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The iQube user manual contains the earlier quoted warning and another one about not switching the iQube on or off while wearing headphones. We strongly suggest reading that manual and taking this advice to heart. Our loaner at times uttered a transient noise upon switching off. Connected to our PC, we thus powered it up before donning the headphones. We get back to this later so stay with us. It's no longer an issue.
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There is a lot of hoopla around hi res but the availability of such recordings is still dramatically small and wherever there is hi res content, it's rarely to our taste. What’s more, we noticed that too many recording offered as hi res are nothing but upsampled versions of ordinary Red Book releases and not native hi res recordings. Great music in 16/44.1 remains great music. Examples we like to mention which sounded truly fantastic through the PC-XXHighEnd/iQube combo were the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Concord on a Summer Night and—believe it or not—Harry Belafonte's At Carnegie Hall. The latter was the XRCD2 version of the classic recording which Kazou Kiuchi of Combak/Reimyo gave us at the recent Milan audio show. Like all music that ends up on any of our hard drives, these recordings were ripped with EAC. Both Brubeck and Belafonte are statement live recordings. Belafonte’s was probably the first recording where audience participation became part of the deal. With Brubeck the spontaneous participation of the crickets in the background adds a lot to the atmosphere of this very dynamic masterpiece.
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V1 thru V3
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Listening through either a Sony MDR-F1 headphone, Sennheiser HD-600 or budget Ultrasone iCons foldable, sound quality was excellent. Bass was full and articulate, the mids were silky smooth and the spoken word of audio books was highly intelligible, with upper frequencies that were never bright or tinny. In sum, listening for hours on end a computer as music source became very enjoyable.
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On to S/PDIF possibilities. We do not own a USB to S/PDIF converter like a KingRex UC192 or M2Tech hiFace so we drafted one of our PS Audio Perfect Wave transports to active duty. A PWT can play not only Red Book CDs but also WA-coded DVDs. These WAV files may be up to 32 bits at 192kHz. In our music collection we have a variety of hi res recordings transferred to DVD and some which originally came on DVD like certain MA Recordings.
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In order to connect the iQube V3 to the PWT we used an unbalanced digital Crystal Cable interconnect which met the Qables-supplied RCA to 4-pole mini jack converter cable. The first CD in was a 24/96 issue of Sera Una Noche on MA Recordings. Now something nice happened. First the PWT sought the correct setting for the disk. A small click from its innards revealed that it had recognized a 24/96 formatted disc. Upon switching on the iQube, something similar occurred. First there was a little relay click, then the power LED on the left front began to blink, indicating that the iQube was trying to lock to the digital signal. Once lock was in place, the LED went steady. Putting the headphones on, the mesmerizing soundscape of Sera Una Noche with its wide variety of acoustic instruments and intricate melodies wrapped around rhythmic acrobatics began to seduce us.
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