I'm new to this forum and would like to ask a simple question. What is the best speaker (as cheap as possible i.e. under £1500) setup for my Cyrus setup.
I have the Cyrus 8vs, the CD 8x and two PSXRs. Interconnects are QED Silver anniversary, and Audioquest slate speaker leads. The speakers I'm using at the moment are ... er.. .. well.. hmmm.. Tannoy eclipse (the 1985 ones).
I went all over the place to find a better speaker, I listened to the award winning quad range (waaaay too top heavy), B&W had some nice(ish) ones but the prices for the ones that sounded good were astronomical, I heard a pair of totems that were nice, but you'd need a decent sub with them. The Spendor S5s that most of the magazines recommended were horrible, made my ears bleed! What is it with modern speakers and high end? Do the speaker manufacturers expect you to always have a sub to cope with the lows???
Anyway, after trawling around listening to loads of different speakers I put a CD on through these crappy old tannoys and they sounded better than anything I'd heard all day - with the exception of B&W Nautilus - oh the nautilus.... they did sound fantastic, but at quieter volume settings they did lack some midrange.
Anyway, I'm convined that there is no way on earth that a pair of Tannoy Eclipses knocked up in the 1980's are the best speakers for the Cyrus... someone please tell me some really good ones. I don't want to buy a sub and I don't want to buy a super tweeter, I just want a speaker with a good bass - not too tight like quad - a good midrange - not too bass heavy like monitor audio's - and a good tweeter - not too tweety that it makes your ears bleed - like quad, warfedale, B&W (sub £1500 speakers) and Spendors.
Spendors definitely shouldn't make your ears bleed. If so, you've definitely got a problem elsewhere in the system or the dealer that demoed them did.
Apart from your comments, I would have said Spendor S5e or S6e as a nice match. Like Richard, I also like Proac. Sounds like what you really want are some BC1s.
I'll give the proacs a demo I think Well, I will do once I get my 8vs fixed - it appears as though Cyrus are among the list of crap manufacturers who build systems to die once they are out of guarantee. The guarantee lasts for two years, my amp is about six months out of guarantee and its now dead. I called cyrus and they said that it'd only be cheap to fix (about £100), then I'd have to pay for postage etc, so probably another £50 or £60. I was offered the upgrade to the 8vs2 for £250. But, I just thought, 'sod it, what's the point, it'll only break in another two years'! So I told them to forget it.
I just feel miserable, I don't use my amp that often, probably about two or three times a week, I don't push the amp at all, it rarely goes over a quarter volume. I just feel ripped off, so I'm thinking of dumping all my Cyrus stuff - flogging all the rest of it on ebay and putting my broken 8vs in the bin and investing in American equipment, maybe Krell. At least I'll get decent customer service.
Andrew, your Cyrus kit is a very, very good set up indeed. You'll loose a shed load of money selling it on eBay, replacing it would be very costly to get something that is the same standard. Which every speaker option that you go for, (that will be down to your musical personal taste), you really need to consider upgrading the interconnects and the speaker cable. Often this upgrade can really bring a system to life, with the Cyrus kit that you have, you haven't even been close to hearing the true balance and scale of sound that it is capable of.
I have a Cyrus CD6 and amp is Cyrus 8vs iam using speakers: Quad 11L with silver anniversay speaker cable with Cambridge & audio interconnect.
What interconnect-cables should I use with my cyrus, and am thinking of upgrading the speakers to ATC SM11's and use better cable. ANybody got any better suggestions for speakers, speaker cable and interconnects for the Cyrus?
Sach , try to listen to speakers from PMC , ( Professional monitor company ) they are all transmission line speakers and are the most natural range of speakers i have ever heard , they seem to breathe and make music sound live and involving. See http://www.pmc-speakers.com .
They will work well with your cyrus gear and you will probably forget the need to upgrade your cables.
I have a Cyrus daD3 CD which I connected to a Cyrus7 amp with Cyrus' own interconnects. I have tried a few interconnects and the improvement I achieved with these was by far and away the most dramatic. Dynamics were greatly boosted; I had to turn the volume down the first time I tried it. I think Andrew has been unlucky with the reliability issue. I have had my Cyrus gear for over ten years with no issues on the reliability front.
Try the Octagon Cathedral II-a's - they wil compare very favorably with any speaker up to about £3.5K, yet cost not much more than half that. Being transmission lines, they have a beautiful midrange - and are ruler flat fromm 250Hz to 22KHz. In the bass region they output below 30Hz, giving a solid tuneful bassLook at the Acoustic Perfection website( www.acousticperfection.co.uk) for details of these and other variations on the trnasmission line theme.
