We were teased about potential Blu-OS-powered music streamers from Cyrus Audio for over a year and a half, and, finally, these streamers are now official.
There are two new music streamers, the Cyrus Stream-XR and Cyrus Classic Stream. The first joins Cyrus's premium XR range of hi-fi separates, from which the CDi-XR is a five-star performer. The Classic Stream joins, unsurprisingly, the Classic range. Revived last year, it also includes the Classic Amp and Classic Pre separates.
Both retain Cyrus's customary half-width chassis footprint, with the main visual difference being that the Stream-XR has a display and a row of control/playback buttons on the front panel, while the Classic Stream is a more minimal affair with no display and a single power button adorning the front.
Both music streamers share plenty of features, from AirPlay 2, MQA decoding, Roon Ready certification and both wi-fi and wired ethernet connections. The tried-and-tested BluOS platform, which we've seen in various Bluesound, Dali and NAD products, forms the core streaming function of the two streamers, allowing playback from popular music streaming services such as Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Spotify and more through the BluOS controller app.
Each model can handle lossless playback of high-resolution audio files up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM. The main difference between the two models lies in the internal DAC used.
The Stream-XR uses the second generation of Cyrus's QXR DAC, which includes a "high-speed analogue buffer stage" and aims to deliver the analogue signal as accurately and precisely as possible. This DAC design is based on the ESS ES9038Q2M chipset, tuned by Cyrus's own engineering team to achieve the "highest possible performance".
Meanwhile, the Classic Stream uses the first generation of this QXR DAC, which is also found in the Classic Amp integrated amplifier and Classic Pre preamp.
In terms of physical connections, the Stream-XR has a pair of analogue line-level outputs, one optical and coaxial digital input apiece, and single optical and coaxial outputs. The Classic Stream has only single optical and coax outputs, and one pair of line-level outputs. Both models have provisions for adding Cyrus's external power supply, too (at extra cost).
The Cyrus Classic Stream is available now for £1995, while the Cyrus Stream-XR is yours for £2495.
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