Cyrus Soundkey DAC & Headphone Amplifier - Ruby

Product Information

The overall sound signature is very smooth, focusing on warmth and immersion at the expense of complete clarity and neutrality.

Cyrus Soundkey este un DAC / AMP pentru telefoane, dar care poate fii folosit si la desktop. El este conceput ca sa mearga bine cu casti, in special cu casti care au un sunet mai cald si mai gros, cu care se imperecheaza foarte bine. Pe de alta parte, Soundkey nu merge foarte bine impreuna cu casti reci sau analitice, el insusi fiind putin rece si analitic in sunet. FiiO’s DAC is a little like listening to an artist rehearse, while the soundKey reveals a defining performance. It provides a boost to volume, so ensure your volume level is low on your handset when initially plugging in your earphones. The Soundkey is designed for portable headphones between 16 and 64 ohms which is a great majority of portable headphone/earphone models. Sound

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The Soundkey is a device that boasts an extremely low current due to the fact that it does not incorporate a separate battery, keeping it small and light and eliminating the need to charge it. Power is sourced straight from your smartphone's battery. This should not worry users, however, as, unlike most DACs tend to drain 100mA, this little device will draw merely 50mA, ensuring battery life is conserved and allowing more time to listen to your music. It’s affordable, compact and high-performance – only iOS-fanciers, with their convoluted method of attachment, will be less than all-around thrilled by the difference it can make to mobile listening pleasure. The build quality is flawless, and the manual volume knob is a pleasure to use. It uses Dethonray’s ‘Touch & Feel’ algorithm to make the volume adjustment smooth and accurate. Well, it is pretty portable. It doesn’t get hot during usage, only barely warm. Furthermore, it doesn’t have a lot of battery drain from your smartphone, so you don’t need to worry if you’re running low on bat, the Soundkey isn’t going to kill your day. There’s a pair of LEDs, one on either side of the volume dial, that indicate the sampling rate and type of file. They’re not particularly informative, as they don’t differentiate between the most common PCM file types. For example, 44.1kHz and 96kHz files are both represented by the same green light. Equally, everything from 176.4 to 384kHz files is indicated by yellow. Even the DSD files are lumped together without much thought. iFi needs to do better here.

Shifting gears more than somewhat with a 16-bit/44.1kHz stream of Melt-Banana’s Candy Gun via Tidal reveals the soundKey to be reasonably, thought not decisively, dynamic – it has all the fevered abandon the tune requires, but doesn’t quite describe the peaks and troughs as explicitly as some rivals. The immediate impression was how much smoother it sounds, even when compared to a similar USB device like the EarMen Eagle. That had more excitement and verve, but is not as refined or subtle as the SoundKey.Finishing with Mad World by Sacre feat. Mike Monroe, it’s clear the FiiO DAC doesn’t have the greatest understanding of space or organisation. The FiiO Q1 Mark II is a piece of kit that spreads itself a little too thin. While there is definitely a place for its bigger body, tactile buttons and multiple ports versus sleeker, smaller products like the Cyrus soundKey, there’s no getting away from the fact the latter provides better audio performance. The little Cyrus Audio Soundkey is a DAC/AMP in the 150 USD price range, having a few competitors like the FiiO K3 (110 USD), Shanling M0 DAP (110 USD), and the Audirect Beam DAC/AMP (100 USD). Cyrus Soundkey vs Audirect Beam–I noted in my review that the Beam is a bit on the smoothly textured yet bright in signature. Since both are DAC/AMPs, the only thing I want to mention about the differences in build quality between the Cyris soundkey and the Beam is that the Beam gets MUCH hotter during actual usage, and that the Beam is smaller physically, and has a volume / song change knob, which may be good, or bad, depending on whether you assume you’ll be using that. In terms of sound, the soundkey feels like an upgrade from the beam, with more textures, more resolution, more details and clarity, and with more impact. The Soundkey is also almost 50% more expensive though. Like other Chord DACs, the Mojo 2 features a custom-coded FPGA processor responsible for the distinctive Chord house sound. The Mojo 2 also features lossless DSP (digital signal processing), an advanced ‘digital tone control’ equalization promising no degradation in sound quality.

