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Very early thoughts

Posted by Scrith (A) on May 6, 2009 at 11:17:19

In Reply to: I'll be interested in Ayre QB-9 experience posted by Old Listener on May 5, 2009 at 22:52:58:

I am hesitant to write my thoughts about the first 8 hours with the QB-9 because it probably needs some break-in, and, unfortunately, I think it is likely that someone on the internet who is desperate for attention will reference my comments out-of-context in a post elsewhere to "prove" something about the QB-9.

That being said...I always find it helpful to read about someone's experience with a new product when evaluating it (assuming it isn't just a regurgitation of what everyone told them to expect). Plus this post is going to be pretty-well buried in an old thread. So here's what I'm feeling after one night:

I am a bit underwhelmed. With the incredible amount of hype for the asynchronous USB support, plus the great reputation Ayre has for creating quality audio hardware, my expectations were sky high for the QB-9. Perhaps I shouldn't have expected so much of an improvement, because I believe that my previous DAC, a Benchmark DAC1 USB, is an amazing piece of hardware for around $1K. And perhaps my high-end computer (with a very powerful processor, 8GB of memory, and Vista64 on an SSD drive) is not jitter-prone in the first place, so I'm not seeing as much benefit from the asynchronous USB support that someone with a less-powerful computer might. And perhaps I should have known better, because, in my experience, most DACs sound amazingly alike once you reach a certain level of quality (perhaps because they are all based on the same small set of DAC chips that are currently being manufactured)...and Steve, do not take this as another opportunity to attempt to explain why your DAC sounds different.

I feel like the QB-9 is a slight upgrade over the DAC1 USB at this point, but there are some rough edges (some digital sound in some music that I don't remember being there with the DAC1 USB) along with the highlights (some nice sounds I haven't heard before coming from music I've listened to at least 500 times). I am really hoping the roughness will go away with more break-in. The bass is somewhat stronger than it was in the DAC1 USB, by the way, but I'm wondering if achieving this strength has resulted in a sacrifice in precision (an A/B comparison will help with that determination). I plan to keep the QB-9 (and the DAC1 USB will probably end up on Audiogon soon) because, overall, even with only 8 hours on it, it is an improvement over the DAC1 USB...just not as much of an improvement as I was hoping for. I think the best comparison will come when I do some A/B tests between the QB-9 and DAC1 USB (including some blind tests with my wife, if she is in the mood for it), which I'll attempt once the QB-9 has 50-100 hours of break-in.

Aesthetically, I like it. The display is great (it is nice to see some affirmation of whether I'm playing 44Khz vs. 96Khz data, and only a small green light when the unit is not in use). The packaging is good, the manual is OK, I didn't look at the power cord (I'm using the Cardas Golden Reference that I was using with the DAC1 USB). I'm not sure whether it came with a USB cable or not (I'm using my old Locus Polestar). The Ayre dealer that I purchased it from (Optimal Enchantments, in Santa Monica, CA) has another in stock, by the way (or at least he did when I picked mine up, just one hour after it was delivered to him).

Disclaimer part 2: these are just initial impressions. Please do not interpret this as my final opinion, because it is not. And please, for those who are inclined to it, do not let this degenerate into yet another discussion about music playback software, driver/OS/BIOS settings, audio data transfer protocols, cables, power filtering, audio data formats, operating systems, storage devices, etc...I know all the arguments, have blind tested for differences among them myself in most cases, and am using what I have found to be the best configuration based on my 15+ years of computer-based audio experience and familiarity with programming audio code.

Edits: 05/06/09

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