I had an Altair G1.1 on loan for a couple of months and found it a really nice sounding piece of equipment in my desktop system. I used it both as a Roon network endpoint and as a USB DAC. I have never used a Node, so I can't comment on that. The Altair sat in for a $6,000 Classe CP-800 in my system, and the Altair sounded at least as good as the Classé.
The Altair operated flawlessly in all respects. I used its balanced outputs to drive my power amp and its unbalanced outputs to drive a subwoofer. I also used the Altair's DSP successfully -- it is very clean -- to cut down the largest bass peaks in my room.
The only feature it lacks (for my setup) is digital crossover for subwoofer, but I got excellent results without such a crossover by using just the sub's own low-pass filter. If I had been in the market for a streamer with DAC (really, a digital preamp), I would have bought the Altair, especially at the current reduced price. I definitely think it's worth a listen.
P.S. I did not use it to play CDs, but I have used the Aries G1 in my main system for that (with a USB-attached optical drive). The result was as good as the best transport I've used. The limiting factor was a little mechanical noise when the CD drive was reading the CD. I have not used the Aries for ripping, preferring to do that on a computer where I can control the metadata.
