Ayre QB-9 Twenty upgrade

[Ryan Berry]

I'm glad it got back safe to you.  One of the drawbacks of the level of upgrade is that we had to replace just about everything inside the unit, so you will be starting over on the break-in process.  That said, I think you'll be pleased with it.  I've ended up liking this upgrade quite a bit more than I did the DSD upgrade back in 2013.

Cheers,

Ryan Berry

[Ryan Berry]

4 hours ago, Norman said:

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.

 

Hi Norman, I think I can help here.  As you suspect, the QB-9 Twenty did eliminate the internal power supply that we introduced with the DSD upgrade.  Simply put, putting an additional linear power supply to run the USB section for the DSD upgrade ended up being a terrible decision for us that caused a lot of headaches.  We spent a lot of time having hundreds of people compare A to B between the power supply being on and off in the QB-9, and ultimately, found that it didn't seem to make any difference in almost every system for almost every person who compared one to the other. 

 

What was reported almost daily for the first three years of the DSD upgrade was how "loud" the unit was with the additional transformer.  People frankly hated such a small box having the ability to emit ANY noise, even if it was something you had to be within 6-8 inches of the unit to hear.  It's a complaint that we continue to receive for the QB-9 DSD, particularly in Europe.  Since we can't make the transformer completely silent and having two transformers is just another component creating noise without providing notable benefit to the sound, we decided to eliminate it for the Twenty model.  In actuality, we kept the option on the PCB just in case we needed to make it an option for people, but the upgrade's pretty new still, so this is the first bit of feedback on the change.

 

Hopefully that helps answer why we removed it.  Putting internal power in is really easy to do, but functionally, the cons seem to outweigh the pros in the case of the QB-9.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Berry

[Ryan Berry]

4 hours ago, Tone Deaf said:

Picked mine up yesterday.  Right out of the box it's clearly a significant upgrade. 

 

Was pleasantly surprised that Ayre would offer such an upgrade to the discontinued QB-9.  A big shout-out to Ayre for offering it.

 

Thanks Tone Deaf,

 

I won't pretend that it's not tempting at times to just roll an upgrade of this magnitude into a new product.  It makes for an easy new product to release, but it's not the way Ayre likes to operate.  We know the investment people put into their systems and to force people to buy a new chassis just to get the latest technology just doesn't ring well for us.  So we try and keep everyone current as much as we can.  There's limits of course, and this will probably be the last upgrade for the QB-9 Twenty, but the QB-9 was always a special product for us and we wanted to honor it one more time and thank everyone that is a fan of our products.  Glad you're enjoying it!

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Berry

[Ryan Berry]

Hey Felipe,

Feel free to send us an email I'm sure we can coordinate something with you.  Our email's listed on the Contact section of Ayre website.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

Hey All,

 

My apologies for replying so late.  I was hit by a pretty bad bug recently, which but me out of commission right when the firmware update for the QB-9 was completed.  As mentioned, yes, we have released a firmware update after the first 40ish units of the QB-9 were released.  There's an error cycle that happens on roughly 5% of the units that is causing it to be a little over-sensitive in detecting an error.  Fortunately, it's not indicative of anything like unstable power, etc. coming into the unit and is fixable through a firmware update.  The update itself requires a 5/64" hex driver to open the unit, a USB flash stick, and enough knowledge to unzip a file and not touch the metal bits when you have the unit open and powered on; but I'm happy to work with anyone to help them update their unit themselves or get the unit back to Ayre to be updated for them.

 

If you're wanting to do the update yourself, the quickest way to get ahold of me is probably through here.  Please include your email address and I'll send the file and instructions over to you.  Thanks to everyone for helping us pick up the bug.  We try to put in a number of protections in all of our gear to protect the systems they're installed in, but we were a bit over-cautious on this one.  I'm quite confident that with the update the units will be working as expected for you.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Berry 

[Ryan Berry]

On 11/8/2019 at 3:32 PM, Norman said:

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

 

Thanks Norman!  We take a lot of pride in our layouts and Ariel is an absolute genius when it comes to circuit design.  I'm glad you were impressed!

