blocky Posted July 17, 2019 Author Share Posted July 17, 2019 Rio Sound and Vision are performing the upgrade and its it taking quite a while. The offical estimate as "a few days" to do the upgrade but they have had it since 6th July and now the ETA is next Wednesday 24th. I won't be able to pick it up till the Saturday the 27th July. 3 weeks! In the mean time I have bought a 0.8m Curious USB cable to use with an Allo USBridge as a streamer from Roon. I will also be comparing with an Allo DigiOne SPDIF. Although after 3 weeks I may forget what the old one sounded like! I do have another 8xpd with the vanilla DAC but I'm afraid I really don't have the time for complicated A-B testing setups!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallard Posted July 17, 2019 Share Posted July 17, 2019 (edited) Seriously? That's pretty slow. I can't imagine it takes more than an hour to do. I can empathise with your frustration here. I would be dying to get it back. I wonder who does it. There is a former Cyrus tech who lives in Sydney. Do they outsource? Still no reviews, but after being a Cyrus owner for 23 years I am confident it will be excellent. Enjoy Edited July 17, 2019 by Mallard Foolishness in not remembering Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BioBrian Posted July 17, 2019 Share Posted July 17, 2019 5 hours ago, blocky said: taking quite a while. The offical estimate as "a few days" to do the upgrade but they have had it since 6th July and now the ETA is next Wednesday 24th. I won't be able to pick it up till the Saturday the 27th July. 3 weeks! They probably had to send staff to UK to undertake the special In-House Training "Identify Torx #10 screwdriver". My sympathies. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blocky Posted July 17, 2019 Author Share Posted July 17, 2019 32 minutes ago, BioBrian said: They probably had to send staff to UK to undertake the special In-House Training "Identify Torx #10 screwdriver". My sympathies. I'm actually not too fussed at the moment. I'm so busy with work and under the weather with bloody viruses I barely have the time or energy to listen to music! The upgrade is really for the future for me: for the years ahead of listening pleasure. (I hope!) By the way: I strongly recommend this podcast to everyone if you have not heard it yet: http://strongsongspodcast.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallard Posted July 17, 2019 Share Posted July 17, 2019 You are strong. This is me with new kit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blocky Posted July 22, 2019 Author Share Posted July 22, 2019 Update on this upgrade. It turns out not all 8xpd amplifiers are created equal. Once the service personnel opened my unit they discovered that amplifier is model 1 (there are 3 models apparently). It can't even have its firmware updated via USB! They all look exactly the same from the outside (at least to me they do). So while it is commendable that Cyrus state they support the upgrade for all their amplifiers going back 10 years (mine is 7 years old), they have obviously not provided sufficient support to their distributors to perform this upgrade. You would think they would have upgrade kits for model 1, 2 and 3, if they are that different. And this is after announcing the availability of the upgrade in January but not really making it available till the Munich show in May. I think it is a reasonable observation to make that their marketing dept have not handled this product release well. So the ball is back with the retailer and distributer and for Cyrus to get back to them with the answers. The retailer (and no doubt the distributors) and possibly Cyrus themselves are monitoring this thread and will have their say and hopefully set the record straight for all. And I'm not the earliest adopter: apparently they have already performed 7 upgrades (where are these people?). Just not one as old as mine. I tend to buy nice gear and hold on to it for years, part of the reason I like Cyrus. I hope the love is reciprocated! Watch this space. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blocky Posted July 25, 2019 Author Share Posted July 25, 2019 Good News! The distributer are going to replace the front panel with a new one that will permit the upgrade. So I should essentially have an amplifier with all new digital components. Parts are coming from the UK so hopefully I'll be back in business in the next few weeks! It's going to be interesting making comparisons as it would have been a while since I have played my system. If I get time (which is a long shot) I can always setup an A-B comparison with my other 8xpd (with original DAC). I'll be really intrigued to see if I perceive any change out of the box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steever Posted July 25, 2019 Share Posted July 25, 2019 Gee, after all this drama, I honestly hope it's a significant step up for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blocky Posted August 26, 2019 Author Share Posted August 26, 2019 Hi All, I finally picked up my QXR-upgraded 8xpd on the weekend! It's been over 4 months since I ordered it and there have been complications