Wo-ha-ha-ha! My new dream system

You may have noticed from our front page that we have some new toys in the form of the PMC MB2i's - a jaw-dropingly good speaker based on PMC's penultimate 3 way studio monitor. These speakers are so good we've been having fun trying some different amp options. Those who have been into our store lately may have heard the PMC's on a few different amps; the Bryston 4B power amp with the BP26C Preamp and matching MPS2 power supply, the Leema Tucana II integrated or for those at our Musical Fidelity product night, the AMS35.All truly great amps and all bringing something different to the party that is the MB2i's.

However last night we decided to have a play...

So our what did we end up with?

Well, being a tri-wired speaker, we wanted to tri-amp them and the only electronics range where we have enough gain matched power amps to pull that off is with Cyrus. Lots of Cyrus. Which is fine because we really like Cyrus gear. Over the course of the night we changed things around a bit but we ended up with 9 individual Cyrus components - no half measures here!

The PMC's 12" bass drivers were powered by two Cyrus Mono X's - one for each speaker, supplying 240watts each into the PMC's 4ohm load.

The 75cm Dome mid-range were each powered by a Cyrus X-Power - bridged into mono, and supplying 195watts per driver.

The Tweeter was powered by a single Cyrus 8 Power in standard stereo configuration (we didn't want to go over the top) providing 90 watt per channel.

That's a total of 5 separate power amps supplying in excess of 500 watts RMS to each speaker!

The Preamp was Cyrus's DAC XP, a high end preamp with a great DAC on board. We also added the Cyrus outboard power supply the PSX-R, both to give more detail and clarity, and frankly because we could!

Finally, the source was the brilliant Cyrus CDXT SE CD transport, with another Cyrus PSX-R for good measure.

Cabling had to be a bit more modest as our ultra high end speaker cables are factory terminated, and we don't have a ready made tri-amp configuration, so we went with Chords Oddyessy speaker cable, our best "off the reel" cable and an overall well balanced and articulate cable.

Interconnects were again by Chord, the ProDac digital cable between the CDXT SE transport and DAC XP preamp, the Signet to the 8 Power powering the tweeters and Chorus 2 to the amps powering the mids and lows.

So after lots of setting up, the end result?? Utterly amazing. True full range, bass you didn't know existed, mid range detail I've never heard before on discs I've had for years, almost 3D imaging and phenomenal dynamics: when you walked out of the room you could really believe there was a band next door. And a full orchestra? It sounds like a full orchestra, from tympani’s to triangles, double basses to violin, Contra Bassoon to the Piccolo, loud, soft and everything in between...

But don't take my word for it, come in and have a listen...

And be quick because like everything in this store I'm sure it will be pulled down in a few days...