I'm running the Cyrus CD8x and PSR through a Densen BEAT 200/310 pre/power amp setup at the moment. I chose the CD and amps to match my speakers which I adore - they are Monitor Audio Gold Reference 20s. I don't know exactly how they will match up to the full Cyrus combination you have, but if you can possibly give them a listen, do try them. I've had mine for 6 years now and to me they give just the right combination of musicality, strong midrange, crisp but not dominant treble and a good hefty but precise bass wallop. They definitely don't need a sub to produce their best. However I suspect they do need a lively amp to get the most out of them - hence my choice of the Densens in preference to the Cyrus, which as I recall is very precise, articulate and detailed but not as lively/fast as the Densen kit can be.
I listen to a wide range of music - classical, pop, rock (some heavy!) and bass-heavy dance, and frankly nothing seems to faze the Monitor Audios.
For what it's worth I've got the speakers biwired with Chord Odyssey 2; I think the list price of the speakers is £1500 if it hasn't changed for a while.
My brother and i run the same set of speakers and cd players but different amps, he has a cyrus 6vs amp i have a musical fidelity X-150 amp, both have rega apollo cd's. We both have Monitor Audio RS6 speakers ($1700 retail here in Australia). They sound brilliant in both systems, read the review on www.stereophile.com, it says it all, then let your ears be the judge.I agree about the ear bleeds, solution for me was Chord cobra 3 interconnects.
i was interrupted with my last reply, i re-read your message and noticed your comment on the monitor audio speakers, i'm confused when you say that some speakers need subs but the monitor audio's are to bass heavy?, " interconnect and speaker cables are the tone controls of modern day equipment" I have found that silver cables to my ears is what makes them bleed, this in turn makes the bass way too bassy, specially with the MA's, the chord cobra 3 is multi strand copper and give a much more even sound spectrum with an engaging musical sound. I tried a chord chamelion silver plus at twice the price on my linn set up and had the same dissapointment as the sound from the cd, i reluctantly tried the cobra 3 on my linn, it's still there, the taming effect of cd sound was not replicated with the linn, the top end is sweeter than ever without sound dull or clipped and the bottom end was more taut but lost none of its dynamic power. Moving the speakers around changed the sound stage, they are now sounding better than ever.
I haven't read all of your replys, but your system mirrors what mine once was. Don't get hung up on the age ot your speakers, I was using a pair of 1980 LS3/5as on my identical set up until I managed to score a fantastic deal on some Wilson Benesch speakers. I am not going to recommend any particular speaker, but I will whole heartedly recommend Van Den Hul Orchid interconnects. At £180 per 80cm pair from Divine Audio they may make more difference than many speaker upgrades, they really are that good. I have directly compared them to Chord Signature (the CD8x has 2 outputs so switching between cables using the remote control is no problem!) and I really could not tell the difference, plus the VDH's are much more flexible. Indeed when I bought a pair of Mono Xs I decided to buy another pair of these cables to run from my 8vs (which I am using as a pre-amp) to the power amp. Try these first and possibly save yourself a load of money. You can then spend it on more music! I upgraded (very significantly) to VDH from Chord Chameleon silver. If you do want to go with speakers, then whilst out listening to many different brands, I liked the PMC range. The Pro Acs were good but the PMC OB1s were much much better and the 8VS will drive them with out difficulty. Perhaps you can get some second hand ones on ebay, but don't over look upgrading all of your cables first.
I forgot to mention that you will need to budget for an upgrade to the new 8se variant of the CD player. Having heard the two side by side ( I actually own both models - see my ebay sale of the 8x on Sunday next) you will be astonished at the improvement. (I have even been thinking of returning my 8x as faulty, there must surely be something wrong with it!)
Having the full Cyrus set up off XTse,Dacxp, 2 X Powers plus 4 psx-r s feeding into Spendor S5e which I am now finding to be very bass bloomy and restrained midrange . In my opinion the XT se is certinly showing the limitations of the Spendors at this present time I find PROacs B&W Monitor all to have the same faults hence I have auditioned ATC scm11/19 shortcomings of the Spendors have been rectified . I suggest looking at sealed boxes as in the ATCs they give good tight solid bass and a fantastic upfront midrange ????
Well, I will do once I get my 8vs fixed - it appears as though Cyrus are among the list of crap manufacturers who build systems to die once they are out of guarantee. The guarantee lasts for two years, my amp is about six months out of guarantee and its now dead. I called cyrus and they said that it'd only be cheap to fix (about £100), then I'd have to pay for postage etc, so probably another £50 or £60. I was offered the upgrade to the 8vs2 for £250. But, I just thought, 'sod it, what's the point, it'll only break in another two years'! So I told them to forget it. 
