Ayre QB-9 Twenty upgrade

[Norman]

I got my upgrade the other day. The first thing I noticed is that it didn’t work. The computer didn’t recognize the DAC. It worked fine the day I shipped it to Ayre for the upgrade, but didn’t work when I got it back. Why?

 

What I (think) I discovered is that the Twenty upgrade seems to require USB power, which was not the case with the DSD upgrade. In order to make the Twenty upgrade work I had to switch my SOtM tX-USBexp card from USB power OFF to USB power ON (the red switch on the PCI card). If true, at least in theory, this is a step backward, as the DSD version did not require USB power.

 

Has anyone else experienced the same thing? I’d like not to use USB power from the computer (or external linear power supply) if that is still possible.

[Norman]

Thank you for your thoughts on this. I tried your suggestions, and here are the results:
 

Changing USB cables makes no difference.

 

Switching the USB power off once the computer recognizes the DAC immediately switches the DAC from Play mode (display shows three horizontal blue bars) to Standby mode (display shows single green LED).
 

Toggling USB power on and off while the Windows 10 Sound control panel is open both toggles the DAC between play and standby mode and toggles the computer between recognizing the DAC and not recognizing it. In other words, both the behavior of the DAC and the behavior of the computer indicate that the DAC needs USB power for the computer to recognize it (and to play music).

 

Finally, when connecting the Ayre to any of the “ordinary” USB ports on the computer (not the fancy SOtM card, which allows USB power to be switched on and off), the computer recognizes the unit and everything works fine. That’s because the ordinary USB ports provide 5V to the DAC by default. The DAC gets the power it needs.

 

So, all of my experiments (the ones you suggest and others) point in the same direction. It seems that the QB-9 Twenty upgrade now requires power from the USB port, whereas the DSD upgrade did not.

 

I’d love to get confirmation of this and, if it’s true, would like to know why the folks at Ayre made the decision to again require power from the USB port.

[Norman]

Hi Ryan. Thank you for the detailed explanation. Yeah. I can easily understand the dilemma. If there is no real difference between the two sources of power, and if you can eliminate the noise from the transformer laminations, eliminating the transformer makes perfect sense. I really appreciate the transparency in your explanation. Anyone who reads this will understand the decision.

[Norman]

I asked the question because the Twenty upgrade did not work out of the box without identifying the problem and changing my system configuration. Hence, I was looking for confirmation that there had indeed been a change in the design. Others may have the same experience, so Ryan’s contribution here may help them as well.

 

So true. It’s amazing that Ayre saw fit to provide an upgrade to a mature product. Very cool!

[Norman]

In response to CG, the sound quality is fantastic. Aural memory is far from perfect, but the upgraded version sounds super clean. Background noise is zero. Instruments and voices sound very natural. If pushed to specifics, I would say that the single most noticeable change is in the soundstaging. To my ears, the soundstage is larger in all dimensions: wider, taller, and deeper than before. For music that was actually recorded in a real space (in contrast to music constructed from parts recorded separately), the players are spread out further on the stage, allowing each one to be localized better in space. I particularly noticed an increase in image height. All said, I’m super-excited about the sound quality of the Twenty upgrade.

 

I was told (in a phone conversation with Ayre) that Ayre is preparing a firmware update for the unit to address an issue whereby the DAC will cycle between standby and play under certain conditions. Perhaps Ryan can comment further.

 

My system at the moment:

Ayre QB-9 Twenty—>CAPS 3 computer with LPS and SOTm USB port—>Sonic Frontiers SFL-1 Signature preamp—>McIntosh MC2000 amp or homebrew PP 2A3 amp or homebrew SE 45 amp or homebrew SE 300B monoblocs or homebrew SE 211 monoblocs—>Avantgarde Duo 3.0

[Norman]

Ha! I just saw desbiss’s post. Yes. I have the same cycling problem but haven’t received the firmware update. Running the DAC with the cover off is my temporary solution. I was expecting the firmware update to appear on the Support—>Firmware page of the Ayre web site, but it wasn’t there as of yesterday. Would love to get that update.

[Norman]

Yep. I’m sure that they’ll put it online when it’s final. Glad to hear that the version you have has solved the problem.

[Norman]

Hello all. My temporary solution to the cycling issue was to remove the cover from the DAC. This prevents heat buildup, which seems to trigger the problem. In the case of my unit, it would work for a while when cool, but will eventually fail in the way that everyone is reporting, including the brief err message. Removing the cover may help until the firmware fix becomes broadly available.

[Norman]

Beautiful, clean board design. Nice Wima film caps and good Rubycon electrolytics. Just as clean and elegant as it gets.

[Norman]

Thank you, Ryan, for weighing in. I’ll contact you privately for the firmware update. Thank you for making this available!