Ayre Acoustics QX-5 Twenty – The Digital Hub

[Axiom05]

On 6/8/2018 at 11:20 PM, Ryan Berry said:

Sorry about that!  We were pushing hard to have the testing done before the weekend, I think we didn't have time to get the notes in.  

 

A very simple update that we've had requests for to add .dff support for DSD playback.   Nothing else beyond that at this time, but we're always working hard to continue to improve the interface. 

I'm not seeing any new firmware updates, still see version H from March 13.

[Ryan Berry]

Hi Axiom,

 

The main revision of the QX-5 will not have changed (still H).  The network firmware revision should have updated to 03.05.15 and can be seen in the setup menu.  If yours hasn't updated, simply have the QX-5 connected to your Ethernet network so that it can look online for the new file.  The QX-5 looks for new revisions every time it is turned "on" out of sleep mode.  If it's still not updating, give us a call and I'm sure we can get it set.

 

-Ryan

[Vule]

Hi Ryan,

 

Probably there are no so many demands for that but...but enabling AES/EBU DUAL MODE on QX-5 would be much appreciated from some users like me. Of course it would require an upgrade. Any thought about it?

[Ryan Berry]

On ‎7‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 5:26 AM, Vule said:

Hi Ryan,

 

Probably there are no so many demands for that but...but enabling AES/EBU DUAL MODE on QX-5 would be much appreciated from some users like me. Of course it would require an upgrade. Any thought about it?

 

I'll look into it.  On first glance, I think there's some hardware limitations on the current board for this due to all the isolation work we put into the inputs, but I'll talk with Ariel when he's back on the 9th to see if he has any thoughts on if we can work around them or draft them into a new board.

 

Yours would be the first request I've heard for the feature, but it sounds interesting and I'd like to at least look more into it.  Thanks for the idea!

[Vule]

Thanks for taking it in consideration. 

It will bring QX-5 DIGITAL HUB on even higher level, considering improvement of SQ and overall connectivity with Ultra Hi-End DD Convertors/Players.

[Ryan Berry]

Hi Vule,

 

I spoke with the R&D department about this possibility and are unfortunately limited by the hardware inside of the unit.  While our DAC could certainly handle it, there's some other components that cannot without having twice as many of them, and we simply didn't plan on that when it was designed.  Retro-fitting such a thing into the circuit really wouldn't be a very realistic option either without replacing the entire board.  

 

I can't say that it'll never be a possibility...we never say never at Ayre!  But at the moment, it wasn't going to be an easy thing to do as I was hoping it may have been.

[Vule]

Thanks for Your honest reply. It makes sense. Let us all see which features and queries a future will bring. If it appears one day I'm sure mine will be the first in the line for the upgrade.

 

Cheers to all good people from Ayre Acoustics

 

Vuile

[Ryan Berry]

Thanks Vule!  I was honestly bummed out.  I thought it'd be a neat feature to tack on if it was easy to do.  You'll definitely see an announcement if something changes in the future.

[Vule]

Installed the latest update on my QX-5/20. As the end user I CONFIRM sonic improvement while using network audio playback.

Thanks!!!                                      

[Ryan Berry]

Glad you like it, Vule.  We have some further improvements we're just finishing up, so keep your eye out for another firmware update soon.

[thyname]

New firmware upgrade for QX-5 Twenty!

 

 

[Vule]

The best is yet to come !

[thyname]

5 hours ago, Vule said:

The best is yet to come !

 

‘This sounds pretty good, but what do you mean?

[Axiom05]

@Ryan Berry, @vortecjr

 

I'm hoping to get some help on why I am having so much trouble reestablishing a USB connection between my ultraRendu & my QX5-Twenty. It seems that whenever I have to restart my ultraRendu I have to go through all sorts of machinations in order to get these two pieces to talk to each other. This has become extremely frustrating as there seems to be no consistent pattern to solving the problem. My QB-9DSD always required me to cycle the power off and on to fix this kind of issue, but it always worked. Yesterday, with the QX-5,  I tried all of the usual tricks involving startup/turn-on order, power cycling which have worked in the past, however this time to no avail. At one point I was able to see the QX-5 under DAC Diagnostics on the ultraRendu but there still was no connection between mpd and the QX-5. It seemed like the ultraRendu could "see" the QX-5 but not the reverse. Finally, against all past experience, I rebooted the ultraRendu with the QX-5 on and this reestablished the USB connection allowing me to once again play music. I fear that one day I will not be able to get these two pieces to work together at all. I have had the QX-5 for nearly a year and this issue has gotten progressively worse (QX-5 or uR firmware updates?), going from no issue at all to now being ready to pull my hair out. Yesterday all I did was power down the ultraRendu to disconnect it from the system and then later on reconnect & restart it, no updates or other changes were involved.

