QB-9 USB Upgrade
 

My original post was “Why is this taking so long”, but it should read “was well worth the wait!”

What you have posted sounds like nothing more than a rumor to me. Have you called Ayre customer service and asked about getting an upgrade? It took six weeks turn around for mine, and I think that has been the turn around time for some others. Yes, that is a bit longer than I would like to waited, but the 8 months you are stating seems hard to believe. Maybe your dealer is not shooting you straight?
Ayre is a small company that has been really ambitious with product development and release this past year and that must really tax their resources considerably. But the fact that they have the philosophy to provide an upgrade path at all puts me in their corner as a loyal customer.

Ayre won't even return my calls. And the dealer I work with always shoots me straight.

My dealer told me just to not bother for now until things slow down a bit for them. I doubt it's the way you presented, but I'm sure they are pretty bogged down with trying to do the upgrades. My QB-9 still sounds great anyway, just light when I bought it so I'll probably just upgrade to the next DAC they do in a 5 series (whenever that might be!)

I had a bad QB-9 experience with Ayre in 2012. I bought a new unit Feb 2012. It had a technical issue with spurious noise. Not repeatable, random noises. They initially said nothing was wrong but claimed to swap out the mother board. The first instant I had the "repaired" unit on it started with the same issue. After 6 months of the run around they agreed to send me a factory demo unit to see if it did the same thing in my system. It did not. Finally, after nearly a year, they agreed via email to send me a replacement unit. Over two months went by ... radio silence. I got fed up and asked for a refund. Alex Brinkman was a real turd at that point and stiffed the dealer who was a real professional the whole way. While I had the factory demo on hand I went to the McIntosh dealer and did an A-B with the D100 DAC. I bought the Mac. Never had a moments issue with noise of any kind. Ayre make good gear but the customer service has really gone down hill.

I also had an interesting experience where my K5xe had been upgraded to an MP but they didn't place the "new" identifying sticker on the unit. I didn't know until I tried to sell it and was asked about why the sticker was missing if it was indeed an MP.

I called Ayre to try and rectify it...at least get them to send a message in writing proving this serial number was indeed an MP but they took over a month to call me back (after multiple attempts of calling them) and then refused to help at all. They wouldn't even help prove to me, the current owner, that the change was made...end result...I took a hit on the sale cause I couldn't prove it was upgraded...this was about 3 years ago.

From what has been posted above, Ayre SHOULD go on the do not buy list!

Not to excuse Ayre here, but wouldn't the receipt for the upgrade from your dealer/Ayre have sufficed?

This is utter nonsense. Ayre is universally known in the audio world as having service that is second to none and can be verified by reading many other sites on the web. Just because a small company doesn't have 5,000 employees to take care of everyone's upgrade a.s.a.p. doesn't mean it should go on a don't buy list. Heck, I was in Boulder one time and called them from the side of the road on a whim to see if they would mind giving me a quick tour of their operation. They said sure c'mon over and made time for a quick meet. Not only that, they also took care of me on a used piece that had a quirky problem all for the cost of shipping. I'd buy any one of their products and not have a second thought. If one of the top selling high end DACs need an upgrade, I'm sure some patience is warranted due to the amount of people clamoring for the upgrade. No companies are perfect.....cut em some slack unless there's something shady going on.

I upgraded to the DSD when my QB-9 went in for a repair. Turnaround was 4 weeks - this was back when they started doing the upgrades. Ayre could not have been more communicative or helpful. I went to them directly rather than through a dealer. The upgrade was well worth the cost - the unit sounds great. Given the negative stories above I thought it only fair to post a positive experience.

I am cutting them slack. They make great stuff. They can't meet demand. No big deal. I just want some information. Usually there is at least an explanation and an apology.

Upgrade was an early one done through Ayre directly. No dealer, no receipt, which was equally dumb by me. Don't get me wrong the gear is good, I had a QB-9 and Vx5e as well and they were awesome but this experience just rubbed me the wrong way.

I bet Charlie would love to hear about any issues at Ayre regarding service. I bet it is so frustrating not to be able to go into the office to check up on people you trust. Ayre has been slow in responding to me in the past on an issue but I posted somewhere else without slamming ayre and Charlie wrote me back. I prefer to reserve judgement because we don't know why. Finding employees competent enough to build this quality of parts has to be hard. If you own a company and/or manage one then you know how hard it is to find good help. Also you can't hire enough for the demand and the. Lay them all off because the rush will be over by the time all get trained. If anyone believed the eco reports, most companies aren't hiring and people are not spending money on such things so anticipating the demand load would be hard.

A bad experience is not utter nonsense. My story is factual. Let me be clear ... Ayre make good gear. The problem is their current customer service rep. Alex Brinkman is not an original employee. HE is THE problem in my experience.

FWIW, Alex isn't a customer support rep, he's their North American Sales Manager.

That may be his title but he was the guy calling the shots on my issue ... I call that customer service ... Or lack thereof.

