Amplifier: Mission Cyrus Straight Line

This ‘Straight Line’ amplifier from Mission gets it’s name from the simplicity of the design. No phono preamp, balance or tone controls. If the music doesn’t contain enough treble, bass, stereo balance and vocal presence, it’s the music that is lacking – not this system – so the lack of controls is not a problem :-).

Currently this 50W/Channel amp is driving TDL Studio 1M speakers. These transmission line speakers are efficient and quite easy to drive to high undistorted volumes.

Unfortunately the Straight Line’s ‘precision matched channel’ rotary volume control is getting a bit noisy when moved, a habit not uncommon to older amplifiers in this series.

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Amplifier: Musical Fidelity X-LP Vinyl Preamp

Amplifies small signals from the turntable cartridge by absorbing them through the Moving Magnet input (or Moving Coil if that’s your fancy), applying some RIAA defined boost and flatness and outputting the goodness of the music at a similar “line level” volume to other HiFi components. Nicely presented in an extruded military style aluminium tubular case for protection presumably against bullets!!

You might think a box this large would include the power supply – but no, there’s a standard wall wart type for that!

Performance? Well, it does the job, faultlessly. I needed a vinyl preamp as my Cyrus Amp didn’t come with one fitted, a trend understandably common amongst similar component amplifiers nowadays.