 

Is there something obvious that I am missing here? Is there a known, reliable procedure to establishing a USB connection between a renderer/streamer and the QX-5? I am not ruling out that this issue lies at the ultraRendu end or that these two pieces of gear just aren't that compatible (for whatever reason). Whatever the cause of the problem, I would like to find a solution if possible. Any help would be appreciated. I would also be interested to hear if anyone else has encountered similar issues.

 

 

Thanks in advance!

Bob

[thyname]

Hey Bob, You are probably aware that QX-5 has a network bridge built in. Roon Ready and UPnP and DLNA capable to use with many apps.

 

Are you using ultraRendu with it instead of built in Network Bridge because it sounds better to you? 

[Ultrarunner]

3 minutes ago, thyname said:

Hey Bob, You are probably aware that QX-5 has a network bridge built in. Roon Ready and UPnP and DLNA capable to use with many apps.

 

Are you using ultraRendu with it instead of built in Network Bridge because it sounds better to you? 

I find my QX-5 sounds better using an ultraRendu at the USB input.than using it’s Ethernet input..

 

Bob, I have none of the problems you are experiencing. I normally leave all my gear on 24/7 but when I’m experimenting with components or cables I don’t have to follow any specific power-on sequence.

 

I recently did lots of AB comparisons with an UpTone LPS-1.2 powering the uR. This meant turning the uRendu off and on numerous times. Never once did I have any issues.

 

I use Roon now and previously Squeezelite. I think I might have used MPD and I did try UPnP. and Shairport. All work fine with the QX-5. Have you tried other protocols? Perhaps it’s something unrelated to the two devices such as a network issue? You could try emailing Jesus at Sonore and see if he has any ideas. 

[thyname]

1 hour ago, Ultrarunner said:

I find my QX-5 sounds better using an ultraRendu at the USB input.than using it’s Ethernet input..

 

 

 

‘Have you tried the new firmware and network update?

 

Latest general firmware version is “K”.

 

Bridge firmware version is 03.06.40

[Axiom05]

4 hours ago, thyname said:

Hey Bob, You are probably aware that QX-5 has a network bridge built in. Roon Ready and UPnP and DLNA capable to use with many apps.

 

Are you using ultraRendu with it instead of built in Network Bridge because it sounds better to you? 

@thyname Thanks for you response. My QX-5 does not have the network module, I didn't feel that it was worth the added cost at the present time. I've been very happy with using the ultraRendu and mpd, extremely happy with the sound quality of this combination.

[Axiom05]

@Ultrarunner Thank you for sharing your experience with this combination, I also think that the ultraRendu and QX-5 sound great together. Your suggestion to look into a network issue is a good one. I hadn't really considered this as once everything is working I never have any problems, only after rebooting the uR do I have any issues reconnecting to the QX-5. I'll look into this.

[Ryan Berry]

Hey Bob,

 

I'll put my thoughts on this up here and a bit of a background information below it.  That way you can choose to read the short answer or the whole insider information as you'd prefer.  So here's the short(er) answer:

 

I don't believe the issue you're seeing is firmware-related, at least on the QX-5 end.  The fact that it's getting progressively worse for you is my main reasoning here.  The QX-5 is using effectively the same circuit and firmware for the USB as the QB-9 did and has remained unchanged since the QX-5's release.  The firmwares we have updated are unrelated to the USB portion of the circuit, so I don't believe that is the cause.  If things are changing, then I think something else is at play.  That leaves us either with firmware on the ultraRendu (if it's been updated more recently) or hardware - either the QX-5, the ultraRendu, or even the USB cable as the more likely culprits.  For reasons I'll explain below in the longish story, my initial reaction is something hardware-related.

 

Some quick things that I would try to help eliminate a few variables: if you have a high end, multi-hundred dollar USB cable, try swapping it out for the cheap USB cable that comes with the QX-5 or really any printer USB cable you may have lying around the house.  Sonics aside, the one thing that the mass-market cables have had in common is that they typically have all been very reliable connection-wise, where the high end cables had to go through a bit of a learning curve after we released the USB Class 2.0 interface in the QB-9.  I'm not saying to NOT use a high-end cable if you feel it makes it sound better, but the standard USB cables are very useful in diagnosing problems due to their consistency.

