Ayre QB-9 Twenty upgrade

Jake Forsyth · June 6, 2023

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for tagging me into this thread 😉. I will definitely do what I can to answer some of these as time and understanding permit.

I am one of those heathens that significantly prefers physical music media. I.E.... "The less software, the better"!

So a lot of my answers may not come immediately and take a little bit of research and or conversing with Ariel on; especially with regards to DAC behavior with many of our available contemporary software platforms like ROON, Jriver, JPLAY, Foobar, Etc...

Since this post is alive and active still, what may end up happening soon is a total write up for all things to consider when setting up the QB-9 Twenty for a MAC/Windows/Linux or Server/Streamer set up that gets pinned as a resource here.

On 5/27/2023 at 3:17 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

We should tag @Jake Forsyth the new CEO of Ayre, so he can pick up where @Ryan Berry left off in this thread.

Ariel is definitely the Ayrehead-In-Chief (his term!), I am the Lieutenant Ayrehead. 🤪

On 5/27/2023 at 4:32 PM, Yoram Diamand said:

An Ayre egghead, who knows everything, would be welcome indeed.

Really more "something about everything", but not all things. From browsing this post in its entirety, I think I could learn a thing or two from you!

On 5/29/2023 at 6:57 AM, CG said:

Except, he's not that.

What The Heck Is Happening At Ayre

Ariel is the man ~~in the hot seat~~ at the head of the table. But, I'd bet that Jake could address these questions.

Thanks for following along! Learned a lot already just reading through every comment and doing some research.

On 5/31/2023 at 3:22 PM, scottsol said:

The official term for Ayre employees is now Ayrehead. You can thank Jake (or excoriate him) for that.

Really the term was meant to be for you guys, our most loyal, uh... fans! But Ariel stole it. 😜

3 hours ago, spin33 said:

I'm a satisfied QB-9 Twenty owner going on 3 years now, but looking for thoughts/suggestions/advice re an issue that's just developed. I set up a brand new Roon Nucleus Rev B for the first time the other day, migrating from a sonicTransporter i5 that I’d been using for the last few years. Installation and setup went well and all is running smoothly, except for the Nucleus's apparent inability to recognize the DAC's DSD capabilities.

Roon is not presenting the Native DSD option for me in setup, only 'DoP' or 'Convert to PCM'. When paired with the sonicTransporter, Roon recognized the QB-9/20's DSD capability and offered a selection for ‘native DSD’ in the setup. That's gone away now that I’ve migrated to the Nucleus. No other changes to the system or setup were made.

Any QB-9/20 users here who also connect to a Nucleus? I so, what's been your experience? I've put up a similar post and query on the appropriate Roon Community support forum and have had a couple of non-official responses, but so far no solutions. Perhaps someone here may be able to provide insight. Also...paging @Jake Forsyth :-)

Spin, glad to hear you are enjoying the QB-9 Twenty all these years! Thanks for poking around on the ROON forum too, that helped. Our guy that helped us with the Linux kernel for the QB-9 Twenty should have made the fix available to ROON a few years ago. It is possible ROON is not using this kernel.(?) I will bug Ariel about reaching our ROON contact tomorrow for a more definitive answer, but this definitely seems more like a ROON programming thing than something we could do on the QB-9 Twenty or in any settings for the Nucleus.

On a side, but related note, we should be seeing new windows thesycon drivers for QB-9 Twenty tomorrow I hear.

Jake Forsyth · June 6, 2023

Just thought I would share this here with you all before posting to the social medias. Took a visit on my way into work to see our friends at QSC Systems in Longmont. They are our contract circuit board manufacturers that have been working with Ayre for 28 years. They handle a few other brands (some that are pretty close to us), and our account manager over there uses Ayre at home.

Since they are 15 minutes away from us, we typically drive over to inspect the first few boards before giving the green light to finish the rest of the big orders. They handle a lot of our products, and without their help, our tiny company would be backordered for ages. Just gotta give them props where it is due 🙂. They have a fresh batch of QB-9 Twenty upgrade circuits for us that will be dropped off, or picked up soon!

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