I don't have a problem with someone venting about a problem with a service issue, my comment was directed at the whole......"well, based on this situation Ayre should go on a do not buy list". If that were the case, then every company on the planet would be on a do not buy list since no one is perfect and all companies make mistakes. My point was that Ayre is universally known to have some of the best service in high end audio and to say that you shouldn't buy their products based on this situation is nonsense, which it is. A more sensible comment would be that maybe anyone thinking about purchasing this high end DAC from Ayre may want to hold off for now until this situation is resolved or take a look at offerings from other manufacturers. From what I know about Charles Hansen, he would do anything and everything to take care of his customers.

I had emailed Alex B. as to how I would go about purchasing their DAC without hearing it since my local dealer didn't have upgraded DSD compatible DAC at the time. Alex was great when I met him at THE Show in Newport last year, but felt he left me hanging when I was what you would call a "hot sales lead" with concerns about being able to demo.

But this is the post (rant) from Charlie Hansen that really turned me off to their products quite some time ago:

ANOTHER Example of Why I HATE DSD and Why Customers Who Bought Sony's Boloney Are So Annoying

Why?

Charlie's rant seems rather justifiable, especially the bits about the customer turning to the manufacturer of his DAC to try to solve a software issue.

You of course can feel about Ayre how you like for the reasons you like, and I'll be the first to admit that Ayre can, at times, be non-responsive.

But by the same token so can most other audio manufacturers, big or small.

FWIW, the issue of how to hear equipment your dealer doesn't have is an ongoing one. Dealers can't afford to purchase "one of everything," and manufacturers can't afford to supply dealers with new products on a demo basis.

So far the only answer is shows like RMAF, or, if you're lucky, the manufacturer might have a show demo they can let the dealer borrow if the timing works out.

I know when I was in the market to purchase a Wadia CD player/DAC, the only way I got to audition it was to contact Wadia directly and they then drop shipped a unit to my dealer for me as my dealer didn't want to be on the hook for ordering one if I didn't like it (understandable, as who knows when/if they'd ever sell it otherwise.)

On a similar basis, the only reason I got to demo an ARC Reference 2 SE Phono Stage is that ARC just happened to ship one to my dealer in preparation for a "Music Matters" event.

That's fine but I'm not spending $15k on a company's products when they cannot be bothered to respond to a direct email inquiry. I demand better customer service and support than that. This is in stark contrast as to how I was treated by Pass and that sealed the deal for me.

Pass Labs has terrific customer service. Even Nelson picked up the phone and spent 20 minutes with me describing the new .8 series. I haven't had any issues with Ayre's customer service other than the long queue to get my QB-9 upgraded. I ended up selling it instead but not for that reason.

Ayre has always been adamant that phone calls are the best way to reach them; I'd be surprised if an issue was not sorted where a person actually called Ayre. Having said that, I notice that they now have an e-mail form on their website and if they are not responding to e-mail, then that form shouldn't be there and they should revert to their phone only approach.

With regard to upgrades/repairs, I've had nothing but good experiences. My KX-R upgrade turnaround time was 2-3 weeks and Ayre replaced both logic boards in a problematic MX-R outside the warranty period at no charge. It doesn't get much better than that.

From what I was told by my dealer, there was quite a wait for the upgrade just after the first of the year. In fact, I was told that it would be September before mine would be upgraded. I know they were a bit overwhelmed by the number of people that wanted the upgrade and they did hire at least one person that does nothing else, he upgrades QB-9s day in and day out.

Since the rest of my office gear is black, I decided to buy a new QB-9 DSD in black and sell the silver model. It took about 4-5 weeks to get the new DAC. The new model is quite an improvement over the previous one which was no slouch itself. It's still breaking in, but I'm very happy with it... FWIW, I went from a Teac UD-501 to a Benchmark DAC2 HGC to the QB-9 (used) then to the QB- 9 DSD and it is the best of the bunch. Highly recommended. :music:

I went on the list in June of 2013. I JUST got called to send my unit in. 10 months later! And they are keeping it for six weeks! But, my audio gurus say it is worth the wait. Full review to follow when unit comes back.

That's a pretty crazy backlog. Thank goodness the backlog for the Twenty series doesn't appear to exist. I guess it makes sense given the price differential of the two upgrades - the line for the QB-9 upgrade is probably many multiples longer.

I was excited about the upgrade but because I seen this coming I decided to just go in a different direction. I wonder if the long turnaround hurts them in that respect.

Given the apparent jump in performance in relation to the cost, I doubt it. It would typically be more expensive to sell/trade in a QB-9 and go with a different unit of comparable performance as the upgraded unit. Plus, for some people the wait might be a benefit as it allows them to save up. For example, I'm actually happy that Ayre delayed the introduction of the MX-R Twenty as it means that I will likely be able to get on it upon introduction whereas if there was no delay, I wouldn't.