[Ryan Berry]

On 11/6/2019 at 8:16 AM, desbiss said:

I've upgraded mine, and after a rocky start I am loving it! Mine initially had USB cycling (3 blue bars on display, then standby light and so on... perpetual loop). Apparently there was an issue where the USB receiver in my DAC thought there wasn’t enough voltage. I worked with my dealer & Ayre and they provided a firmware update that resolved the issue. Even before being broken in it clearly bettered mine with the QB-9 DSD upgrade.

 

Only issue now is that mine is NOT (yet) Native DSD compatible. I have worked with Antipodes (my renderer is an EX) and been able to conclude that it is not my EX, so Antipodes has reached out to Ayre. Note: I am able to use DoP but it only goes to half the advertised DSD rate due to the larger bandwidth used with DoP. So only 128 for me right now.

 

Antipodes has reached out to Ayre and I am hopeful that another firmware update from Ayre will get Native DSD enabled, as this was a major selling feature for me.

 

Just to confirm, we have been talking with Antipodes.  It all seems related to flags and Linux, so we'll be looking into it further based on their advice.  Once we've figured out what needs to be done, the update will be in the form of a firmware release for one unit or the other.

[Ryan Berry]

2 hours ago, desbiss said:

Hi Ryan! Kindest thanks for your response. I am excited for the Native DSD 256 functionality, so if there is anything I can do to assist please let me know.

 

Also, this may not be specific to Linux... My dealer mentioned that the issue is also occurring in a Mac OS scenario. They have a customer using Roon via Mac OS who is having the same issues as myself with Native DSD and files above DSD128 (ie no DSD265 when using DoP, and no Native DSD whatsoever).

 

Again, sincerest thanks!

 

I'll look into this one more, but my current understanding is that's an unfortunate limitation of the Macs.  They insist on doing everything through DoP, so you lose half the rate.  I haven't dug long enough to find the workaround there, if there is one.

[Ryan Berry]

13 hours ago, Ultrarunner said:

Ryan, is a similar update for the QX-5 in the works?

 

We tend to avoid announcing any updates before we're ready to release it.  The QX-5 already has much of what the QB-9 received in this update -- particularly the Twenty circuit design.  So the quick change would simply address the USB section.  While I know that makes a difference beyond just the capability to play Native DSD, we're always pretty hesitant to release an upgrade unless it's more significant than just that.  The DSD version of the QB-9 and DX-5 upgrades is an example of how we weren't happy just enabling DSD and charging for it.  Ayre's never been a company that releases yearly updates just to get you to keep sending your unit in to us.  That said, we are always working on things to improve our products beyond where we are today, so once we have accumulated a list of upgrades that is worthy of the product, I'm quite certain we'll have something available.

[Ryan Berry]

3 hours ago, colop said:

Hi,

Thank you for the pics.

I wonder, what is that RJ45 connector for, next to the USB port?

Simply for programming the bootloader on our FPGA so that the firmware is field-upgradeable.

[Ryan Berry]

1 hour ago, jma2 said:

Hi all,

 

As desbiss assumed correctly, a firmware update managed to get the initial problem solved. I am able to play music via the Squeezebox Touch and the Uptone USB REGEN. I haven't done too much listening with respect to the quality of the sound as I want it to break in over the week and further because it's a bit hectic with work now.

 

One thing I tried was to verify the PCM claims (up to 384kHz). I used the 2L test bench and in particular the first track (the Hoff Ensemble (nice track by the way!)). When I played back the 24bit/352.8kHz version of it, either I ran into problems or the Ayre ran into problems (could somebody verify if this track plays with you? It would be very much appreciated). I unexpectedly heard an irregular very low-frequency rumble in stead of the nice track. The rest of the PCM tracks worked fine and since I couldn't find any 384kHz track, I couldn't test the max rating.

