Why do Cyrus get such praise from What HiFi???


I had a complete Cyrus system, well amp and cd player and the special PSU units for both. The cd player packed in after a few months. The trouble with them was that because the player played therm at a lower speed, (apparently to get the most info off the disc without resorting to error correction), they were very poor at reading less than pristine cds, or in some cases, cds!
I actually had to send the unit back 6 times, along the way getting a brand new unit. To no avail. The cruncher was when the little standby button on the front vanished into the case. The cost for repair? £250!! This was despite the fact that the unit had only recently returned from Cyrus after yet another repair. The reason Cyrus gave was that the front of the unit with the buttons on was one piece, but also that all repairs are £250 regardless, to keep it fair!!! So £250 for a plastic button. I was so offended by Cyrus products that I refused to pay and they told me I had to pay return postage to the dealer, I told them to keep it...boy that felt good.
Later my top of the range Cyrus amp got hot and decided commit suicide. Due to the design using a shoebox shape, the output transistor had given up the ghost. It went back for repair. A few weeks later once again the amp turned off, blazing hot to the touch. The heat this time just triggered the overtemp sensor and poof. I hadn't even been pushing it that hard.
Result, sell the lot, I won't have Cyrus in the house again. Their customer service was snooty and the products fall well short of what I expect at that price. SO, why do What HiFi constantly praise them without mentioning their abysmal  reliability? The dealers I have spoken to confirm that they have a "frightening" number of Cyrus products back that have failed
spikey123

I think Audio reviews, adivice from friends, should be taken as a guidance rather than dogma. And the more adivce one can get,the more well rounded opinions and or experiences one can get to make your final decision. Also, Try to read between the lines. Is the opinion coming from a sellers point of view? Read and reread the sentences and each individual word. trying to scrutinize the whole sentence.

One issue with Reviews is the financial relationship between the advertisers and the content producers.  Another is the long term reliability product issue.  If a reviewer has the product for two weeks and there is a high failure rate after 3 months you will never know this from a review.  
  And then there is the preferential treatment reviewers get.  How many times have you seen in Stereophile “The component wouldn’t play after I plugged it in so I called the CEO who took his private jet to my home the next day and spent hours fixing it”?  Certainly the average Jose won’t get that level of attention.  I find internet reviewers who aren’t priority targets for the manufacturer to be more useful in that their experience is more predictive for the average consumer