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How does it sound? What Hi-Fi gave it 5 stars and said “This 8vs2 is good. It’s extremely good. In fact it’s quite possibly the best all-round amplifier that Cyrus has ever made – and considering the quality of the company’s past integrated models, that’s really saying something. All this and it costs £50 less than the old one, too”.

The 8VS2 gets the thumbs up from us, it is difficult to criticise at £850 and will hold its own with amplifiers up and above the £1K mark. Cyrus offer the well established upgrade route of an external power supply, the PSX-R for £500 which elevates performance by quite a margin. We were keen to hear what additional performance could be had from upgrading the internals of the 8VS2, upgrades that would not only work when using the 8VS2 as a singular unit but also boost performance when partnered with the PSX-R.

The Audiocom upgrades focus on improving the AC input power supply, unregulated AC supplies, DC power supplies, mechanical control, to allow the 8VS2 to reach its full potential. We start by adding a pair of Bybee large Quantum purifiers to the AC input line, this is the power line which connects after the IEC inlet, from the AC switch to the transformer. The Bybee Purifiers substantially improve the performance of any DC supply by removing Quantum noise; in this case the dominating noise is frequency dependent, often referred to as 1/f noise. This noise behaves like the musical spectrum, it envelope mimics that of the musical signal. Recent studies indicate that perceptually such noise blends in very well with the music. Once buried within the music, the noise defuses image outlines and adulterates harmonic textures. When we installed the Bybee purifiers this 1/f noise is removed allowing you to hear the music unhindered.

An additional pair of Bybee Slipstream purifiers are installed for the 30.6V AC lines so that when the AC power reaches the linear power supply it is exceptionally clean. The combined improvements of the Bybee purifiers is outstanding; the most obvious improvements are in bass and dynamics, you can hear more ‘inner detail’ in well-known recordings, the sound-stage is broader and deeper with very precise placement of voices and instruments, both laterally and in depth.

The quest for quiet power supplies continue with a more subtle but nevertheless effective tweak to the HT fuses. We replace the internal fuses for the HT rails with a pair of cryogenically treated, ceramic fuses with Silver end caps. Fuses are a weak point in any power chain, and any glass body standard 20mm fuse is not designed for audio. These ceramic fuses have lower resonance than the glass type and sound cleaner.

We next upgrade the generic 7805 voltage regulator for Wolfson WM8816 Stereo Digital Volume Control. The 7805 is a 5 volt DC regulator which supplies the digital & analogue power for the WM8816 chip. The ripple noise rejection and output noise performance of the 7805 regulator is not ideal for audio, it has typically 45µV of noise at its output which reaches the WM8816 device and subsequently performance is lost. We replace this with a ‘Super-regulator’ now in generation 3, this high performance discrete regulator provides ultra-low noise, wide bandwidth ensuring the digital volume control chip gets the cleanest, noise free supply. Additionally, we upgrade the regulator bypass capacitors to the Panasonic FC audio type.

Our attention now moves to the power amplifier stage with upgrades to the general purpose electrolytic capacitors used for bypassing the emitter output of the NPN/PNP transistors and associated circuitry. We upgrade the capacitors to the excellent Panasonic FC audio type, this brings improvements in tonal realism, dynamics, bass depth owing to the characteristics of the FC internal structure.