is ayre qb-9 dac better than cx7e mp?

just read some stuff from audioasylum Charles from Ayre insisted that the dac is on par with cx5e mp, cx7e mp only sounds better cuz the dac is not fully broken in.
And also to maximise performance with dac, he said it's better to upgrade up to 8GB RAM, there are tests about Macbook pro sounds much better than mini+ with software like Amarra it makes top notch sound. Oh he mentioned pluggin the dac in power filter as well. So there you go.

I have a QB-9 and love it. I also have a Esoteric DV-50 and if there are any differences, they're too subtle for me to hear and rely on memory.

I also keep seeing the thing about the Mac and adding the extra memory changing the sound. (Could be from one source and repeated here and there). If adding memory does in fact change the sound, there's something "broken" on the MAC. It doesn't take a lot of computes with today's, or even yesterday's, hardware to take a PCM stream and send it out USB. The MACs problem could be sloppy software design unpacking lossless compressed music files and generating the PCM stream. Although I still can't think of a way this would change the actual output data from what was originally used when compressed. There's no variables, it's a deterministic transformation. I'm guessing it's "faulty recollection" that happens way to often in audio if not broken software. Also, all this assumes the MAC software does not process the resultant PCM stream before output or rely on some sort of system timing to generate the PCM.

My 1GB memory based Samsung netbook and external USB disk drive running XP sounds exactly the same as my Quadcore 6GB DDR3 based game system. And I'm not a Windoze fanboy. Microsoft has generated some of the sloppiest software known to man. :)

I haven't heard the cx7e, but I listened to the 5XE and the QB-9 with B & W 803D speakers and Ayre K5 amp and preamp. I also heard the qb-9 with Wilson Maxx speakers and Audio Research amps (sorry, don't know which ones), the 5xe with Wilson Sasha speakers and agree, to some extent, with Cerrot's opinion above. I actually did like the qb-9 though, if the right equipment was matched with this dac I think it would sound very good. Only when comparing with a more expensive cd player did it show it's weakness. With the Ayre amps and B&W speakers, it was warm sounding with good detail, nice soundstaging. Of course this was my opinion, others may not have liked it, but I thought for the price it was very enjoyable to listen to. Sandra

To my ears, in my system, the CX-7eMP and QB-9 are pretty close overall. The QB-9 sounds a bit more open and immediate but also a bit smoothed over, perhaps a hair less dynamic. I'd call it a draw, overall. It's impossible, however, to farily compare the two because the computer *must* be part of the equation for the QB-9 and there are boatloads of variables that affect computer playback (all the hardware combos, OS, msic player, power supply and on and on). I still need to try 1) different music players (eg, Jplay, JRMC, etc); 2) upgrade USB cable; 3) linear power supply; 4) SOtM USB card. I'm hopeful that the QB-9 will outperform the CX-7 after I get the computer "optimized". In the meantime, the CX-7 can't play hi-rez material even tho' it is far easier to use than ripping/tagging/organizing/backing-up music files.

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In my system, my QB-9 is better than my C5xeMP.

And it's outperformed other CX5s & CS7s (and for that matter - every CDP regardless of cost) on various locations where I was voicing a system.

I believe (not stated as fact, just opinion) that much of this is so system dependent - cables, computers, optimization of computer & files, music players, etc.

So I'm not sure if any of our opinions count for much except how the components worked in THAT system.
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