• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Road Warrior
    • Best Of… Catalog
      • USB Power – Best USB Chargers
      • USB Power – Best Battery Pack / Chargers
      • Audio – Best Portable Speakers & Audio Equipment
      • Storage – Best Portable Hard Drive Solutions
      • Hard Drive for iPad
      • Baby – Best Baby Travel Gear
      • Essential Travel Accessories
      • Losing Weight without Exercise
      • Space Saving Power Outlets for Capsule Apartments
      • Rough and Tough Stuff
      • What is Thunderbolt?
    • Gifts for MEN
    • mobile computing
    • Pimp My iPad
    • travel appliances & travel accessories
    • travel audio
    • travel bags & luggage
    • travel wear & travel apparel
  • JetSetter
    • luxury resorts
    • stylish city hotels
    • Travel Intelligence
  • Urban Nomad
    • Urban Diaries
    • urban design
    • smart home
    • small spaces and capsule apartments
    • drinks of distinction
  • About Us
  • US Shop
  • UK Shop

Nomadz.Net

Travel Gadgets for a Mission-Critical Lifestyle

You are here: Home / Gifts and Gift Ideas / Portable in-line DAC – Cyrus Soundkey

July 5, 2016

Portable in-line DAC – Cyrus Soundkey

Cyrus Audio makes seriously good home audio components for the audiophile. Now they are making travel technology for portable audio enthusiasts.

I have owned their CD players, DACs and audio amplifiers for over nearly 30 years, so it’s an understatement when I say that I am a fan. They are a small firm based in England with a highly enthusiastic and dedicated team of boffins who seamlessly combine the analog and digital worlds into very handsome looking (and diminutive) audio equipment. Their attention to detail is phenomenal and their sound quality superlative.

That was why I am so excited to see that they have a Kickstarter campaign for an inline portable 32-bit DAC, called the Cyrus Soundkey. Judging from the prototype photos it looks like it will be incredibly small and lightweight (16g). Given my experience of Cyrus’ highdef equipment, I can’t wait to get my hands on the final product.

If you are wondering what a DAC (digital to analog converter) is, it uses more sophisticated electronics to convert digital sound files into analog waves for your headphones/speaker, resulting in much higher-fidelity sound. This is especially critical when listening to audio files on a phone or portable mp3 player, which tend to use very bog-standard electronics and inexpensive components to do the job. The Cyrus Soundkey will process the audio much better and upsample it to bring out more liveliness and nuance. It will even support high definition 24 bit/96 kHz files. The Soundkey amplifier will protect your phone’s battery life by only drawing 50mA, which is half the standard of 100mA that Apple sets on third-party accessory suppliers.

They have already reached their initial goal but there are still days left in the campaign and they’ll be announcing stretch goals, so why not jump in and join us backers!

Click to go to the Kickstarter campaign for the Cyrus Soundkey.

 

Filed Under: Gifts and Gift Ideas, Gifts for Men, Road Warrior, travel music Tagged With: audio, dac

About Road Warrior

I travel the globe a great deal for work. My motto is "Travel Hard, Pack Light." I am constantly refining my travel gear to give me the lightest and most ultraportable footprint possible. Achieving a Zero Footprint is my ultimate goal and I approach it as would a Zen Master.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Categories

7 Best USB Power Adaptors and USB Rechargers for JetSetters, Globetrotters & Road Warriors

Best Battery Pack / USB Battery Rechargers

Tags

AirPlay audio California capsule apartments capsule wardrobe capsule wardrobes Carlsbad child friendly coffee design digital audio digital cameras ecofriendly Good to Go hard drive hardware headphones health health & beauty Hotel hotel reviews interior design iPad iPhone italian cuisine Italy japanese cuisine London luggage luxury travel macbook map product review Restaurant review Singapore solar sports thunderbolt travel apps travel kits USA waterproof whiskey wine

Footer


Notice: genesis_footer_creds_text is deprecated since version 3.1.0! Use genesis_pre_get_option_footer_text instead. This filter is no longer supported. You can now modify your footer text using the Theme Settings. in /var/www/webroot/ROOT/wp-includes/functions.php on line 4720

Copyright© 2021 · by Shay Bocks