 

 

I will try DSD later.

 

Dear Ryan, is there a way for us to determine which firmware version we are running? If more versions of it get into circulation it may be difficult to pinpoint issues or to compare. And how will we find out if a new version becomes available?

 

Kind regards,

Jan

 

 

Hi Jan,

 

I've had no problems with playing 352.8kHz files here using Foobar, but I'll try it with the file you linked.  It will likely be tomorrow for me to be able to get to this.  I'd be surprised if it doesn't work, but anything is possible.  There's a few factors that can be at play in this setup, so we can at least start with verifying that the QB-9 is handling the file correctly directly from the PC and work from there.

 

Right now there's only two versions of the firmware: one that may get caught in the "Err" loop and one that doesn't.  Sonically, they're otherwise identical (as long as the first version isn't caught in the aforementioned loop).  That said, if we release another version in the future, I've asked Ariel to add on a splash screen when the unit is first plugged in to show the firmware the unit is currently running, so that will appear in future versions.  Otherwise, it can be checked using the AyreLink ports on the back, but honestly setting up that port to connect to a computer is more work than it's worth just to check a firmware version.

 

As far as future releases, if you're not already, you can signup for our mailing list on the Ayre webpage at www.ayre.com.  As we update any of our products, we send announcements through our list there.  If you scroll to the bottom of any page on our site, you can see a field to enter your email address for the newsletter.

 

Cheers,

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

15 hours ago, FelipeRolim said:

Although Twenty was announced to be the latest hardware upgrade planned for the QB-9, it would be perfect if we could continue to receive improvements through the firmware.

 

Of course.  If there's any easy to implement changes that we can put in in the future, we'll certainly do so.  We're hobbyists too and always try to improve on what we've done as we learn.  I'm not sure what those may entail right now, but anything is possible.

[Ryan Berry]

I think you're right, Barrows.  We bypass so much in the ESS chips beyond just the filters that we definitely do not use them as intended (but they sound MUCH better to us this way).  I've not noticed much of a difference between PCM and DSD with our implementation, but I also have to admit that I haven't sat down to really critically listen to each method for much time recently.  If anyone has spent some time with the Twenty version to experiment with this, I'm always interested in hearing what people think.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

Hey Des,

 

Thanks for the report.  It sounds like something I need to play with more.  Are you using any additional filtering in their DSP engine or just the conversion to DSD? 

 

DSD 256 is something the unit could technically support in the QB-9, but not with the improvements we made in getting the data from the USB microcontroller to the DAC chip in the QB-9 Twenty.  We did a LOT of listening to the more traditional method vs. our new way of handling the data and there was a pretty clear winner to us.  The tradeoff was that it caps us off at DSD 128 in the unit without getting into some really expensive oscillators like the QX-5 uses.  Theoretically, we could have had it simply revert to sending data the normal way when playing DSD 256, but it makes zero sense to have a higher sample rate that we know will sound worse than the lower rates.  We can likely get more out of it with other lines, but I doubt we'll be able to simply patch in some firmware that gets around this.  I hate to sound negative on something, as I love nothing more than to figure out solutions around issues, but I also hate to have you hoping for something we've done a few rounds on already.  You never know what we may come up with, however!

 

Glad to be a part of the community.  I'm a hobbiest myself and have a lot of similar interests to people here even outside of being a manufacturer, so this is probably the place I'm most active.

 

Cheers,

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

1 hour ago, desbiss said:

I also wanted to clarify - my enquiry was regarding Native DSD 265. You and I have been in email dialogue regarding it not working (yet) with my Antipodes EX. We had not yet conversed regarding potential resolution.

 

Ah, right you are!  I had DSD 512 in my head from a conversation I had with another Ayre user yesterday.  Sorry for the confusion.  Yes, DSD 256 SHOULD be a simple fix.  We'll try and follow up with Antipodes to see where we're at on this one.  On a positively note, Melco recently sent us an update to try on our Melco unit here and we were able to play DSD 256 successfully, so I'm quite confident that it's possible.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

2 hours ago, desbiss said:

That’s great news! Thanks again Ryan.