 

If the problem remains, I would try to take the ultraRendu out and connect directly to the PC.  If the QX-5 is negotiating with the PC just fine, then the problem is potentially with the ultraRendu that we'd want to investigate further.  If the QX-5 and the PC are also having issues, then it could be a cold solder joint or some part that's on the edge of failing in the QX-5.  That typically hasn't been our experience when trying to resolve similar issues in the past, but it is certainly possible.  We'd have to get your unit in at that point to get it corrected for you, but I'm sure we could get it fixed.  I'll also try and reach out to Sonore and see if we can get a unit in at Ayre to test a bit with in the meantime.  If you'd be willing to try those out and get back to me, we can figure out the next step to making the system work right for you.  The probably least convenient thing to try would be finally trying to use a different PC and see if the issue remains should none of the other variables have an effect, so I'll try not to put you through that.  Feel free to message me, email me, or call me at Ayre.  I know we'll get it worked out as best we can, it can take a bit of time to make sure we're addressing the right component when it comes to digital

 

So story time.  It's long, but I thought it interesting, so hopefully some others do too:

 

The USB negotiation is always a frustration for a design team, as there's elements involved that you have little to no control over.  As a bit of a backstory (mainly so I don't sound like the typical company claiming their product is fine and it must be something else): when we released the 192kHz version of the QB-9 in 2010, everything was working perfectly.  We were lucky with this bit of technology as we were able to completely design our own implementation circuit design-wise when we introduced the QB-9.  Because of that, the hardware has remained relatively unchanged for the USB interface, which we know has been very reliable for us.  The only thing that has shifted in the years that followed was adding some minor features like higher PCM and DSD rates that took more work in the DAC than the interface.  I believe we were the second company after Wavelength to use their solution and were really a big factor for the eventual popularity of asynchronous USB in high-end audio, so we've been using a form of the same technology for about a decade now.  

About 2 years after the 192kHz release, which DID require a new circuit to handle USB 2.0 connections, we began getting reports  of computers that would need to be reset by unplugging in the unit and plugging it in again any time their computer system was powered off or went into sleep mode.  We spent the next few months trying to fix this problem, which was particularly difficult as, no matter what I tried at Ayre (I was a technician with the company at the time), I could not get the problem to occur at the factory.  You can imagine it's hard to fix a problem you can't see.  We finally had a Ayre user gracious enough to send his computer in that was exhibiting the problem, and sure enough, we could see it every time.  This set us to trying all sorts of firmware options to try and solve the problem.  During that time, another person called in and was explaining the issue to me and mentioned the brand of computer they were using, which was a Dell, matching the computer that was sent in to us.  I then began calling back the other people who had a similar problem, and sure enough, every single one of them was using a Dell at the time.  1 year later, and the same issue began showing up in Apple computers, then HP about 3 months after that.  It turned out whatever supplier the companies were using for their USB host controller is common between all of the major brands and it was working its way through the companies as they ordered in new stock.

 

You can imagine the luck I had trying to convince these companies that their hardware had an issue.  We're a small audio manufacturer with only hundreds, not thousands of QB-9s released by then and only a handful of high-end companies by this point had adopted the technology.  To their credit, HP took me seriously enough to put me in touch with their senior design engineer, the rest gave me the canned customer service response and I never heard back from them.  However, about 8 months later, I did notice that new computers released by all three of the companies began working correctly, so I assume there was a similar incompatibility with something they couldn't ignore.  In the end, the problem was more or less resolved (except for those that had a computer made during that time!)  My understanding is that they don't work to this day, so I don't think it was simply a driver problem they could easily fix.

 

At any rate, this isn't the first time we've had to go down this path, so I'm sure we can figure out where the issue lies.  Hopefully it will be just an easy problem, like a bad solder joint, and we can get it fixed and get you back to listening quickly.  Please let me know what you find out with the suggestions I posted above to isolate the problem piece and we'll do what we can to get you taken care of.  My biggest issue isn't trying to fix it, but having you ship the unit in and lose it for a week, only for us to ship it back with the same problem when we can't find anything and try just arbitrarily swapping boards in the unit that won't address the actual problem.  

[Ryan Berry]

11 minutes ago, Axiom05 said:

@Ultrarunner Thank you for sharing your experience with this combination, I also think that the ultraRendu and QX-5 sound great together. Your suggestion to look into a network issue is a good one. I hadn't really considered this as once everything is working I never have any problems, only after rebooting the uR do I have any issues reconnecting to the QX-5. I'll look into this.

