Cyrus I Integrated Amplifier
The Cyrus I Integrated Amplifier was one of the very first budget amplifiers that tried to be more sophisicated and sonically superior to any its competition. It also allowed those listerners whose budgets had previously only catered for the truck loads of far eastern shiny silver and black affairs featuring all those horrible filters and knobs, buttons and tone controls which do nothing but degrade and colour the sound an opportunity to own something more refined and essentially very British.
Launched in 1984 by the electronics wing of Mission who were primarly know for their excellent range of loudspeakers and built in Huntingdon, Cambridge, the Cyrus I Integrated Amplifier quickly became a classic. The front fascia had a volume control, an input selector and a record selector - which allowed the user to record and listen to different sources and finally an on/off switch - well what more do you need ? Time and time again I have heard manufacturers say that there tone controls are so well designed using superior components that they have hardly any detrimental effect on the overall quality - in my experience, this just simply is not true. I have for example an Audiolab 8000A which as well as having tone controls, also has a direct signal switch. If the power and pre amp sections of the amp are split, the sound is far more cleaner and coherent with the pre-amp section bypassed.
The fact that Cyrus opted for a very short signal path between the five input stage and the power amplifier meant that it sounded far better than it rivals. The other advantage that the Cryus I had was that because of it's compact and more rigid chassis (85mm x 215mm x 345mm) and thanks to the clever use of a non metallic ferrous alloy case any mechanical resonance was minimised and radio interference reduced.
The Cyrus I also had an excellent MC/MM phone section which was also rare for an integrated amplifier under £200 and something that nearly all the far eastern competition lacked.
For the money, it was hard to criticise the Cryus I, the only real thing it lacked was serious power, however as this was primarly a budget amplifier, 25 watts per channel was more than enough given the average room size of the amplifier's potential customer. Besides there was always the Cyrus II integrated amplifier which although boasted 50 watts per channel cost twice as much.
Cyrus I Specification
Manufacturer : Cyrus, Huntingdon, Cambridge
Year Produced: 1984
Power Output:25 watts per channel into 8 Ohms (40 watts per channel into 4 Ohms)
Distortion: 0.005%, 0.007% (1kHz/8 Ohms),
Size:8.5cm x 21.5cm x 34.5cm
Weight:5kg
This entry was posted on Wednesday June 28th, 2006 at 6:47 PM and is filed under Amplifiers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.
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