Ayre Acoustics
QX-5 Twenty Digital Hub
The Ayre Acoustics QX-5 Twenty Digital Hub is Ayre's flagship D/A converter and digital preamplifier, built around an ESS ES9038PRO DAC chip whose stock reconstruction filters are bypassed in favor of Ayre's own zero-feedback, fully balanced Diamond output stage and proprietary Minimum Phase digital filter running on an FPGA. It functions as a full digital hub with ten digital inputs spanning Ethernet, USB, AES/EBU, optical, and S/PDIF, a 100-step digital volume control, and both balanced and single-ended headphone and line outputs.
MSRP
$14,000
Used market · Very Good
$7,248
MSRP to used market
From $8,750 at launch to $7,248 today.
Specifications
- Color
- Choose an option Silver Black
- Weight
- 16 lbs / 7.25kg
- Max DSD
- USB2: DSD512; NET2: DSD256; Optical/S-PDIF/AES-EBU: DSD64 via DoP
- Dimensions
- 17.25 x 13.00 x 3.75 in / 44 x 33 x 10cm
- Input options
- Choose an option Base USB2 NET2 Full Clear
- Analog outputs
- Line output: 4.5V rms balanced, 2.25V rms single-ended. Headphone output: 9.0V rms balanced, 4.5V rms single-ended, via 1/4" and 3.5mm single-ended jacks plus balanced 3.5mm jacks
- Digital inputs
- 10 total: Ethernet, asynchronous USB, 2x AES/EBU (XLR), 3x optical (TOSLINK), 3x S/PDIF (BNC); available in Base/USB2/NET2/Full option tiers
- Volume control
- 100-step digital-domain volume control, 1.0dB per step
- DAC architecture
- ESS ES9038PRO DAC chip (stock filters bypassed); Ayre's own Minimum Phase digital filter on FPGA, single-pass 16x oversampling; zero-feedback, fully balanced discrete Diamond output stage; exclusive Equilock circuit; Ayre & Morion jointly-developed crystal oscillators
- Max PCM resolution
- USB2 input: up to 768kHz/24-bit; NET2 input: up to 384kHz/24-bit; Optical/S-PDIF/AES-EBU: up to 192kHz/24-bit
- Dimensions w x d x h
- 17.25 x 13.00 x 3.75 in / 44 x 33 x 10cm
- Special decoding features
- HDCD decoding; MQA decoding not implemented (as of 2017 Stereophile review); Roon Ready and DLNA/UPnP support
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