Ayre QB-9 USB DAC

Ryder, I thought you were talking about the PWD. I'm interested in knowing how the "next gen" DACs compare with each other.

Kschiu, the Digital Link III is a fairly new DAC. My friend mentioned he also did a shoot-out between the Ayre and Perfect Wave DAC with all the different filters tested with the presence of two critical listeners. The Ayre was said to have won by a huge margin in resolution, separation, bass and soundstaging. According to them the differences were not subtle. Hope that helps.

I just had this in my house for two days and it was incredible. You really need 4GB ram on your computer though or it glitches.

I own the Ayre QB-9 USB DAC and it is terrific. I am very impressed with the way it sounds and yes, it is better sounding then my Ayre CX-7e CD player. The highs are better and so is the bass. The music is clearer and more engaging. My MAC Book Pro computer has 4 GB RAM and the 120GB solid state drive. I am using the Seaport Free Agent Go Pro 500GB external hard drive to store my music files (a 2nd one for backup). The Furman AC-215 power conditioner is required so the MAC computer does not interfere with the audio components. See www.furmansound.com/product.ph

I am using the Transparent USB Cable from the computer to the Ayre DAC. I followed Ayre's MAC Book setup instructions and they worked. The Audio MIDI setup was a little different from their instructions but we finally figured it out. The QB-9 is connected (balanced cables) to my Ayre AX-7e Integrated amp connected to my Sonus Faber Auditor M Speakers.

The major issue was the computer in terms of what model, how much RAM, hard drive and external drives. Ayre was very helpful (www.ayre.com) and so was my audio store, Music Lovers Audio in Berkeley, CA. It takes between 3 to 5+ minutes per CD using the AIFF format. This is a very boring time consuming process.

I checked and double checked everything to ensure I made no mistakes. Everyone I talked said to get the MAC and not a PC. Ayre recommended I use the external drives for better music quality and not the hard drive on the computer.

If you decide to move in this direction, I suggest working with a high quality audio store to help you configure the needed components.

I am a PC person and this is my first MAC computer. It is very easy to use and iTunes does a great job of managing the music. I hope the above helps. Cheers...

I just attended the Ayre demonstration of the QB-9 using the newest Ayre MX-R monoblocks, Wilson Sophia's. Steve Silberman was on hand to demo and did comparisons with the DX-5 beta product (to be released). He did A/B comparison with a Redbook Cd and complete explanation of the MAC and PC implementations. It was a very useful demo and convinced me the time has come to start ripping all my CD's.

I have to say, the QB-9 sounded great. Of course, the reference room at Music Lovers in Berkeley is pretty nice too, I don't have Wilson's, etc, so it hard to say what differences I would hear at home. I did not compare it to alternative DACs and wanted to hear the Berkeley Audio. Steve did start to convice me that SPDIF is a fundamentally flawed technology so that might rule that one out. The asynchronous implementation of USB really made sense to me and I have been developing and selling digital video technology for many years so I kind of get it.

Regardless, Ayre is a great company and the combination of a reasonably priced DAC with MP filtering, technical support,etc is just hard to beat. My Monarchy tube DAC (which sounds fine I might say) may hit the for sale ads soon.