Article: Review: Ayre QX-5 Twenty USB2 Upgrade

[austinpop]

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[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks for the review Rajiv! Your experience mirrors mine, with respect to Ayre upgrades of existing products. The company always delivers. 

[MikeJazz]

that's a very interesting and complete review...thank you.

 

[Mercman]

Thanks for your enjoyable review!  A few things I discovered listening to the USB2 through my Wilson Alexia 2s.  The soundstage improvement over the previous board was really significant. Both depth and width increased; something harder to discern with my Stax headphones.

 

I also tried upsampling everything to DSD512 with Roon and Audirvana Studio, but I found that the sound was better listening at native sampling rates with my setup.  Charley Hansen felt that upsampling didn't benefit his DAC and the USB2 board confirmed this,

 

 

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, Mercman said:

I also tried upsampling everything to DSD512 with Roon and Audirvana Studio, but I found that the sound was better listening at native sampling rates with my setup.  Charley Hansen felt that upsampling didn't benefit his DAC and the USB2 board confirmed this,

Steve,
 

I wouldn’t use Roon upsampling as a basis for judging the value of upsampling with the USB2. HQPlayer and PGGB are much better.
 

I recommend trying PCM 705.6/768 (16FS) with PGGB. With HQPlayer, try both DSD256 and  DSD512.

[Mercman]

I have HQPlayer I run with Roon. I'll give it a try.

 

Thanks

[Archimago]

As an ES9038Pro DAC, I'd be careful about the limits of DSD256 and DSD512 performance.

 

Remember guys, bigger isn't always better. There are important nuances and unlike AKM 449X DACs, the ESS offerings do not have "DSD-Direct" modes. Not to say that the ESS doesn't sound good, just that optimal performance needs to be considered in this context.

[Mercman]

I found upsampling to DSD256 was preferred with my Playback Designs MPD-8. The QX-5 sounded best native. But I haven’t tried the HQPlayer yet as austinpop suggested.

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

As an ES9038Pro DAC, I'd be careful about the limits of DSD256 and DSD512 performance.

 

Remember guys, bigger isn't always better. There are important nuances and unlike AKM 449X DACs, the ESS offerings do not have "DSD-Direct" modes. Not to say that the ESS doesn't sound good, just that optimal performance needs to be considered in this context.

 

Good point!

 

I tried DSD upsampling merely for curiosity. I found upsampling PCM to 16FS to bypass the Ayre MP filter to provide more of an SQ uplift.

[Mercman]

I believe that you aren’t bypassing the DAC filter, but inserting another filter into the chain ahead of the digital filter built into the DAC.  But if it sounds better to you, that's great.

[austinpop]

19 minutes ago, Mercman said:

I believe that you aren’t bypassing the DAC filter, but inserting another filter into the chain ahead of the digital filter built into the DAC.  But if it sounds better to you, that's great.

 

Steve, I addressed this in the body of the review.

 

Quote

When discussing this with Ariel Brown, Ayre’s chief designer, he confirmed that with the USB2 board and the latest firmware, when the FPGA logic is presented with 16FS at its input, it bypasses the Ayre MP filter and passes the stream directly to the ESS chip for D/A conversion.

 

So, certainly with PCM upsampling, if you upsample to 16FS (705.6/768 kHz) you are actually bypassing the Ayre Minimum Phase filter. Do note that this bypass of the Ayre filter is implicit, in that the bypass only occurs if the input is 16FS, so if you upsample, but only to 8FS (352.8/384 kHz), then you get what you describe, a cascade of filters.

 

All my listening comparisons involved 16FS upsampling. I hope that clarifies things for you.

 

 

 

[Mercman]

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

[Axiom05]

Very interesting review. I own a QX-5 Twenty with the USB2 board and I've been loving the new sound, the other inputs are now redundant as far as I'm concerned. I would just like to add a note of caution when comparing straight 44.1 KHz w/ the Music filter vs 16X upsampling and bypassing this filter. Since the Music filter is a slow roll-off type it begins reducing high frequencies just above 10 KHz, and according to John Atkinson's measurements it is down 1 dB at 13 KHz. Personally I find this mild high frequency reduction very audible and it results in the loss of some reverberation and a reduced sense of the recording space. It can make some classical recordings sound very dry and dull, particularly those made with a more "natural" microphone technique. I am one of the few people that actually prefers the Measure filter because it restores a flat frequency response. Consequently, if you upsample 44.1 KHz content to 705.6 KHz and bypass the Music filter you are also restoring the high frequencies compared to using the Music filter with 44.1 KHz content. The same is true for 48 KHz but to a lesser extent. Filter character aside, you may or may not find the change in high frequency response to be audible.

 

Again, thanks for the review and the useful information that it provided. I had no idea that the Ayre filter was bypassed if fed a 16X file, a potentially very useful thing to know.

[matthias]

Thank you very much @austinpop

 

What would you say is the greater SQ delta:

Going from the old to the new USB  board or (with the new board) from the Ayre to the Taiko driver?

Thanks

 

Matt

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, Axiom05 said:

Very interesting review. I own a QX-5 Twenty with the USB2 board and I've been loving the new sound, the other inputs are now redundant as far as I'm concerned. I would just like to add a note of caution when comparing straight 44.1 KHz w/ the Music filter vs 16X upsampling and bypassing this filter. Since the Music filter is a slow roll-off type it begins reducing high frequencies just above 10 KHz, and according to John Atkinson's measurements it is down 1 dB at 13 KHz. Personally I find this mild high frequency reduction very audible and it results in the loss of some reverberation and a reduced sense of the recording space. It can make some classical recordings sound very dry and dull, particularly those made with a more "natural" microphone technique. I am one of the few people that actually prefers the Measure filter because it restores a flat frequency response. Consequently, if you upsample 44.1 KHz content to 705.6 KHz and bypass the Music filter you are also restoring the high frequencies compared to using the Music filter with 44.1 KHz content. The same is true for 48 KHz but to a lesser extent. Filter character aside, you may or may not find the change in high frequency response to be audible.

 

Again, thanks for the review and the useful information that it provided. I had no idea that the Ayre filter was bypassed if fed a 16X file, a potentially very useful thing to know.

Very interesting. I must admit, I had done the Music vs. Measure filter comparison some time ago, and decided to stick to Music. I didn’t revisit it in the context of the new USB2 upgrade.

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, matthias said:

Thank you very much @austinpop

 

What would you say is the greater SQ delta:

Going from the old to the new USB  board or (with the new board) from the Ayre to the Taiko driver?

Thanks

 

Matt

The USB2 board upgrade is the bigger SQ uplift.

[The Computer Audiophile]

I love that Ayre gives people the option between listen and measure. Given what Rajiv has reported here, people also have the option to bypass both by using 16fs. Very nice options. 

[Vule]

Rajiv

I read Your review of dCS Bartok and now of Ayre QX-5.

With USB2 upgrade how does it compare now with dCS Bartok?

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Vule said:

Rajiv

I read Your review of dCS Bartok and now of Ayre QX-5.

With USB2 upgrade how does it compare now with dCS Bartok?

 

It has been too long since the Bartók was in my system, and a lot else has changed for me to say anything definitive. All I will say is both DACs are outstanding and deserve an audition.

[mr_bill]

Does anyone know if the  USB2 is used in the QB9 Twenty upgrade??

[Axiom05]

On 6/1/2022 at 4:33 PM, mr_bill said:

Does anyone know if the  USB2 is used in the QB9 Twenty upgrade??

Yes it is.