In a recent campaign with counter-current neutral beam injection (NBI), the quiescent high confinement mode (QH-mode) is studied in ASDEX Upgrade. The QH-mode regime is obtained with all accessible NBI angles, with and without additional ion cyclotron heating, at various values of edge safety factor q95 and at values of Zeff down to 2.5 after fresh boronization. In contrast to the ELMy H-mode, the pedestal pressure depends significantly on radial heat flux in the QH-mode, giving rise to a reduced heating power degradation of H-mode confinement. The 'edge harmonic oscillation', a characteristic MHD feature of the QH-mode that replaces ELMs, occurs at rational surfaces in the H-mode barrier region, and has so far been found only with a toroidal mode number n = 1. These conditions seem to define windows in q95 for favourable QH-mode access.