which means my amplifier was updated to the latest specifications. I would not think others ordering now would have similar delays but make sure they are aware of you serial number in case you have an early model like mine. I'll try and post my impressions over the coming weeks as I get time to enjoy it. Having a little one running around I have very little time for decent listening sessions. So it might take some time for my to voice a discerning opinion. But for the eager I have included photos essentially showing the same amplifier just with a QXR badge on it. As you can see the back is identical. My test setup is the following: Roon: iMac 27" i9 NAS: QNAP TS-259Pro+ (4TB mirrored) Switch: Cisco SG 300-28 Small Business Managed Switch CAT6 CD Marantz CD 17 MkIII (SPDIF) Streamers Allo USBridge Curious 0.8m USB Cable iFi iPower Low Noise Power Supply - 5V Other Streamer Allo DigiOne (SPDIF) AMPs 8xpd QXR PSXR Power supply 2 x x200 power mono blocks Power ISOTek EVO3 6 way power board ISOTek (green) cables on 8xpd + PSXR + power board Speakers PMC OB1i Very very very early early impressions: You have to remember I have been without the amp for about 7 weeks so I'm relying on my older impressions. I started by using the DigiOne on the SPDIF input as I had this setup already. The reason is the old DAC only supported 44.1/24bit on the USB. Initially I did not discern much of a difference. Afterward I realised I still had the parametric equaliser enabled on Roon that may have masked much of the improvement. I quickly switched to the USBridge. I went through a few personal listening favorites: Natalie Merchant Live 1999 "The Gulf of Araby" Led Zeppelin - How the West was Won "Going to California" Pink Floyd - Us and Them (very warm track) Radiohead - Let Down Radiohead - No Surprises Dire Straits - Love Over Gold David Gray - Cascade (Live) Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet U2 - Stay Diana Krall - Live in Paris Overall I'd say "brighter", but not in a bad (harsh) way. The OB1i's are known to be a warm speaker and I felt the new DAC really raised the top end of the spectrum most noticeably. This was also the first time I used the Curious USB cable also I guess there might have been something due to this too. I tried Dark Side of the Moon that I have in DSD but it showed up as some really high rate PCM on the display. Later I realised that there is a setting in Roon that by default would covert DSD to PCM (as Roon did not have an entry for this DAC). Once I changed this to DSD over PCM (DoP v1.0) it worked and the front display showed "DSD64". Cool! So for the record, the fact that Roon does not know this amplifier/DAC does not seem to matter. More impressions later...... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny71 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Hi Blocky, I am going to buy a Pre2Dac with QXR. Curious whether it's worth the money. I am under the impression that your thread is the only one in this matter web wide. Have you achieved more about the outcomes of your tests? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny71 Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 Really. Any real improvement from your upgrade? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hi-Fi Whipped Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 6 hours ago, Johnny71 said: Really. Any real improvement from your upgrade? What amp are you coming from? Like all purchase always best to hear one if you can, I owned Cyrus for a while but it made my speakers sound to bright so speaker matching is important. I remember it sounding very clean and punchy and with the right speakers I'm sure it would have sounded great. how much of an imporovement this Dac upgrade makes over the previous, I agree that @blocky may hold the key to start understanding it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich303 Posted February 17, 2020 Share Posted February 17, 2020 I came across this page after Googling for info on the QXR DAC module and thought I'd share my experiences with a Chord Mojo. I have a Pre Xpd that was on pre-amp and DAC duties for my hi-fi. I listen to music on the go a lot as well so I got a Chord Mojo to use with my Westone W60 IEMs while travelling and at work. After finding it was a vast improvement over my previous mobile kit I started to read very positive comments from people who'd also tried the DAC in their main hi-fi. There really are some gushing reviews, people saying they're taken aback by how good it sounds and how much better it is than whatever DAC they were using in their main home hi-fi. Well, I just had to try it for myself. It takes using an RCA splitter cable in to a 3.5mm headphone jack to make it work. The headphone side goes in to the Mojo and the RCAs in to the Cyrus as a source. My initial thoughts on this were; how can this be any good going through a headphone cable? The thing is, the improvement in overall clarity and separation was immediately obvious! The little Chord Mojo has a far superior sound than the standard DAC in a Cyrus Pre Xpd. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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