NODE ICON - option to turn off display for certain inputs
Answered
The lcd display does not have great black levels, which is fine for music playback. BUT, as part of a living room setup, the display is a distracting light source when watching TV in a dark room. And there's no real need for the display while watching TV, except for volume adjustment. We should have the option to turn the display off for optical input and eARC, preferably automatically. The display could wake up for volume adjustment, or not.
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Official comment
Hi Todd, hi Jordan,
Thanks for your quick feedback on the NODE ICON. We're aiming to add some additional functionality to the display, like turning it off completely, as you describe. No exact timeframe yet but it's high on our priority list for product updates. There may be a phased approach before we have it available per input source, but I'll keep you updated here as I know more.
Thanks,
Matt -
I’ll probably end up sending my Icon back. Nothing irritates me more than seeing a display while I’m watching movies. My AVR has a dim feature for a reason. And I’m not placing some fabric over a thousand-dollar piece of audio equipment that shouldn’t need to be hidden. I’ll get a MiniDSP SHD Studio instead. Comes with Dirac full license and sub preouts for the same price as this Icon, and we can actually TURN IT OFF. This is Mickey Mouse stuff not having the capability of turning off the display, especially when the app offers a BRIGHTNESS SWITCH. How ridiculous is it to have a brightness switch, one that goes down to “0”, but doesn’t actually allow 0 to be fully dark? Ugh. What a shame.
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Well, this is a nice turn of events :)
I came to suggest a per source setting for the display and an option to turn it off completely and that seems to be the plan already.2 -
Thanks Matt. Appreciate the prompt response. Means a lot.
Upon familiarizing myself with the Icon, however, I’m quite disappointed to see the streaming user face. With Qobuz it’s limited to a single IPhone screen size (no scrolling), with New Albums at the top (which is the only category with icons)… followed below by tabs for Recommended Albums, Recommended Playlists, Popular Albums, Genres, Favorites. There’s no Weekly Q or additional categories, which makes it firmly inferior to Eversolo and is far from what the Qobuz app resembles. Honestly for $700 more than Wiim Ultra I’d expect more from the streaming user face. I’ve also experienced numerous crashes while steaming Qobuz where I receive repetitive failure promps. Not sure if this is limited solely to Qobuz as I haven’t attempted other services yet. For $700 more than Wiim Ultra and for $400 more than MiniDSP SHD Studio (after factoring the cost of them giving you Dirac full license & UMIK 1 into their $949 price), I would expect more from the Icon’s user face and less with the crashes.
At this point I’m wondering why I need this Icon over Wiim Ultra. I wanted Dirac, but it’s $670 more for the unit alone and another $360 for Dirac & UMIK. $1030 above & beyond the Wiim just to add Dirac is pretty darn steep. That extra $1030 almost covers the price of a Buckeye Hypex 252MP amp ($579) and MiniDSP DDRC-24 that comes with USB DAC + Dirac Live + Speaker processing + UMIK 1 ($449).
… or you can simply add the DDRC to the Eversolo A6 and voila— now you have subwoofer outputs & full Dirac for $250 cheaper than Icon after paying additionally for Dirac & UMIK.
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Wait, so no Balance control or EQ for $1000 either? We have to spend hundreds more on Dirac to get those features? Gimme a break. My room is 4 inches taller on the left than the right. That means the SPL on the right is about 1 to 1.5dB higher, which means center stage is shifted about 8 inches to the right, meaning singers are not dead center like they should be. I don’t have this problem on my Eversolo… bc it has balance control… and EQ.. and PEQ.. and it allows you to tweak those setting straight from your “currently playing song” screen which is really nice. The $340 Wiim Ultra offers Balance control and EQ. A huge price increase over Node just for an extra ESS chip and a front display that’s basically for decoration only since it isn’t “touch” (unlike Eversolo) and since there’s no KNOB (unlike Eversolo). So to recap. Almost double the price of Node N132 to give us no Balance control, no EQ, no touch display, no knob, and currently no way to immediately fully dim the display. Got it. Wiim Ultra already has a digital display & balance/EQ. Do you think they couldn’t easily fit a touch display and a second DAC into that $660 price difference? Definitely sending this thing back, as it’s pretty clear what Bluesound’s goal was here. I’ll keep my much nicer looking & and much greater functionality Eversolo and add Dirac to it through MiniDSP, which will also allow for TWO SUBS, instead of just the one for Icon… and which uses the same 2 DAC chips found in Icon. Back in the box you go.
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This gets even more ridiculous. Just got a switch box to connect the Icon to my 18” Deep Sea Sound Mariana 18S sub. The sub’s gain is set with Audyssey MultiEQ XT32. I can tweak the finished product in Audio settings to boost the bass to taste.
This gets me to— ARE YOU SERIOUS, BLUESOUND?!!! When you connect a sub, which I just now did, there’s no f***ing volume control for the sub!!!! The ONLY THING Icon gives us is setting a crossover. Absolutely unacceptable. No point whatsoever in creating & marketing this thing as having a sub out if you have to get off your damn couch, walk over to your sub, pull out a flashlight to look behind it, and manually control it from there. HORSES**T!!!!! With the baddest 18” sub on the market, on the Icon my bass is actually WORSE than with the sub off and my MoFi SourcePoint 10’a playing full range by themselves. Ridiculous, ridiculous, RIDICULOUS!!! So now I gotta get the flashlight out, squeeze myself under my TV to look behind the sub to manually turn it up. Oh but subwoofer volume is dependent on the material being played, so you can FORGET ABOUT mixing genres, unless you want to get your exercise in. Just as I said previously— Mickey Mouse stuff. Was about to click submit, then I just now ran the crossover down to 40Hz and it’s concernedly crackling my left speaker for some crazy reason and not even with the volume cranked up (afraid it might damage a pair of $2400 speakers), and these are speakers I can play full range just fine. F*** this POS.0 -
Todd, if the product does not meet your requirements, just buy another product.
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@Gurb. Already commenced the return process on the worthless Icon and have an Eversolo DMP-A6ME and WIIM Ultra sitting right in front of me. Since the Icon has essentially relegated itself to a 2.0 system, the Eversolo easily beats it, and as an actual functioning 2.1 system the Ultra easily bests it as well, regardless of the $660 savings. Ciao.
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