Submitted by The Computer Au... on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 13:06
At CES this year Ayre Acoustics unveiled its USB DAC. In typical Ayre fashion this component has very nice build quality with a minimalist appearance. The most impressive things about the Ayre USB DAC are 1. It supports 16/44.1, 24/88.2, and 24/96 native sample rates, and 2. This DAC use the asynchronous USB protocol. Think of the Ayre USB DAC as the solid state version of Gordon Rankin's Wavelength Audio DACs. Ayre Acoustics partnered with Gordon to develop this new USB DAC and licensed his asynchronous USB implementation. This Ayre DAC is built solely for USB computer integration. There are no other interfaces available. This allowed Ayre to concentrate all its efforts on one interface without compromises. The DAC is also fully compatible with the AyreLink communication system through RJ-11 ports on the rear of the chassis. I spent some time listening to the new Ayre USB DAC and was pretty impressed even under less than ideal show conditions. I'm looking forward to reviewing this DAC as soon as it's officially released in a few months. Read more for images of the Ayre Acoustics CES suite.
Higher resolution download (59 MB)
Chris Connaker
Founder
Computer Audiophile
Chris,
Another note on the QB-9 is the use of custom digital filters. Instead of using the canned filters it uses an FPGA with custom algorithms.
Charlie wrote a paper and it should be available soon.
Thanks
Gordon
J. Gordon Rankin
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Wavelength Audio
http://www.usbdacs.com/
http://www.wavelengthaudio.com/
http://www.guitar-engines.com/
Sounds very interesting. How much will it cost and how large is it?
It's about half the width of a traditional components and nearly the same depth. Price will be less than $2500.
Chris Connaker
Founder
Computer Audiophile