 

As an update: when I last checked with Antipodes they had connected Ariel with an individual who is familiar with the automatic Native DSD detection in the Linux software used by Small Green Computer and Sonore, (as well as Antipodes).

 

I understand the problem is not in using the QB-9 with Linux kernels, but the QB-9 Twenty firmware’s ability to be detected as Native DSD capable in the aforementioned Linux application.

 

Thanks again for the cross-company collaboration. Cheers!

 

Hi Des,

 

I'll let Ariel and handle that.  After further looking into things, I don't believe this is the final solution, and as the QB-9 is working flawlessly with other platforms like the Melco, I suspect it's just a matter of tweaking on the Antipodes end.  Again, I don't want to say too much on the subject as I'm not involved with the firmware end outside of the conceptual level, but the goods news is we know that it can work with the firmware in the QB-9 as-is.  There's been a few emails that have gone back and forth on this, so I'll want to check with Ariel once he's back from his trip for the latest update before saying more.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

21 hours ago, FelipeRolim said:

I've never seen an advantage in handling files for DSD conversion and applying particular filters/algorithms when DAC is not no-oversampling. If QB-9 "Twenty" continues to apply its own filters or its own upsampling/oversampling, even when using external conversion, there should be no advantage. Personally, I prefer to always work with files in their original format. But I think this is very relative from system to system. Sabre chips usually deal better with DSD, and I believe bit-by-bit data transmission is less dependent on clock synchronization between devices compared to 16 or 24-bit closed packet transmission. There are a lot of factors that determine the outcome, and perhaps that is why DSD works better. But, with good transport, the formats should play with equal quality.

 

Another determining factor of the result is the driver. The driver provided by Ayre, although a bit outdated, in my opinion, is a key to getting the best possible result from DAC. So, I think QB-9 works at its maximum potential with Windows (and the specific driver) than with Linux. I've tried over ten Linux operating systems (including AudioLinux and Euphony), and QB-9 always performs better with Windows, among other factors, also because of its specific Thesycon driver. It is critical to the best result.

 

Hi Felipe,

 

I tend to agree, and I know Charley was fairly vocal on his feelings on DSD/PCM differences (or lack thereof) in the past, but I'm always open to an excuse to go listen to some music some more to test!  Computer audio can be tricky at times when it comes to nailing down what is making the real difference, especially when different players enter the mix.  Testing every combination can become a huge time commitment once you start comparing Windows vs. Apple, vs. Linux, fanless systems, dedicated players vs. general use computers, Roon vs. Decibel vs. Audirvana, etc...it gets overwhelming quick.  Similar to you, I always like to play it as recorded.  It sounds best to me in the tests I've done in the past, but not so much that I would discount the possibility of bias of wanting to keep it simple.

 

It's interesting you should mention the driver.  We actually have a brand new one this year that's completely updated and necessary for raw/native DSD playback on Windows.  You can find it on our page at https://www.ayre.com/support/, select Firmware, and then select the USB Driver tab.  Let me know if you have any trouble with it.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

Hi All,

 

A lot to talk about in this thread.  I'll try and stay in order:

 

On 12/15/2019 at 7:30 AM, CG said:

Second point...  With the QB-9 DSD, I'd used an UpTone ISO Regen with the short USPCB adaptor.  It made a substantial difference in performance.  For some reason, I cannot make the system work now with the ISO Regen.  No communication at all, no matter what order I plug things in and turn things on.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that I'm not sure the ISO Regen is needed now or would even help.  The aspects of the sound that the ISO Regen previously improved are already much better with the streaming computer now connected directly to the QB-9 Twenty through the very same cable as used previously.  Yeah, I'd like to solve the mystery of why the ISO Regen won't work now (I did make certain the switch on the USPCB adaptor was set in the right position to power the QB-9 Twenty's USB section) but, maybe in the end it won't matter.  Sometimes less can be more.

