Cyrus ONE HD
Contents
Cyrus One HD – 1200 Euros
Cyrus we know mostly from the gray boxes. Your author has had a Cyrus Q Power. And demoed several Cyrus systems in his days he worked in a hifi store. What fine devices they were! The Cyruses were always up for it; up-beat, energetic, rhythmic.
If we look at the connections, we see that this is a fairly modern device: coaxial in, optical in, USB, three times single ended and phono. And also bluetooth. That’s just a lot. This Cyrus One HD does remind us of the Q Power in a way. The up-beat character which is not intrusive and surprisingly friendly in the high (that was sometimes different in the past). We do not hear any hint of sharpness. This makes this Cyrus more ‘layed back’ than the Rega Brio…. who would have thought that? We didn’t. Later, in the measurements, we see this reflected: the Cyrus runs straight to 5 Hz, the Rega runs down in the bass).
The ONE HD puts down a nice overall picture. An image that, in our opinion, is very true: tranquility, insight and a playfulness that draws you into the music. Is it the most detailed? No. Is it the most dynamic? No. Is it the amplifier with the biggest stereo image? No. But the point is: everything is in balance. And that listens pleasantly. We are not distracted by certain characteristics.
Now, it’s always a matter of matching, however, this Cyrus proved to be a fine player in the previous big test as well. That was on the DALI Rubicon 8. Now the Cyrus also plays on the Focals particularly nice and well balanced. We think this is a very fine amp!
Measurements
Cyrus has achieved a very nice tuning on this Class D hybrid which, according to the booklet, should deliver 100 watts into 8 Ohms (at 0.1% THD+N). We measure 80 watts at 0.28% in 8 OHm and 160 watts in 4 Ohms at 0.8% THD). So that’s not quite spot on…
The Cyrus ONE HD comes across as smooth. We do not see on the Prism the lowest noise floor in the test field at 1 watt, but towards 10 watts it does drop with 20dB. This does indicate that you’d better ‘turn that knob’ a bit; you’ll get a better signal-to-noise ratio.
The frequency response is very straight. Practically a straight line from 5 Hz to 40 kHz. Then it peaks a little to 50 kHz and then drops off. Distortion is within limits. We see the Cyrus spiking around 5 kHz / 0.45% at 10 watts. At 1 watt it is 0.15%. There are cleaner amplifiers in terms of THD though.
Specifications