The treble is clean and very nicely extended, with a lot of air between the instruments. This is actually what impressed me the most about the SoundKey, most DAC/AMPs that are uber portable, especially in this price range, tend to have a rolled off or smooth top end, but the sound key doesn’t it has a really nice amount of bite and sparkle, making it a really good fit with metal music. Cyrus Soundkey vs FiiO K3– Starting with FiiO K3, they are pretty different devices. The thing that is interesting here is that K3 is a desktop device only, and drains a portable way too fast to be practical as a portable DAC/AMP, and its physical size and shape makes it even less ergonomic for portability. In terms of sound, when placing them side by side, the Soundkey sounds more bright, more open, more airy, where K3 sounds more hot and a bit metallic in the treble. Both have good details and similar size for their soundstage, and both are pretty clearly good products, but they are intended for different usages, but, this being said, you can use the Soundkey both for portable and desktop usage, while K3 is only for desktop. Innovative in its small design, the Soundkey is one of the most compact and lightweight headphone amplifier and DACs available today. Taking into account that most people listening to music through a mobile phone will likely be on the move, Cyrus has designed the Soundkey to weigh a mere 16g, making it light as well as compact. The smooth and rounded edges of the outer shell reduce the possibility of catching or snagging on anything. Cyrus’ soundKey is a portable USB DAC (digital-to-analogue converter) and headphone amp, aimed at use for smartphones and tablets. While these devices have their own built in DACs, they are often low quality units which can really hinder your music. The soundKey bypasses onboard DACs and uses it’s own dedicated circuitry to provide you with a much better sound performance. Listeners can toggle oversampling on and off, enabling and disabling the digital filters. Oversampling mode increases resolution and sample rate while decreasing noise. With oversampling off, phase, artifacts, and jitter are reduced, and coherency is improved.

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We switch to Mahler’s Symphony No.4 and the iFi responds with a spacious and composed rendition. It’s a little smooth tonally, but that just serves to make it less critical of recording and source quality – an important consideration with a product such as this. Building on the success of the BTR5, the FiiO BTR7 features a new THX AA-28 amplifier stage, larger battery, and updated Bluetooth chipset – albeit at about twice the price of the 5. Upon opening the tiny box, it becomes pretty obvious that the build quality on this product is top notch. It’s not overly heavy and despite is small stature, it feels robust and superbly built. With dimensions of 23 x 54 x 8mm and weighing in at just 18 grams, it’s hard to envisage what to expect from this headphone DAC. I guess the only thing to do is to set it up and hear for ourselves. The sound can be described as neutral, slightly bright, clear, clean, fun, well extended, detailed and slightly analytical. It also features both single-ended (3.5mm) and balanced (4.4mm) outputs, USB-C charging and data port, Bluetooth pairing/XBass/XSpace button, microphone, and power switch.

If you’re going to use an unbalanced cable to plug into the DAC, we’d suggest opting for the slightly more neutral-sounding Hugo 2. However, when hooked up through a balanced XLR four-pin cable, such as one found on Sennheiser’s headphones, the HDV 820 will sound remarkably cleaner and more refined than its rivals. No matter what you use, the ESS SABRE32 DAC is still sonically impressive – it delivers a tight mid-bass, excellent mids and extended non-fatiguing highs. Key specs – Dimensions: 306 x 224 x 44mm; Max bit depth/sampling rate: 32-bit/384kHz; Inputs: USB, balanced XLR, unbalanced RCA, coaxial, TOSLINK optical; Outputs: XLR3, XLR4, 6.3mm, 4.4mm It should be noted that I have absolutely no affiliation with Cyrus Audio or HIFI Center, I am not receiving any incentive for this review or to sweeten things out. This review is not sponsored nor has been paid for by Cyrus Audio or HIFI Center or anyone else. I'd like to thank HIFI Center for providing the sample for the review. This review reflects my personal experience with Cyrus Audio SoundKey. Every opinion expressed is mine and I stand by it, the purpose of this review is to help those interested in Cyrus Soundkey find their next music companion. Listening test results were good with Sennheiser and not so good with Hifiman. The later probably suffered from rolled off frequency response and clipping distortion. The Hugo 2 is a larger, improved version of Chord’s Mojo DAC. Not only does it offer more features, such as a switch filter, a dedicated crossfeed button (X-PHD), and more inputs and outputs, but it also delivers spectacular sound; for its price, it’s the best-sounding DAC we’ve come across.Cyrus Audio is actually quite well known among enthusiasts, although they are quite specific with their products, having a different design for most of their products than for the soundkey. Since the sample for today’s review is provided by HIFI Center, I can tell you more about this shop from Romania, who has both an excellent experience with Hifi products, and also a wide selection, including portables, FiiO products, but also high-end speakers and stereo setups. If you need someone to know what they are doing, HIFI Center will surely be able to give you a helping hand, and provide an excellent aftermarket and warranty service! Cea mai buna parte din a utiliza acest Soundkey este faptul ca are si suficienta putere pentru a duce majoritatea castilor mici (In-Ear), dar totusi face fata cu brio si la cateva casti mai mari cum sunt cele Ultrasone, sau majoritatea celor On-Ear. The iFi GO bar has a clean, crisp sound signature and, by default, does not emphasize the lower frequencies. This gives it a lively and resolving presentation that listeners can tune to their liking using the XBass and XSpace controls. Where to buy Inexpensive; sweet-sounding audio signature, great for instrumental or vocal-based music; three types of connection cables included.