 

Hi CG, as Tone Deaf mentioned, there shouldn't be a reason the QB-9 isn't working with the ISO Regen that I can think of.  As you already are aware, the QB-9 Twenty reverted back to having the USB section powered externally as the original QB-9 did.  This was mainly a choice we made due to issues with people being able to hear the second transformer in the unit and because we've really never heard a system ourselves that having the power internally made much of a sound quality difference.  Without a noticeable benefit, it was hard to justify keeping it in there.  That said, the QB-9 Twenty's USB section pulls around 300 mA of current, so I can't imagine it's an incompatibility that's at play here.  Knowing that the QB-9 is working directly, I'd be inclined to think that the issue is happening somewhere else.  I wish I had more advice here, but outside of trying other USB cables, the best thing I could think of is to perhaps reach out to UpTone and see if they have any ideas. 

 

We have added additional filtering in the QB-9 Twenty's USB interface, which could POTENTIALLY cause too attenuation if another device upstream uses similar filtering, but I wouldn't expect this to work with one person's system and not anothers.  That's the only thing outside of power that I can think of.

 

On 12/15/2019 at 7:30 AM, CG said:

Finally, one reviewer of the QX-5 compared it to his own QB-9 DSD.  If I understood his description right, he didn't find much difference between the QX-5 and the QB-9 DSD.  Nuanced and slightly were the words he used.  

 

Everyone will hear systems differently, and I would say that any Ayre product has similarities between the lines that has always been present, just as any manufacturer tends to, of course.  That said, I'd be pretty surprised if anyone found the QX-5 Twenty and the QB-9 DSD as only sounding slightly different from one another.  The QX-5 Twenty has always been on its own level in clarity to us at Ayre, and I would have a hard time thinking anyone that spent some time with the two systems wouldn't hear it in short order.  Obviously, the QX-5 also boasts more ways to use the product, including as a streamer, but the QB-9 DSD and the QX-5 Twenty are really fundamentally different. 

 

While the QB-9 Twenty is a closer move toward what the QX-5 Twenty contains, they are still quite separated in a side-by-side comparison to my ears.  There's simply components in the QX-5 Twenty that would have blown the budget of the QB-9 Twenty upgrade that would have made it not feasible (not to mention figuring out how to fit everything inside the QB-9 box!)  Where to draw the line is something we always tend to struggle with in a new design...it's always "just one more thing" that we want to add until we end up with something that has every bell and whistle that we can dream up and have to start over again, but the QB-9 had a lot of the groundwork already done after having just designed the QX-8.

 

6 hours ago, FelipeRolim said:

As far as I know, the QB-9 "Twenty" is superior to the Ayre DX-5 (I don't know if I can reveal the source of this information, but maybe Ryan can help us), which was an equipment that by Audio Magazin had 130 points for the XLR output and 125 points for de RCA output, compared to the 125/120 of the QB-9 192/24.

 

I would agree with that, Felipe.  The QB-9 DSD was essentially the same circuit as the DX-5 DSD without the video or transport circuits.  Without this extra circuitry, I'd argue that the QB-9 DSD is probably better than the DX-5 as a straight USB DAC.  As such,  I'd consider the QB-9 Twenty pretty universally superior to the DX-5 DSD at this point.

 

5 hours ago, CG said:

Actually, I'm in error. I think the proper comparator is the QX-8.

 

These two products are the closest to one another.  Obviously the QX-8 is more than a USB DAC with its various inputs and streamer option, but many elements of the QX-8 went into the QB-9 Twenty design.  The QB-9 Twenty CURRENTLY sports the latest USB section which we know sounds superior to our previous design.  That makes a side-by-side a bit difficult right now, but I'd expect this to change before long.

 

31 minutes ago, FelipeRolim said:

I'd like to see QB-9 "Twenty" being reviewed again. I believe we'll have a nice surprise.

