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.
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