Cyrus Audio is no stranger to US readers, but its half-width
‘singing shoeboxes’ sometimes struggle to make their mark outside of the
British Isles. This, coupled with the significant changes in the type of product
people buy today, meant Cyrus needed to make something bigger and that is
capable of being all things to all people. Lyric is the result. Lyric is the
first full-width product that Cyrus has made, but it retains much of the cast
aluminium casework, albeit with a glass facia, a clever non-print coated glass
facia at that. This is both smooth to the touch, and leaves engineers wondering
how they got that finish to look so good – something (with the greatest of
respect) not normally associated with Cyrus products and its typically
rugged-feel castings.
Cyrus Lyric front
view
Lyric comes in two flavours, 05 and the 09 tested here; the
latter offering greater power and a better DAC than the former, at a price
differential of $1,250. But what is Lyric? It’s a preamp, power amp, FM and DAB
tuner, CD player, network streamer, and DAC in one box. Some elements are
culled from existing Cyrus products; the streaming engine comes from Stream X,
and the CD transport has the ‘servo evolution’ control system from CDt. The DAC
comes from the CDi CD player, and is a 32-bit device able to accept inputs up
to 24/192 in PCM. Apparently, Cyrus will “never, ever” embrace DSD according to
Peter Bartlett. For now, at least.
The most radical bit of Lyric is the power amplifier, a
hybrid of analogue and Class D approaches, which has a large toroidal
transformer-based linear power supply and a Class D output stage. This gives
the Lyric its high 170 watt power rating, but without the weight of a similarly
powerful Class A/B design. This is because the efficiency of the output stage
allows for a relatively small power transformer. It also runs fairly cool for a
high power amp. Apparently, this technology was developed for a forthcoming
standalone power amp from Cyrus with even more power, and if Lyric is anything
to go by, that could be very interesting indeed.
Cyrus Lyric back
view
One of the weaknesses of some Class D implementations can be
sensitivity to the impedance of the loudspeaker load, meaning the amp’s
character may not be predictable from one speaker to another. Cyrus has taken
the step of building in automatic impedance matching to the attached
loudspeaker. It does this at switch on, so don’t make the mistake of switching
on before hooking up, because that rather undermines the process, I found!
Lyric changes its display if you put your hand near it,
showing track title, album, and artist over the cover art that it displays when
streaming. A quick scroll through the menu reveals that inputs can be named and
the analogue one can be converted to AV direct (effectively cutting out the
volume control). You can also specify 2.0 or 2.1 speaker set up and
backlighting has three modes. Being Cyrus’ attempt to woo the smartphone
generation it is also ‘made for’ all things iOS, and can stream wirelessly from
any phone with aptX enabled Bluetooth. Control is achieved with a supplied
remote that lights up its buttons when you move it. Unlike the n-Remote
supplied with classic Cyrus products, this does not have a screen nor is it rechargeable.
Instead, you are encouraged to use the Cadence app on your Android or iOS
device, a piece of software that seems to work well on both platforms. It even
has buttons for Wikipedia info look-up as well as instant social media links,
so that you can tell the world what you are enjoying on your Lyric, in the
musical equivalent of a selfie. Internet radio is covered by TuneIn, which
requires a small amount of computer interaction to set up presets. In addition,
both A and B variants of the USB input are available for computer audio, memory
sticks or tablet/phone connection. In other words, it can do almost everything,
all the time.
All the key info
on the app is reflected in that small front panel screen, including album art
But does it encourage you to listen? Yes, is the short
answer. For a start it’s intuitive to set-up and use. If you wire Lyric into
the network with an Ethernet cable, you don’t even need to use a password; it’s
ready to roll. The supplied handset is a little unconventional, with unusual
graphics in place of words, but it doesn’t take long to learn. More
importantly, once you have the app, the remote becomes almost redundant, but
might prove useful for volume and play/pause. The volume wheel on the Cadence
app works nicely though, allowing small volume changes (unlike most slider
designs) and the level is writ large on the unit’s display. In fact, all the
key info on the app is reflected in that small front panel screen, including
album art.
