An entertaining and revealing disc player at its level
Cyrus hasn’t put a foot wrong with its CD players for as long as we can remember. In fact it would be fair to say that the company’s track record has been phenomenal. So it’s no surprise that the Cyrus CDi – the successor to the Cyrus 6SE and Cyrus 8SE – is a typical gleaming example of the company treading the right path.
Scale of achievement
While the British audio brand has since launched the excellent flagship CDi-XR, the original CDi still sets the benchmark at its more modest (although admittedly still significant) price. And after a very short listen to it, we remain convinced of the scale of Cyrus’s achievement here.
We play Hans Zimmer’s Dream Is Collapsingfrom the Inceptionsoundtrack and right away the CDi displays the uniform, articulate and intuitive presentation that we would expect from a more expensive player.
It offers buckets of detail, and the finer flurries of quieter instruments surface, while the more intense parts of the score soar to a dramatic climax. Each layer of the composition is precisely unpeeled, and each instrument passes through the mix with coherent flow and tact.
But the rhythmic talent here is what really raises our eyebrows. Pace and momentum is exercised with articulation and vibrancy. We find ourselves entertained by the Cyrus’s dynamic agility and neutral balance in a way that is rare at this price. Though fast and fluid, the sound is much weightier than any of the company’s previous models.
Even when we switch to Timbaland’s Morning After Dark, a track that has a fleshy, hard sound, heaps of sub-bass and thumping beats, the Cyrus CDi doesn’t bat an eyelid.
As if that weren’t testing enough, we dig out a live recording of Linkin Park and are equally impressed at the amount of clarity and definition it extracts against the background crowd noise – even if the spacious soundstage seems a bit forsaken.
Solid build, fuss-free design
We may not have heard quite this calibre of sound from a Cyrus Classic Series player before, but we have become fairly accustomed to the blueprint design of its machines. Unboxing the long, narrow aluminium chassis, therefore, isn’t exactly a bolt from the blue.
We generally like its solid build, fuss-free design and simple, easy-to-read black-on-green display – although the last of those now looks thoroughly outdated in today’s market and could do with a rethink.
In earlier SE models, we found the ch
