Whoop Whoop, first post on Head-Fi after lurking for weeks. Cheers to all!
Since yesterday I am also a member of the Cayin i5 owner community - my first DAP ever. The purchase became necessary when I noticed that my Nexus 6p only has a mediocre output signal and my new se846 couldn't play up to their potential. After searching the DAP market without having any clue what to look out for, I was bound to hit the i5 sooner or later.
I didn't want to spend too much money because I really didn't know what to expect from a lossless DAP. Also, I wanted to be able to use Spotify (yes, I know) or maybe Tidal in the future. These two requirements limited the number of devices drastically - basically I was left with the Fiio X7 and the i5.
Reading about how something "sounds" can be quite misleading - I experienced that once, when I thought I found the perfect pair of speakers by reading forum posts. Boy, was I wrong!
Anyway, there are not many places to test and compare DAPs so I decided to get the i5 - seemed to be the better "package" even with the known firmware flaws. The only thing I was really concerned about, was the "noise" and "hissing" that I've read in many posts. And I couldn't find anything about how the hyper-sensitive Shure se846 would team up with the i5 (except one phrase: "might not be the perfect combination").
As a precaution I had already ordererd the iFi iEMatch - I was sure I would need it (also, because now it's complementary with almost all new se846). As it is, I have now already packed it and it's waiting to go back to Amazon
Maybe my ears are not the audiophile benchmark, but I must say that the noise is absolutely minimal. Not audible at all when the music actually plays and barly present during silent parts. This impression may come from the fact that I am very new to the headgear scene and I don't have much to compare the sound with. But for my current "audiophile beginner level" noise is absolutely no issue.
Since I haven't played around too much with my new toy, there's nothing I can add or want to the already known shortcomings of the i5. One thing, tough, I am missing or maybe I haven't found it yet - is there a way to fast-switch windows when in player mode? I know, you can use the Android icon when you're in Android mode to switch to the player, but in the other direction I always have to go over the menu. Just a slight UX annoyance....
Thanks for listening,
Stefan