This article is about the Bluesound NODE ICON, a new streaming audio player from our friends at Bluesound.

It has been over 10 years since Bluesound was first introduced as a higher performance competitor to Sonos, who dominated the streaming music component space at the time. Bluesound is part of the Lenbrook group, which also owns NAD, a brand that has been making very high value products since the late 1970s. Their 3020 integrated amp rocked the audio world when it was first released, and to this day, they continue to win awards for making gear that just sounds far better than it should for what it costs.

The NAD engineers were tasked with making Bluesound in the NAD mold of audio gear that competed with some of the best, yet had a price tag that was affordable by a wide range of music lovers. And the Lenbrook team was smart enough to hire a world-class team of software engineers to design the interface everyone would use to access their music. The interface is called BluOS and has benefited from continual software updates over time.

The key piece in the Bluesound line for the last year has been their NODE. It just offers so much in a music streamer for its cost and has become the streamer most employees at Audio Advice decide to use in their personal systems. That says a lot right there!

Bluesound became the go-to choice for people who wanted a step up from Bluetooth streaming or Sonos but did not want to get into the higher end streamers from the well established 2 channel audio companies.

But as with all things in the electronics industry, competition can come in and shake things up. Brands like WiiM came into the market at very affordable prices, offering good quality streaming, and started to erode Bluesound's popularity. Well, competition is a good thing, and it led to Bluesound coming out with three new pieces in the fall of 2024: the NODE NANO, a brand new and highly updated NODE, and the subject of this article, the NODE ICON. We covered the first two in an earlier article. Their team has packed in a ton of great sound and new features into all three of these players, and we are sure the NANO and NODE will once again be the choice of many for affordable music streamers.

Bluesound vs Sonos

But the ICON branches out into new territory. At double the price of the NODE, the ICON is the most expensive streamer Bluesound has ever produced. However, as you might expect from Bluesound, the ICON aims to compete with units that sell for far more than its price. In this article, we will dive into the ICON to show you how it is far more than just a NODE with a cool display.

Before we dive into the ICON, let’s go over BluOS, the operating system used by all Bluesound audio components. We have been fans of this system from the beginning, and it has been fun to watch it evolve and improve over time. It has some great features, but the primary goal of Bluesound streamers is to open the door to true Hi-Res audio streaming. It supports 24/192k and handles all of the major Hi-Res streaming services with Qobuz, Deezer, and Tidal. You’ll also get the usual lower res services from Spotify, Pandora, Amazon, and many more. For DSD fans, you will be happy to know that with the rollout of the Icon, there will be a software update to enable all three new units to handle DSD over PCM natively. They will support DSD 64/128/256. We should point out that DSD playback is available on local stored files, not streaming.

Best Music Streaming Services

The app is super intuitive and allows for room grouping. We also love that for units with subwoofer outs, you can set crossover levels, which will roll off the bass to your mains. You get basic tone controls as well, and with the NODE and ICON, Dirac room correction is an optional add on - more about that later. Apple AirPlay 2 and aptX Adaptive Bluetooth are also on board to allow you to stream anything from your phone. The Bluetooth is two-way, which means you can stream from the ICON to your wireless headphones. For those of you with audio files on your network, they will blend in seamlessly to allow you full access to all your music.

We find it very easy to search for music, with playlist building being a snap. So, with over 10 years under their belt, it is pretty clear that BluOS works quite well.

Physically, the ICON is almost 9” wide, about 3.5” tall, and about 7.5” deep, giving it a much beefier appearance than the NODE. The 5” display is a cool feature as it allows you to see what is currently playing from across the room. The look is definitely enhanced by its high-quality aluminum chassis in gloss black. You’ll also find some backlit controls on the front of the gently sloping top panel. These light up when you get close to the unit and give you tactile functions for volume, play, skip, and five presets you can set up in the app for just about anything.

For those of you just getting into this, the ICON is a music streamer that can also serve as your control center. It has the flexibility to connect it up to a legacy audio system using its audio outputs in fixed output level mode. Or if you switch the audio outs to variable, it can be connected to a pair of powered speakers or a separate power amplifier that would, in turn, drive your speakers. Its compact size also means it will fit right on top of many powered speakers to give you a complete and elegant system.

More sophisticated music streamers will give you more ways to hear sound than just music streaming, which is where the ICON really shines.

Input and output wise, it is a big step up from the NODE. With the ICON, you get full-sized analog audio inputs, which would be perfect for adding a turntable to your system using one with a built-in phono preamp or a separate phono preamp. In addition, it has a standard sized Toslink input. A great feature we are seeing on more and more streamers is an HDMI eARC input. What this lets you do is connect a compatible TV that has HDMI eARC to get the TV sound over to your two-channel system, greatly improving your TV experience. And if you have an older TV, most of those had Toslink audio out, so you are covered in any case. HDMI eARC gives the added benefit of the TV remote taking over volume control, which is super cool. Plus, the Icon will decode Dolby Atmos files and mix them into two-channel stereo. The final input connection on the rear lets you directly connect a hard drive for your music files, or BluOS can pull them off your network drive as well.