You are right... It ended up costing 10x what the upgrade would have trading it in but I ended up with something I can not find a flaw with as hard as I try. I wish the best to you all and hope you guys will feel the same about the upgrade.

I have my upgraded DAC and it kills the old DAC. It is a huge step up. You MUST break it in. to evaluate. 120 hours. Out of the box it was harsh. I just ran it 120 hours with music, brown noise, pink noise and glide tones and listened again. It is profoundly better you'd probably have to spend $12k+ to beat this. It is smoother sounding AND more detailed. That is NOT easily done. Very musical and involving. Lots of punch but it never assaults your ears. Less congested. Probably not even fully broken in yet. Amazing! Why is Stereophile not raving about this?

I just picked up my upgraded QB-9 and it is burning in now. I'm looking forward to listening after some burn-in.

However, the reason I am writing now is to shed light on how long the upgrade process has taken: it's been over 14 MONTHS since I signed up for an upgrade. In my opinion, Ayre totally dropped the ball on these upgrades. Not only has it been more than 14 months of waiting, but it took 10 full weeks for Ayre to actually perform the upgrade and get it back to me. This is simply unacceptable customer service. During those 14 months, I received "updates" indicating that my number would probably come up in the queue as soon as last March. This was followed by numerous other predictions (June, September, October, etc.).

Don't get me wrong -- I think the $500 upgrade price is probably a good deal for the performance upgrade (based on reviews). And I have nothing but admiration for Ayre's engineering chops. But 14 months is just crappy customer service.

It's a small company that sold a lot of these DAC's, only a couple of people working on the upgrades, I think Ayre underestimated the amount of DAC's that would come back for the upgrade.

I agree it's long wait, waited also around 8 months before the DSD upgrade (DX-5) arrived in Netherlands, but now I enjoy the feeling of having a new player again

I agree the wait was agonizing but once you get it installed it is pure joy. It was logistically difficult for them for a number of reasons. Ayre leads in this industry however. They make magical stuff.

I am happy to report that the sonic quality of the upgrade is outstanding. Here's what I said on computeraudiophile.com:

With a grand total of 5 hours of burn-in, I sat down to listen to very familiar music last night and the difference between the old dac and the new dac was . . . . . startling. Wow. There is significant new detail and clarity on every track. Vocals are more intelligible. The noise floor appears to be lower. Instruments and voices are more separated in space. The whole presentation is more musical and gives me more insight into the intent of the musicians -- the real touchstone of what I am looking for in a component upgrade.

Ayre gets a D- for the length of time this upgrade took. They get a solid A for sonic performance and value for the money.

Everyone seems to feel the upgrade was a noticeable improvement. I bailed and sold my QB-9 and went in another direction because I played the waiting game with the first round of upgrades and knew what was in store. Now I'm reading the reviews I would like to compare to what I have now for piece of mind.

easystreet21... Welcome to AA! :wave:

Its really awesome. A noticable improvement on all accounts. Especially bass. :)

The ComputerAudiophile highly recommended it. :)

However, if the dac you went with, is the Berkeley Alpha dac 2, Im sure you are in good hands. Berkeley dac1 was as I understood it, just a notch above the QB9 and so if you really want to up the ante, go with the Berkeley alpha reference series or maybe a dcs stack? The sky is the limit, if you can pay :)

I have read the reference is a step up from the the alpha2 I have but at this point I can't find anything I would want to improve. Definitely getting to the point of diminishing returns.

From experience, I would disagree with the statement. With the QB9, I thought it was as good as it got. The QB9 dsd kills it though. And from reading reviews the Alpha dac reference, kills the QB9 dsd.

I was at a presentation with Dave Nauber of Classe, and he called being an audiophile a disease (not his exact words though). As soon as you have heard something better its hard to go back. I believe this.

So never ever listen to something more better, just stay at home. But oth. its hard to imagine that the diminishing returns are just that. Sometimes, yes, but when you are an audiophile, isn't it the very very small details that people nitpick about? Otherwise, my computer speakers from Logitech sounds pretty nice :)

i totally agree with this. This is why the cable company borrowing policy can be dangerously expensive. Once you hear a better cable in your mind, you can't listen to what you have without obsessing about the slightly better sound you are missing.

Interesting to read of people's experience in getting the QB-9 upgraded. My dealer Tom Unger at Gifted Listener Audio in Centreville, VA told me back in late 2013 to wait a while before having my unit sent in due to the backlog that existed at the time. I gave my QB-9 to Tom to ship it into Ayre last September finally and the unit came back in less than a month.

The upgrade to the chipset plus DSD status was a noticeable improvement. I also at the same time upgraded the DAC card in my Classe CP-800, which I did myself (took about a half hour to do it with care). I've enjoyed comparing the two DACs since then. I would give the Ayre a slight edge overall in musicality. The CP-800 has to do a lot of other things in addition to converting digital to analog, so this is understandable.