2. digital
  3. 124453-113

Ayre now has a new QX-5 all in one

box with DAC/Streamer (Tidal etc), Roon ready. It has nearly any input and a great headphone amp too.  It can also be used as a preamp, although I personally have yet to hear any digital pre sound as good as a great preamp, but that's me.  It's all balanced and has the Ayre power supply filters that all the Ayre products have.  I can't wait to hear it. I personally am running a great sounding Empirical Audio OSDE/SE with all the upgrades from Steve and I also have a Mac Mini server that Empirical totally rebuilt with a separate Hynes linear power supply.  It's full of only hi rez, well recorded music of all genres.  I love it, but the new servers do sound a bit better, so I've been looking.  I didn't want to set up a NAS, but since I run a Linn DS system in the bedroom I'm open to it.  I love the Melco NAS and may just get that for my NAS and the Ayre for everything else.  I want a simple, one box solution and I do use IEM's and cans on Sunday and Sat mornings so having a great amp solution in my main rig is enticing too.

I rn an Ayre AX-5 Twenty with Vandersteen Treo's (going to sell so I can upgrade to the Quatro's) and Basis/Aesthetix's for vinyl.  Pretty exciting times in digital.  I'm sure that Ayre will be a great value for all that it offers and it should sound incredible.  Time will tell.
ctsooner

Showing 2 responses by yage

yage
401 posts
 
I compared MQA to PCM on an Explorer 2 and came away underwhelmed. It might be fine for streaming, but I think it trades off performance against traditional PCM to do so (except perhaps at the 'native' resolution).

I'm definitely looking forward to the Ayre. I've got an AX-5 Twenty / C-5xeMP setup and can't wait to do an A/B with the QX-5.
yage
401 posts
 
Looks like the QX-5 Twenty will have digital volume control after all. I think this makes it an interesting choice if you have an all-digital library. QX-5 Twenty + VX-5 Twenty should make for a great combination.

Re: MQA - my guess is that record companies would mainly be interested in this from the marketing aspect - look it's 'high-res' (even though it seems to be a 'lossy' codec) but backwards compatible with all existing hardware as well as compact enough for streaming services. There's a lot going for it, but in the end, it's all a numbers game. Sonic performance is not necessarily the prime motivation.
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