Arcam and Bluesound music streamers go toe-to-toe

Some types of hi-fi equipment feel as if they could last for ever; a good turntable you picked up in the 70s could still happily be spinning records today. Other tech, your smartphone, say, is visibly improved year on year.

But some products, streamers for example, are being made notably better even though on the surface it’s not immediately clear how. There’s no quantifiable specification such as processing power or screen resolution to draw comparisons between different models. That’s the lesson we learned after pitting Bluesound’s Node 2 – a streamer that has remained on the market since 2015 – against 2017’s Arcam rplay.

The Node 2, in fact, has increased in price since it first came out – going from £430 to £500; the rplay, meanwhile, started life at £400 but is now available for approximately £330. That’s a significant schism, and one that could end up being a deciding factor in many buyers’ minds.

At first glance, there aren’t too many differences between the two streamers. Both can boast a similar set of features and both are used in pretty much the same way. In fact, most people wanting to move their music from their computer to a dedicated NAS unit, and requiring a good streamer to act as middleman, might not be able to tell which is the better performer simply by looking at the specifications.

But listening to both, it’s clear just how far the quality of streamers has come in a little under three years. Will the Node 2 be able to retain its charm when set against the new blood?