[BartSimpson1976]

could be worse. Hissing of DX80 is ten times worse and you can hear it through the music.

 

[earfonia]

  Sucks people are finding out about the hissing after the fact.  No way I would ever touch a portable player with hiss, especially with how many options there are in the market now...

 
There probably many options there... but frankly not many that have very low hiss noise. Currently I'm listening to Mojo with AK70 as transport, and Mojo hiss noise is higher than i5. AK70 also has noticeable hiss noise on my 1964 V3 or AK T8iE Mk2, especially in quiet environment. But not a deal breaker to me. Most DAPs, DACs, amps, all has hiss noise. But some is lower than average and can be considered quiet.  My Onkyo DP-X1 is much quieter, but doesn't give dynamic and visceral impact as good as Mojo. So it is a trade of. I don't mind a little noise as long as I could get better transparency and dynamic.

 

[Ultrainferno]

My Mojo and AK70 (or any AK for that matter) is dead silent with my hiss sensitive monitors. The i5 however does make noise

 

[Andykong]

Great! Thank you!

Sorry for the quality of photo, they are snap shot from mobile phone at factory floor.

The replacement work is fairly simple, but be reminded that you need to buy the battery and the carbon fiber back plate when you change the battery, the back plate is glued to the player, so there is 90% chance that you will break it while open up the player.

 

[Andykong]

Yes, I am wondering what happened. Now I have yet to install any app after my reinstallation. I actually only had Spotify prior to this problem.


The last before this problem was I was running my Beyerdynamic T1 from the player and listening to DSD files for 3 hours or so.

600ohm T1 from i5 directly? You guys really takes the i5 seriously.

 

[Andykong]

Excellent sharp eyes!  Yes!  Kennerton Odin!
I love it so much....!  Fischer Asia asked me to review Odin, so I got loan of Odin demo unit last week. And yea, i5 drives Odin pretty well, very cool! 

That's because I have the Odin as well. I even used it in our demo setup at the recent Hong Kong High End Audio Visual Show.

I must alert Kennerton about this, they have our N6 and C5 already, I'll advice them to add i5 to their list as well, I hope i5 will be mentioned in your Odin review and I'll quote your review to Kennerton immediately.

 

[kel77]

600ohm T1 from i5 directly? You guys really takes the i5 seriously.

Frankly the sound was great with the pairing as compared to running t5p or HD800s on the i5.
I was dialling 40 or so with the volume on High gain.
 
So far I like the Meze 99 and T1.2 with the i5

 

[jmills8]

Some people have the hearing of a Bat.

 

[BartSimpson1976]

or just sensitive IEMs. The existing hiss of the i5 is usually hiding behind the background hiss which even most of the modern recordings have. In 98% of the time it is absolutely no issue.

 

[Rozenberg]

I don't really find the hiss problematic. I thought my CIEM was sensitive enough, but I guess it wasn't?
I did notice slight hiss, but it's just so quiet I could forget about it.
 
Also I like my HD800 paired with the i5 directly. It's loud enough at 55-60 and pretty satisfying IMO.
 
Unfortunately, I'm preparing my i5 to go back to its maker for a while so I won't be able to test other high end IEMs when I'm going to local Jaben some day :|

 

[earfonia]

I hope i5 will be mentioned in your Odin review.

 
Ah, for that I need longer listening time... 

I will probably try to borrow from my bro again one day... he travels a lot, seldom meet him. Let's see.

 

[earfonia]

  My Mojo and AK70 (or any AK for that matter) is dead silent with my hiss sensitive monitors. The i5 however does make noise

 
Hmm... I will check my Mojo and consult Chord. I also feel Mojo should be quiet, but that's not the case with mine.

 

[Ultrainferno]

   
Hmm... I will check my Mojo and consult Chord. I also feel Mojo should be quiet, but that's not the case with mine.

 
My AK70 sometimes starts making noise but then when I rotate the plug, it stops.

 

[Andykong]

Ah, for that I need longer listening time... 
I will probably try to borrow from my bro again one day... he travels a lot, seldom meet him. Let's see.

Odin is my regular headphone recently. I have demoed the Odin to a dozen of HeadFier at the show and they were all amazed by this unknown product.



By the way, this is not an off topic photo, I used i5 as transport in my show demo system, playing DSD file to the iDAC-6 via a Type-C to coaxial cable. Look at the display of the iDAC-6 and you'll see coaxial and 2.8MHz, isn't that convenient?

 

[Andykong]

Frankly the sound was great with the pairing as compared to running t5p or HD800s on the i5.

I was dialling 40 or so with the volume on High gain.

So far I like the Meze 99 and T1.2 with the i5

This is a convincing case that i5 is a versatile player, someone is using it with a 115db (sensitivity) IEM, you are using it for Beyer T1.2, and earfonia has tried it with a US$2,400 flagship planar. We are very happy to see i5 is widely adopted into different user environments. This is exactly what we are looking forwards to.

Since background noise is the heated topic today, I shall take this opportunity to explain our philosophy behind this issue.

Cayin tried to strike the balanced to accommodate as many headphone as possible during the development process of i5, we have include a wide range of IEM samples during our audition test. To be honest, it is a very difficult task to handle tough dynamics IEMs and ultra-sensitive IEMs at the same time, our bottom line is simple, the background noise must not affect regular music enjoyment with 99% of the IEMs, and the player must be strong enough to drive 99% of the IEMs satisfactory. It is actually quite easy to make a dead silent DAP for the most sensitive IEMs, but then it probably will sound weak, lack of body, dull and unlively when pair with the more demanding IEMs, that's why it is important to "strike a balance" during the development stage.

We cannot aim at 100% to start with because in our experience, our customers have never ceased to surprised us. To be honest, we never expect our i5 will pair with the 600ohm flagship T1.2, this is what we called extreme condition, I am glad that we passed this round.

On the other hand, we have tested the i5 with several sensitive IEMs (Westone W1, Dune DN2000 etc). We have experimented the "exotic approaches" such as setting the volume to 0 and play any song. We learned this from our previous complains, this is indeed very effective as we can FOCUS on the "noise" of the player without any distraction by the MUSIC . The i5 noise is audible under this setting but not significant, however we didn't really take this kind of "noise detection test" seriously, we prefer to stay with actual music audition test. Based on our audition test, the noise level of i5 will not affect music listening. Unfortunately our understanding is not good enough, when we have i5 customers saying they can't enjoy music with certain IEMs, maybe our IEM samples are not sensitive enough, maybe our audition environment is not quiet enough, or maybe our choice of music does not demonstrate the problems thoroughly. The important conclusion is: we need to go back to test bench again. We shall look into the possibility to further optimize the player for the more sensitive IEMs,

To be honest, we are not sure if we can improve our support to more sensitive IEMs and yet maintain the "balance" mentioned previously, the margin is closing up but we'll try. .