Step-up streaming system

If the only source you need is streaming, this system will serve you well

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It seems like an easy win, doesn't it? Take the low-hanging fruit of all those five-star products that are available when you are trying to create a system; they're bound to work well together, right? Even better, take some 2025 What Hi-Fi? Award-winners and stick them in a setup. Job done, surely?

You would think so, perhaps. But life just isn't that simple. You might strike lucky, of course; but almost as likely is that something doesn't quite gel with the products you have selected. No matter the brilliance of individual products, they can't always work optimally with everything else. You could create a team containing the 11 best goalkeepers in the world; but it wouldn't be anything approaching the best football team. And so it is with hi-fi products. Even Award-winning ones.

Luckily, we have a team of experts who have spent years - decades, even - toiling away over a hot amplifier to gain the experience required to know precisely which top products will, in fact, work together to create a system that performs even better than the sum of its trophy-winning parts.

Musical magic

Even more encouraging: when you are looking for a mid-tier streaming system, you're looking at products right in the What Hi-Fi? wheelhouse. Here, then, is an absolutely barn-storming stereo setup comprising three 2025 What Hi-Fi? Award winners; a trio of top performers that will harmonise as well as the Bee Gees and perform musical magic right up there with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Pitched as the "audiophile" flagship option of the Bluesound Node family, the Node Icon has been imbued with more advanced audio technology and tuning, and a greater spread of connections than its junior siblings. The streaming elements remain the same across the family, with native file resolution support going up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD256.