 

I agree.  Stay tuned...

 

Cheers,

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

On 12/17/2019 at 5:04 AM, GAR said:

Quoting from this article: https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/my-quest-for-a-new-dac-part-2-ayre-qx-8-r737/

 

Everything I like about the Codex, the QX-8 does similarly, but better. I've described the Codex as having a lovely midrange, a satisfyingly solid mid-bass, and a smooth, refined treble. Dynamics-wise, it can be a bit polite-sounding, which I attribute to its necessarily small PSU, to fit its small case.

 

Ryan, do you agree with this statement, in particular, the PSU? Does the same thing apply to the QB-9 Twenty? The size and quality of the PSU seems to be SO important to all audio gear.

 

The power supply has a pretty huge impact, though it's more than simply how big the transformers are.  In fact, oversizing the transformer usually leads to the circuit sounding worse from our experiments here.  For a DAC, hitting high amperage ratings isn't what's going to make the product sound better, but the circuit that follows the transformer is what has a huge impact.  When you're designing a DAC, it's pretty simple to have an properly sized transformer in place, even with fully linear power supplies like we use.  As such, I wouldn't expect many audio manufacturers to struggle ensuring the transformer is large enough to give it enough headroom to sound its best.  Beyond that, it's making sure that the transformer you're using is a high quality transformer becomes key. 

 

The Codex was effectively an extension of the Pono player that we designed the audio circuitry for without using a large battery or making it fit inside of a pocket.  Since the unit wasn't as limited in size as the Pono we were able to give it an extra output circuit to play back to a system as a DAC or be used as a stand alone headphone amplifier.  We really jammed as much as we could get away with inside the chassis, even giving it two separate transformers to allow the digital and analog portions of the circuit to have their own linear power supplies.  The transformers weren't undersized as we could have really just made the chassis larger if we needed it to be.  In the end, we almost made it "too good" as it was a definite bump over sound quality compared to the QB-9 DSD.  We weren't willing to continue to sell a unit for twice the price of the Codex when we knew it sounded worse as that's not how we do choose to do business, so we ultimately killed the line at that time.  I absolutely love the Codex and use one exclusively with my computer at home for gaming and movies and I am convinced it's the best thing out there at its price.  Heck, it was good enough to cannibalize one of our more expensive lines when it was released.

That said, the QX-8 is really a different design in many ways, from the regulator design through the audio design.  Components selected in the QX-8 are more expensive because we could afford them to be and the circuit design overall represents the next evolution in what we've learned in what makes audio sound its best.  This can make it difficult to nail down exactly what makes one product of ours sound different than another, because we're not in the habit of simply reusing the same circuit over and over and slapping it in a different chassis just so we can charge more.  Every time we release a new product we've learned a little more and we want to share what we've learned as soon as possible.  Since everything from audio design to chassis design is done in-house at Ayre, this lets us constantly tweak things...we usually have come up with 4 new things by the time the unit we just designed hits production!  

 

I hope that helps explain it...but simply put: it's a bit more complicated than that.

[Ryan Berry]

On 12/17/2019 at 5:51 AM, CG said:

 

Thanks to you, and the others, for the suggestions.

 

I know the isolation device used in the ISO Regen can be flaky.  The chip designer has even admitted as much.  With mine, if I let the QB-9 DSD play for more than five days, the USB signal would be lost.  A power cycle of the ISO Regen fixed that every time for me, too.

 

I've eliminated the cabling as an issue, through substitution.  So, it's down to the power supply and the ISO Regen itself.  The internal regulator of the ISO Regen has never seen use here, since the QB-9 DSD had its own VBus supply.  So, that's a possibility.

 

Hopefully, I'll have time this weekend to investigate further.  My hope is that the new USB system in the Twenty with its better isolation will eliminate the desire for external isolation and reclocking.  The server I'm using has a pretty complete isolation system from common mode currents that I built myself (and actually measured...) and there's no cables other than the isolated power and USB connection to the server.  That may be fine in itself.  Or, not.  It certainly eliminates the common mode circuit added by the power connection to the ISO Regen.  In any event, I'm sure it will get straightened out.  

