CYRUS CDI-XR PHANTOM BLACK
Cyrus has nearly four decades of experience crafting award-winning products, designed and assembled entirely in-house at Cyrus in the UK. From the start, Cyrus’s mission has been to infuse the latest in technology with superb engineering to create ‘emotional’ musical experiences.
A fundamental step change in design approach for XR series has been possible due to an accumulated understanding of DAC technologies and power supply designs, combined with Cyrus’s recently updated manufacturing processes and the availability of higher-grade components. XR series, whilst faithful to the Cyrus core acoustic philosophy, provides remarkable sound quality benefits and substantially increased dynamic range, allowing every layer and nuance of the music to shine through. Indeed, the clarity and detail of the XR series will keep the listener wanting to go back and listen to tracks heard a thousand times before.
One of the driving principles behind the design of the XR series has been noise reduction. Tremendous efforts were made to protect and isolate the signal path from potential sources of noise. Another significant area of focus was power supply design. Using only the best components, XR delivers outstandingly high quality and reliable power to every bit of the circuitry to ensure optimal performance. Last but certainly not least is the crucial DAC that reconstructs analogue signals with incredible accuracy and precision.
The CDi XR is designed as a reference integrated CD player, building on the legacy of the CDi and incorporating many novel technologies developed in-house at Cyrus over recent years. Housed within our iconic half-width chassis, The CDi XR sits alongside above the existing CDi and CDt models, offering a substantive performance upgrade.
Several years ago, Cyrus invested heavily in developing their own in-house CD ‘Servo’ mechanism, called ‘Servo Evolution’. The design principle is to read as much information as possible from the disc itself first time, rather than having to rely on ‘re-reads’ or ‘error-correction’.
Whilst it is true that the data on a CD is stored in ‘1s and 0s’, the way it is read, picking up different frequencies of reflected light, has analogue elements to it. Therefore, precision engineering can improve performance. Off-the-shelf mechanisms produce significant ‘system noise’ when the stepper motors of the mechanism are required to be used during the error correction processes when the data was not picked up on the first pass. The ‘Servo-Evolution’ system reduces these re-reads and corrections by around 20%, producing not only a cleaner data stream for the DAC, but significantly less noise induced in the analogue output stages.
Upgraded components along with intelligently designed circuits using ‘counter-current’ methodologies to reduce noise pickup are in evidence throughout the design. The fundamental principle is that power starts at the ‘quietest’ part of the circuit, before flowing towards the ‘noiser’ sections. Less noise is therefore ‘carried’ or induced into the power paths, limiting the transmission of noise inside the product. Whilst this sounds logical, the application in practice is incredibly complex, and needs to be considered at a system-wide level. Even the geometric alignment of individual components has been optimized to facilitate the cleanest possible flow of power and musical signal.
The DAC has been housed on its own shielded section of the PCB, again to help contain noise transfer. The DAC in the CDi-XR is their own second-generation QXR DAC platform with a key notable difference in its implementation. As a DAC usually has to handle a multitude of possible resolutions and input paths, their design is always a slight compromise on the best possible configuration for any particular source. In the CDi-XR, however, the resolution that is going to be received in known exactly (44.1kHz, 16bit) and the incoming signal path that data is going to travel. As a consequence the QXR DAC has been calibrated with incredible precision. The designers were able to optimize, not just the inbound data path and the data conversion itself, but also the filtering stages of the DAC to render the finest analogue output possible.
Naturally, the XR series also features a new aesthetic. All products in the new XR series are wrapped in a new "Phantom Black" paint finish, introduced especially for the XR series. If you’re worried that they won’t coordinate with your existing Cyrus products, don’t fret. The colour is sympathetic to both the existing core and signature range.
The XR series user interface is also new, incorporating capacitive touch buttons with satisfying audible feedback. The new UI also features a high resolution LCD screen.