 

Your impression isn't really surprising on the Ethernet vs. USB.  For the USB, we have a really good relationship with Gordon at Wavelength and had the advantage of working with someone that had a design that was made for high-end audio.  This meant that for our products, the changes to the layout were fairly minimal and easy to implement.  For Ethernet, there were very few companies in the world at the time that we found had the right combination of some features we knew would make the interface sound better.  In each case you had to buy a pre-built module from them that you then had to interface to.  We ended up picking a company that would sell us the smallest portion of the circuit, meaning you could add your out your own power supply, clock, etc. (though you could certainly buy the full ready-to-go module as well if you preferred).  This let us design the surrounding circuit ourselves, meaning that the only part of the circuit not designed the "Ayre way" is limited to as little of the circuit as possible, letting us get better power supplies, clock, and isolation added among our other tricks of the trade.  The company has also been extremely responsive to our requests, which has helped us add features like Roon compatibility, resolve a lot of bugs we ran into when first adopted the module, and work further with them to better interface with our somewhat unique way of handling data.  Since it's a module used by a number of other high-end manufacturers, they in turn have been able to benefit from these changes has made the interface better as a whole, which we feel pretty good about.

 

In the end, what we ended up is still a compromise, but everything's a compromise when it comes to design.  It's the best version of the technology we believe can be made without Ayre having a huge budget to spend on another team of engineers trying to make something better ourselves...and thus making everything cost more.  Charley, Ariel, and Brendan have always been fantastic at thinking outside of the box and implementing technology in ways never thought about before, but there's always only so much time in the day.  In the meantime, we always have our eyes out for more options, and you never know what the future holds.  Perhaps one day we'll be able to devote the resources to creating our own solution from scratch and we can do some of the tweaking like we did with the ESS DACs to get even better performance from it. 

 

I should mention that I don't mean to make it sound like the Ethernet interface is terrible.  It's not, or it wouldn't be in the product.  We're perfectionists here at Ayre, so we're never completely happy with anything, nor should we be.  We're often our own worst critics and that drives us to keep making things better.  I will say that the Ethernet is far less dependent on the source than USB, but still not immune.  USB, no matter how much isolation you throw at it, is affected by the source pretty heavily.  An Apple doesn't sound like a Dell, which doesn't sound like a custom PC running Windows 10, which sounds different from a PC running Windows XP, etc. so it's not surprising that adding another isolator on top of the isolation already in the Ayre products has some effect.  We run into something similar with our power conditioners.  Most of our products have some level of power conditioning built-in, but plugging the unit into an L-5 tended to make the system sound better.  We even tried daisy-chaining them to see when the benefit ended...the answer was it depended on how noisy your power supply was.  For the Ethernet, I feel the network at Ayre didn't sound as good as my network at home, but the unit also changed locations.  I haven't had the time to experiment more with the unit on an isolated network at Ayre yet to see how much of an effect network traffic may have been making, but I'm certain there is AN effect of some level.

 

For USB, we use a Melco player at Ayre because it is a specialized player that doesn't have to drive displays or handle all the variety of things a normal computer does, meaning the system isn't running nearly as hard all the time.  You can build something custom that's similar, but this was convenient as it was right out of the box and ready to go.  It's also been nice for testing as it's consistent.  It doesn't get updated much, so we don't have to worry about the sound changing and skewing later tests.  When we tried different isolators with the Melco, we didn't hear much change, but certainly could when we put it into my system at home that was running off my main computer.   Of course, your mileage may vary.

[austinpop]

8 hours ago, thyname said:

 

‘Have you tried the new firmware and network update?

 

Latest general firmware version is “K”.

 

Bridge firmware version is 03.06.40

 

I updated both and had a listen. As @Ryan Berry and others have stated, an optimized chain feeding the USB input still sounds significantly better than the Ethernet input.

 

Some day...

[thyname]

10 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

I updated both and had a listen. As @Ryan Berry and others have stated, an optimized chain feeding the USB input still sounds significantly better than the Ethernet input.

 

Some day...

 

‘Very interesting! Never tried any streamer via USB to my QX-5 Twenty. Only via its built in network card.

 

That will change now, as I have an Innuos ZEN MK3 on order. Should arrive in a couple of weeks. It’s supposed to have highly optimized USB output. Will see...

[rickca]

7 hours ago, Ryan Berry said:

the standard USB cables are very useful in diagnosing problems due to their consistency

Ryan, I went through exactly this with you.  I couldn't get the driver to install for my QB-9 and you suggested this troubleshooting step.  I was skeptical but I tried it.  The problem turned out to be the latest whizbang USB cable I had on loan from my dealer.

 

There aren't many companies whose President will take the time to write very complete answers like your posts in this thread.  Ayre is a class act.

[Ryan Berry]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

Ryan, I went through exactly this with you.  I couldn't get the driver to install for my QB-9 and you suggested this troubleshooting step.  I was skeptical but I tried it.  The problem turned out to be the latest whizbang USB cable I had on loan from my dealer.

 

There aren't many companies whose President will take the time to write very complete answers like your posts in this thread.  Ayre is a class act.

 

I appreciate that.  I had a good mentor in Charley for that.  We just want everyone to get to enjoy their music, it shouldn't be a hassle to do so!