Ayre Acoustics QX-5 Twenty – The Digital Hub

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I've auditioned one. It was superb. Had been using my Ayre Codex. I realize I could have spent another 2 months auditioning different gear, but this just made the system shine like never before and Roon runs so well on it. It's on order. 

 

It is a great tragedy that @Charles Hansen has passed, but I have been in touch with Ayre about a few things lately and I have to say that the company is very much on top of things. Apparently he had made careful plans for the transition with the team. This is far from the end of Ayre. Unfortunate that he won't be able to see what they are doing, but I think the company is hitting its stride so well. That is what legacy is about!   

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On 3/20/2018 at 9:41 PM, barrows said:

Not sure where you got this information...  It is not entirely correct.

What a strange thing to say without any back up.

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Ok, that’s a lot more informative, thanks.

 

 

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For any owners out there, I have been in contact with Ayre and Logitech and the both KX-5 and QX-5 are updated in the Logitech Harmony database. Since we use our Ayre stack in the living room, we like to use the Harmony Elite system to control it, the TV, Oppo UDP-205, cable box, and so on. With the update, you can go directly to an input without having to hit up and down buttons endlessly. Perhaps a small thing, but an important one.

 

On another note that I hope is more interesting, having upgraded from an Ayre Codex and Ayre K5xe to a KX-5 and QX-5 (it's coming this week), I've gone from nowhere near enough inputs (two balanced into the KX-5 and one Toslink into the Codex) to an absolutely crazy amount of inputs, both digital and analog. There have got to be some interesting things people are connecting to these units. I guess my AppleTV (via HDMI de-embedder), Roku, cable box, and UDP-205 will all get their digital inputs, and of course my turntable and (my never used) FM Tuner (which just looks cool more than anything else) but I wonder what other mad things I could hook to this system. I've long since abandoned having a Mac Mini directly in the mix since a Raspberry Pi with Hifiberry Digi+ handily beat that (which in turn was beat by the UDP-205, and in the end the QX-5).     

      

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Well,  I've got my gorgeous QX-5, it's burned in for a week and a half and it's sounding great. Thoughtful to put in the three myrtle blocks! 

I've got an all-Ayre (KX-5/VX-5/QX-5 all Twenties plus a P-5Xe for my Clearaudio Performance DC) and Vandersteen 5A (not original owner, can't upgrade) stack now, very much the Audio Connection way and that's ok by me. These units are made for each other

I don't know what happened today, but I played it in the morning and then went to return the 7' Audioquest Aspens that I had borrowed from Johnny R and picked up the 8' Aspens that I had ordered. After installing the Aspens, the system sounded a bit better. You'd think the cables would not yet have built up a proper dielectric charge… Some thoughts…

 

When I swapped out the cable, I also moved the KX-5 from the top of the console they were in (a vintage 1960s Swedish wooden thing) to the bottom. Maybe it's a better base? 

 

I tipped the myrtle blocks on their shortest side, they were on the slightly bigger one.

 

Light corrosion on the earlier Aspens?

 

8' sounds better than 7'

 

Who the heck knows. Anyway, it's a great system that's going to last me many years. Heck, after this I can't afford to upgrade! 

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A firmware update rolled tonight, but what’s in it?

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A new net update rolled toady. I wonder what is on it? 

 

In other thoughts, we have spotify streaming to the qx-5, would it be impossible to get airplay to stream to the qx-5 via shairport? It's not top quality but

 

1. neither is spotify

2. neither is roon. i still prefer the turntable with the rest of my ayre gear, although it's pretty close

3. it'd be good for parties and the family.

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18 hours ago, Ultrarunner said:

 

I use an ultraRendu to convert from Ethernet to USB for my QX-5. It has Shareport. I find it also improves the Spotify sound vs. Ethernet directly into the DAC.

I use an Allo Digital USBBridge for Shareport. Would prefer to go straight in. Roon via ethernet into the Ayre sounds better than via the USBBridge, but that's higher resolution than Spotify.  

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On 6/10/2020 at 6:34 PM, Ryan Berry said:

Hi Csaba,

 

Hard to say until we're done, really.  USB is easy.  The rest is more complicated.  As far as timeline, the more time we get to spend on it, the better we get to make it.  Give us some time and we'll have something good in the end.

 

Ayre has a long history of making changes in units available to existing owners of our products.  It's simply not right to add something and then have no path for someone who already owns the unit to be able to have the same cool features, so it will be available to all once we're happy with it.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

That’s nice to hear. I love the QX-5. It’s such a phenomenal unit.

 

It’s incredible how many sources it allows and I only use three (TV, Blu-ray and Roon). I feel like I need Ayre to put together a list of digital sources I should buy.