Bluesound takes aim at Cambridge Audio with this all-new flagship high-resolution music streamer

I’ve always loved Bluesound’s naming of its music streamers, which are now in their 13th year of existence. In medical terms, nodes are small filters throughout the body, while in more general terms a node can mean a point in a network where lines or paths intersect. It seems particularly appropriate now, though, because Lenbrook (who owns Bluesound, as well as NAD and PSB Speakers) tells me that the Bluesound team has identified 17 change points in the audio signal path of a music recording, from the moment an artist sings in a music recording . microphone, to a listener who hears it – think microphone level, patch bay, audio interfaces, processing and so on.

Interesting, isn’t it? That’s seventeen chances that the authenticity of a recording is a bit shaky – and Bluesound doesn’t want that. The team are all avid fans of live music, so the aim of the Node range, says Bluesound, is to “make the digital disappear”, that is, to make the potential pitfalls in the chain disappear.

And Bluesound has three options with which it aims to achieve this, from the smaller Node Nano to the newest and largest Node Icon. It doesn’t take a genius to see that with this foray into more elite territory, Bluesound clearly wants to include the Cambridge Audio CXN100 network player – because the flagship Node Icon, the most expensive of the trio, costs exactly the same money. And at first I have to say that I like it.

Know your nodes