features within half an hour. No glitches.
From my universal disc player and Roku device, I've set up a HDMI splitter, which sends eARC via HDMI to the Node Icon, and the HDMI video to a nearby TV. I've plugged a thumb-drive with digital downloads into the back, and have set up streaming from Presto Music, my primary streaming source. I'm now using the Node Icon as my preamp, with balanced cables to my amplifier, a Hypex Nilai500DIY. The two RCA outputs connect to my two subwoofers (self powered, of course, with built in low-pass filters.)
Everything audio-wise is simply terrific! I am well pleased as far as that goes.
Whether anything is actually, human-detectably better in sound quality is debatable, but theoretically the Node Icon should measure better than my previous preamplifier, my previous headphone amp, the disc player's DAC, and my phone's DAC which I was previously using (only for the short term) to try out streaming. I do think it all sounds more precise and clearly resolved, but I've not attempted anything like double-blind tests, and I'm not going to since the main purpose was to collect the various digital sources better and more simply, and to add in a much better option for streaming.
The display is small enough that from my usual seated position for music the image and text simply aren't helpful, so I set the default to show a clock. I'd prefer something like VU meters, but the clock is fine. The most verbose information in text you'll get is only the album, track, and track timing, but nothing at all in terms of sample rate, bit depth, etc. That's slightly disappointing, but that specific information is already readily available on the app.
There were a couple confusing aspects to the app interface on my phone, but I got it all figured out with minimal grousing. I don't feel that there are any features missing that are truly important, but it's certainly not the most user-friendly app ever. It's also far from the worst, small praise to be sure. It could be better.
I wish it had come with a remote, but one from Bluesound is puchashable separately if I really need one, or I could program just about any IR remote.
All in all, I am happy with the purchase, especially for the most important element, which is bringing together all of my digital sound sources at a very high audio quality.