 

If the difference between cold and new and ~170 hours of use extends over the next 200-300 hours in the same way, I think it'll be really great.  The minor sonic imperfections I'm hearing were about 90% mitigated over those 180 hours.  Maybe the additional burn-in will get that remaining 10%.  We'll see.  Already, the Twenty has shown itself to be well worth the upgrade price.

 

Hey CG,

 

Thanks for the report on the burn-in.  Since Charley isn't around any longer, I'll be the first one to say that burn-in has a huge impact on our products.  I'd expect that you'll continue to hear improvements for the next few months if our other products are any indicator (and they should be!)  The first few hundred hours are definitely the most impactful, but they really take some time to settle in.  After that, it will stabilize and should sound it's best for years to come.

[Ryan Berry]

5 hours ago, FelipeRolim said:

A friend installed the new version of the driver and was able to get his QB-9 DSD to work. I don't know if the problem is only in version 192/24 or if it is on my computer, but I'll reiterate the experiments calmly and post again here.

Hi Felipe,

 

I'm sorry for the trouble you're having.  Similar to your friend, the unit I personally tested this on was the QB-9 DSD.  I would assume this would work with both as the actual USB portion of circuit is the same between the two units with some minor firmware changes (which is why the old drive worked with both), but I hadn't tested the 192 version explicitly myself.  I'll speak with R&D to see if they have done that experiment and try and recreate it here just in case there's some strange incompatibility we're missing.  Unfortunately, this MAY be after the Christmas break with holiday schedules hitting us, but we'll do our best.

[Ryan Berry]

13 hours ago, Tone Deaf said:

 

Hi Ryan,

 

Just got back home after 2 months in Tucson - now experiencing connectivity issues, including the usb cycling, that might be related to this.  Received mine back in mid October, so guessing my unit be one of the affected ones.  Weird that it was stable before I left town.  I would be fine performing the update myself.   I'll PM you with contact details.

 

Paul

 

Hey Paul,

 

Sent you a message.

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

Thanks for the report.  We'll be in touch and see what needs to be done.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Ryan Berry]

With the QB-9 being asynchronous, you're likely getting little benefit from external reclocking solutions.  However, I think people are seeing an improvement with devices like these as they add an extra level of isolation on the incoming power.  Your QB-9 uses the PC's power and ground to power the USB PHY chip prior to isolation from the rest of the digital circuit.  We then send it over to the DAC after separating the ground and adding our own power supply for the rest of the digital circuit.  Having a separate power supply from the PC going into that PHY chip would very likely have varying levels of improvement depending on the PC.  Of course, as you said, the best way to tell what you prefer is to try it out and let me know what you think.  I may want to pick up one for myself!

 

As far as improvement, I think you'll be pretty blown away going from a 24/96 QB-9 to the Twenty.  Each upgrade we've done on this particular unit has been pretty spectacular in how much it improved from the previous version, so jumping straight to the Twenty is going to sound a lot different for you, I'd wager.

[Ryan Berry]

9 hours ago, AriMargolis said:

FYI, any QB-9 users who also use an Aurender, Native DSD input is now confirmed to be working. It will work for all users after the next  Aurender firmware update, but if you're hot to trot, you can reach out to us at [email protected] and we'll update your system in advance on a case-by-case basis. 

 

Note: Native DSD output is not available yet on some Aurender models, but it is coming soon across the board. Onward & upward. 

This particular instance did not require Ayre to do anything on their end as it only required an Aurender update, but I'd still like to thank Ryan and Gary for being super helpful with other recent issues. They are super generous, smart and helpful. They have made me personally a big Ayre fan. 

 

 

Hey Ari, that's great news!  Thanks for such a quick update.  If there's anything you ever need from us, just give me a call and we'll be happy to provide it.  I really appreciate the kind words.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan