First I'll man up by A) saying i was wrong on the Halide Bridge/HiFace option and B) apologizing, I still don't appreciate the original message. Your only option appears to be the mod as Lewinski mentioned which may or may not work. I have a QB9 so i'm somewhat qualified to answer but i use a MacMini as my source so i have native USB ability. The only input option on the QB9 is USB and there don't appear to be an widely commercially available SPDIF/Toslink to USB convertors on the market...yet. It's an emerging market so we may see something yet.
Sandstone:
You said...The QB-9 not only requires a USB connection, but also the installation of Wavelength Audio-designed software on the PC or Mac used as a source. This supports the handshake between source and DAC to manage asynchronous mode transmission, and virtually eliminate significant jitter...
This is not entirely true. All USB DACS are plug and play using native OS drivers up to 24/96 only (USB Audio Class 1). On Mac OSX 10.6+ it's still native up to 24/192 (USB Audio Class 2) but on Windows and < Mac OSX 10.6 proprietary drivers are needed to enable Class 2 audio via USB. The developer of the Wavelength software has a good page on this www . usbdacs . com.
Sandstone:
You said...The QB-9 not only requires a USB connection, but also the installation of Wavelength Audio-designed software on the PC or Mac used as a source. This supports the handshake between source and DAC to manage asynchronous mode transmission, and virtually eliminate significant jitter...
This is not entirely true. All USB DACS are plug and play using native OS drivers up to 24/96 only (USB Audio Class 1). On Mac OSX 10.6+ it's still native up to 24/192 (USB Audio Class 2) but on Windows and < Mac OSX 10.6 proprietary drivers are needed to enable Class 2 audio via USB. The developer of the Wavelength software has a good page on this www . usbdacs . com.