The Ayre Acoustics QB-9 DAC has proven to be one of the company's most successful ever products.

The QB-9 DAC made its name back in 2009 when it had bragging rights to being one of the first 24/96-capable pioneers enabling computers to become high-end music sources.

Since then the QB-9 received several upgrades including the addition of 24/192 and DSD skills.

Ayre Acoustics QB-9 Twenty Upgrades

Today, as there are still thousands of QB-9s out there being played, Ayre Acoustics has announced a new update to their venerable DAC.

The 'Twenty' update features a raft of upgrades such as a new JFET differential stage that lowers the noise floor, revised AC filtering, custom-made asynchronous USB, and a new ESS DAC chip (we aren't told which one).

There is also the new diamond output circuit which Ayre says improves musicality and bass response as well as the six-layer board design that gives optimal circuit isolation.

The upshot of all this, and the proprietary relocking to eliminate USB domain jitter, is PCM playback up to 384 kHz, native DSD capability up to DSD256 (4x), and HDCD coding.

The QB-9 'Twenty' upgrade is expected to be popular, so we've been told that QB-9 owners are advised to schedule theirs before the waiting list builds up.

Pricing and availability

The Ayre Acoustics QB-9 Twenty upgrade is available now, priced at £1,590 (incl. VAT).