Cyrus reliability and customer service?

It was the naim Uniti range that was having problems with reliability. Their customer service is non-existant; they just refer you back to the dealer. In fact, the MD of Naim came on the forum to confirm they were doing nothing. In my case, the dealers just sent the UnitiLite back and got a new replacement. The new one works fine. 

You mention CD reliability, but the ND5 XS and Cyrus Streamline don't have a CD player anyway. If you want to go down the Cyrus route, I would go for an ex-demo series 1 Streamline. These go for about £800, half their original cost. They unofficially will stream in ALAC and most other file formats. The Naim will sound better, but is it £1,000 better? Only you can answer that.

Cryrus did indeed have a problem with its launch of their new CD players around 2008. I bought a CD-XTse transport that had go back for a firmware update.  My experience of this was fine with quick turnaround.

You could argue that Cyrus shouldn't have launched  the product with problems, but these things happen and they sorted it pretty quickly.

I also had to send back an out of warranty DAC-X after a poorly designed interconnect damaged a connector on the back.  It turns out Cyrus have a fixed price service/rair scheme for units out of warranty.  For the DAC-X this was about £180.

Cyrus seem happy to service and repair old units and are upfront with the costs.  Overall, I'd say Cyrus are good to deal with.

If you are buying a streamer just to be a streamer (not amp combo etc) I would suggest the ND5 XS or Linn Majik.. You could try the Cyrus too but IMO Linn and Naim are at the top of the streamer game by a fair bit and will come down too taste which you prefer. I love the ND5 XS absolutely gorgeous sound, extremely natural, engaging, fluid and analogue sound. 

I agree that Naim do make excellent streamers, complete with one of the best apps around. Since CYrus have launched their app for their  streamers, they are now in direct competition for that crown. The app is stable and very well thought out and is something they'll be perfecting over time too.

Have you considered Sonos?  They've been at it for ages, have the largest product range and best multi-room capability of them all (AFAIK).

I'm not even slightly tempted to swap my Sonos for the so called high end. 

I've got a SBT, but if it dies I'll be turning to Sonos.  There's no way I'd give house space to one of the audiophile streamers.  Worse functionality and user interface, limited multi-room, over sized and over priced, all with no audible improvement to SQ.  All IMHO of course

Having read some users feedback of Cyrus I would say their customer service is pretty poor. Just read problems about their cds players on this site, it seems the only answer from Cyrus was to upgrade to a newer more expensive Cyrus player and it seems even that has similar problems, ie. not playing some cds.. 

Actually he did not "confirm they were doing nothing".

He confirmed there had been issues with a new CD mechanism - that had been resolved - and asked affected customers to arrange for a replacement through their dealer.

You were screaming for action (and for free compensatory CD5i players and half price vouchers) in the middle of Naim's annual Christmas leave on the  28th December.

Cyrus initially had issues with their CD players when they decided to make their own laser mechanism - basically so they won't be at the mercy of the likes of Philips and Sony who regularly discontinue laser mechs and leave some players unserviceable. By doing this, Cyrus can now make and supply CD players for as long as they want to, not for as long as is dictated to them. Those issues are all sorted now with the SE2 mechs.

No audible improvement in sound quality  :rofl: 

You either haven't heard them or you're deaf

Wrong on both counts.  Guess again.

I have had loads of Cyrus kit over the years and none of it has ever broken so I don't know what the customer service is like but I do know the kit is good. My brother is still using a old 8vs2 amp of mine which still sounds great.

I also have a Streamline and a stream XP, I am going to get the upgrade for both to the new "2" so I can use the App and steam higher res files.

The sound on both units is really good with the streamline offering a really nice one box solution. Having tested both on the main system the XP is better than the streamline. Im not that great at putting this into words but for me the music seems more natural and there is more space around the notes - in as much as each note has a start and an end and does not appear as a mush of sound.The sound is more involving with the stream and I often find myself listening for hours, when time permits!

The N remote is ok but not worth it if you are going to use the App. On the N remote software you would have thought you would be able to select all the cyrus models but you cant and for example there is no Pre DAC. Even if there is a work around this is a shameful shortfall which they should really sort out. It almost seems like they did some dev on the n remote then gave up with it leaving it half finished. Personally if I was running cyrus I would give whoever is in charge of the n remote project a good kicking as the software lets it down and would take a decent developer 30 mins to put right.

No guessing needed i've done side by side comparisons on multiple set ups and had a friend 100% pick out the massive difference without knowing which was playing. Through your actives you probably wouldn't hear much of a difference no.. Same way there's not as much of a difference on my Cambridge living room set up and will probably get a connect at some point. I've heard both on my amp and my old Cyrus and the difference is night and day. The sonos sounds like its playing through wool in comparison. but you get what you pay for and they're both great bits of kit at their price point