With many high-performance separate audio systems adding balanced audio inputs, audiophiles will be happy to know the ICON has balanced audio outs along with the standard RCA outs. These are not just connectors that convert a normal signal to balanced, but they give you a fully balanced audio path, which is really great for this price point. You even get a coax and Toslink audio out should you later purchase an uber high-end DAC without streaming to connect up the ICON as a digital streamer only.

Finally, there is a subwoofer out, with full control over both the sub and your main speakers, which adds another level of flexibility and functionality to the ICON. Using the BluOS app, you can perfectly dial in the crossover point and levels from the comfort of your listening chair. There are so many good music streamers out there with enough inputs to allow you to use it as your full control center, but without a sub out, it certainly limits your speaker options. We love this feature and are really happy to see it on both the ICON and NODE.

The DAC and its hardware support are among the most critical parts of any streamer. Creating your own DAC from scratch is a super expensive process, which is why almost all audio companies will buy DACs from a company that specializes in making them. ESS is considered one of the best DAC manufacturers in the world and has a wide lineup of DACs that are used in everything from cell phones to super high-end audio gear. Their best ones fall under the SABRE category, and their new ES9039Q2M has the highest dynamic range of any of their DACs yet.

We were impressed to see Bluesound use this new flagship two-channel ESS DAC in the NANO and NODE and wondered what they would do for the ICON. This is a stereo DAC, but you can use it in a mono configuration for even higher performance, which is exactly what Bluesound did by putting two of them in the ICON! And with its much larger chassis than the NODE, Bluesound was able to beef up the power supply to support these great DACs even better. Plus, as we mentioned earlier, this allowed them to do a fully balanced audio path if you use the XLR output connectors.

Another interesting feature of the ICON is QRONO d2a. That may sound like a mouthful, but this tech is one of the reasons Lenbrook, the parent company of Bluesound, purchased MQA back in 2023. MQA was an audio software company dedicated to making digital music sound as good as possible. QRONA d2a was on the drawing board and the ICON is the first product we know of to use it. This software looks for timing errors as the digital signal gets converted to analog. Timing errors have been one of the things some hardcore music lovers have not liked about digital, as when they are there, the recording lacks realism compared to a great analog recording. QRONA d2a realigns the timing response to give your music a much more natural sound.

It is also neat that Bluesound used the top-of-the-line ESS analog-to-digital converter for the digital inputs to keep your signal as pure as possible. We should point out that if you use a turntable with the ICON, or really any streamer for that matter, your analog signal does get converted to digital.

Headphone enthusiasts will, at first glance, wonder where the headphone jack is. Bluesound has done something we have not seen before, and it's a pretty cool idea. They wanted the front panel to be super sleek with a great display, but their team thought a big headphone jack would hurt its beautiful appearance. So the question was, where should the headphone jack be put? Well, they came up with a great out-of-the-box solution and put a full-sized ¼” headphone jack on each side of the ICON.

Headphone lovers will appreciate the full-size headphone jack. Plus, this is not just any headphone jack. It has a THX Achromatic Audio Amplifier or THX AAA. This is an actual piece of hardware THX sells that was developed for the ultimate headphone listening experience. It is starting to appear in other headphone amps due to its ultra-low noise and distortion, translating into a wonderful listening experience.

Now, we unboxed the ICON right away and immediately put it to the test. We hooked it up to multiple setups within one of our showrooms to test with a plethora of different-priced speakers and amps to see how well it performed. With each step up, the new ICON proved to us that it could be a great choice for a budget-friendly setup all the way up to a high-end setup. It keeps that sweet and warm Bluesound sound signature but had more detail and realism in each track we played when compared to the other Node and Node Nano.

A lot of people are probably wondering if the new Icon stacks up against competitors like Eversolo or Wiim. We’re big fans of all these brands, but in our tests, the Icon definitely outperformed the Wiim Ultra when it came to overall sound quality, and it held its own against similarly priced Eversolo products. That said, whether you notice these subtle differences depends a lot on how revealing your setup is. What we can say for sure is that you really can’t go wrong with the Node Icon—it’s going to be a fantastic streamer for pretty much any setup. But if you're still not sure if it’s the right fit for you, feel free to reach out to our expert team. They’ll help you figure out which option makes the most sense for your needs.

With that said, for under $1,000, the ICON is one of the best streamers we’ve heard and is well worth the price. Combined with its balanced out ability, beefier power supply, dual ESS Sabre DACs, and beautiful touchscreen, we think it will be one of the most popular streamers on the market. It also helps knowing it’s coming from a trusted company like Bluesound, which has been in the game for years and has some of the best engineers who are dedicated to updating their app and software to be sure you can use their products for years and years after you buy them.

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