The recent review of the Bluesound Node ICON has attracted a lot of attention and has also had readers contacting us with specific questions about it suitability; a friendly reminder that this is a service that is completely free. As the questions were interesting, they form the basis of this short blog post about when an ICON is your best choice and when other options might work better still.
The first question concerned whether the ICON together with a pair of active speakers makes for a better all in one system than the equally proficient NAD C700v2 with a pair of passive speakers. In terms of their core functions, both devices are more similar than you might think. They’re both BluOS streamers supported by a collection of digital and analogue inputs. If you combine a Node ICON with a pair of active speakers and a C700 v2 with a pair of passive ones, you’ll have systems with a fair degree of overlap.
BluOS choice
Choosing between them comes down to which inputs you need and your overall budget. The C700v2 has an excellent amplifier in but it will do its best work with speakers at around £2,000 or under whereas the ICON will happily partner with active speakers that are significantly more expensive, making the system you can build with it, potentially more open ended. It’s also worth pointing out that if you have a turntable, while both devices have an analogue input, only the C700V2 has an actual phono stage on board. As Bluesound and NAD are sister companies, it maybe isn’t too surprising to find that parent company Lenbrook sees a niche for both devices.
The next question approaches using the ICON at the opposite end of its functionality; as a line level streamer. At the time this blog is being written (March 2025), there are some serious deals available on another BluOS equipped device; the Cyrus Stream XR. If you don’t need the preamp functionality and other inputs, does the more focused Cyrus start to make more sense?
Dirac makes the difference
This question lives or dies on your listening space. If you have had issues with getting speakers to behave happily in your room, you might not think that the optional Dirac room optimisation on the ICON is the killer feature here but it really could be. Some tests with Dirac on the review sample saw some boosts to performance, even in the fairly well behaved test space. In more demanding rooms, the ICON has the scope not just sound better than the Cyrus but sound better than almost anything else.
So is it game over for the Cyrus? Not quite. If you are fortunate to have a well behaved room, the Stream XR is still able to do some things musically that that the notionally more sophisticated ICON can struggle to match. The attention to detail on the power supply, output stage and other areas that Cyrus has been patiently honing for decades means that the XR still has a level of musical satisfaction that the ICON can’t always match. In a well sorted system the simpler streamer still has the edge.
This takes nothing away from how astonishingly flexible the ICON is though. Bluesound has built one of the most formidable streaming front ends under £2,000 on the market and there are many instances where nothing else on the market will get close.
