The home office set up has gone through a bit of an evolution and now has a Cyrus 8QX DAC and the PWC Twenty 21's have taken up duties as the rear speakers in the main set up and the R100's have moved to the office , once I save up I will replace them with Twenty 21's again.
Now I am a fully paid up Cyrus fan boy and from a sonic point of view I really love the sound and I find the 8QX DAC shares the same signature as my main Pre - Power set up in the front room. Someone looking for a small amp with loads of power and control you would no go far wrong with this unit. Its possible to play files direct from the USB out on a computer to the DAC, as it is on many modern amps, which will gives pleasing results and would be a very tidy neat set up.
The sound itself is warm and detailed without being overly analytical and much as the speakers are just sitting on the desk the soundstage is really nice and set up like this give a tremendous feeling of being in the music , much as really good headphones do. The main problem with the speaker positioning is at volume but a standard listing levels everything is fine, not as good a being on stands but almost.
Cyrus build quality feel 'military grade' and personally I like the way all the units look the same across the range but I know this is not the case for all . A little niggle which I also have in my main set up is how hard can it be to get LED light the have the same level of brightness ? You can see clearly in the photo how much brighter the streamer LED is ove the AMP , just a detail but at this price level its something that they really need to fix.
I know this photo will bring the cablephobes among us into a fit of rage but please note the cable from the MAC to the DAC is a cheap one
The Signature speaker cable is really good and im fairly sure no matter what system it goes into will see an improvement and for me it works really well in my set ups and I use it for all the speakers aport from the real surround speakers. Of particular note is the impact it has had on the centre channel.
The Tuned array digital cable is on home test from the local store and I have tried it in this system and the main system. I wont make any comments about it but I will be ordering on on Monday to go into the main set up and the older non tuned array signature digital one that is in the main set up will come into this system.
The Blue cable is part of the Cyrus power system where you just need to turn one of the units on or off.
The Ethernet cable is a standard one which goes into a netwok switch with another standard cable to the NAS. I use two NAS units which are both close to the streamers, this is done mainly for data back ups as they are in two different locations it will be unlikely that both units will suffer the same fate in a accident etc.
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