Being very happy with my recent purchase of the Bluesound Node I began to experiment a bit to push the limits on its SQ. I have used it primarily as the way to stream Tidal into my main system. The sound from Tidal was very good,, but, especially on classical recordings, the soundstage seemed more constricted than what I was used to hearing. At first I thought it might have been a limitation of Tidal itself, but then I made some lossless rips on my computer (the most informative of which was the Ansermet Scheherazade) and even with then the computer files played via the node seemed to compress the size of the image , both in with and depth as compared to playing the ripped CD through the same DAV (the original version of the Eastern Electric).
I had pretty much resigned myself t the fact that it was just a limitation of the Node unit itself when I got an email from Audio Advisor pushing a Toslink cable from Analysis Plus claiming that this was the first optical cable that sounds as good as a coax.
Over the years I had tried several different Toslink cables between my CD transport and DAC and found that A0 they all sounded pretty much the same and B) None of them sounded as good as a coax cable. But in the case of the Node I only have a Toslink output and since the cable was only $39 and it had a money back guarantee I figure what the heck I'd give it a try.
Well it arrived about a week ago and I put it in the system. I played the Scheherazade rip and BAM!, even with the cable ice cold, right out of the box the soundstage just exploded out to where it is with the CD and maybe even just a touch wider. (I don't know, is there really any such thing as break in on an optical cable?)
Now I need to do some more critical listening to determine if I like the computer file better than the CD overall as there bat be some differences in detail, performance at the frequency extremes and overall tonality that could sway my preference one way or they other, but the most obvious sonic shortfall of the Node hooked up with the generic optical cable I had laying around the house was the soundstage and that problem is solved with this Analysis Plus cable. It may not be the best overall option, or even the best optical cable that I could put on the Node, but it sure upped the Node's performance quite a few notches in my book, and for $39, that's quite a bargain.
I was very happy with the Node and Tidal before thinking that the small decrease in SQ was a worthwhile tradeoff for all of the access to music that I got from Tidal, but now I don't feel like I am making any tradeoff at all. And I feel comfortable with the SQ I will get when ripping CDs to my computer for file based playback.