[xand]

Quoting exactly where your post was, in your OWN WORDS, a general comment as to voltage swing.

The biggest problem with battery powered headphone amplifier and HD800 (or 300ohm headphones in general) is insufficient voltage swing.

Yes, we are better than many portable alternatives, but still, when compare to ±24V power supply with a dozen of 20000 uF electrolytic capacitors (just make up some numbers for comparison purpose, please don't take it specifically), C9 is in a very disadvantage position.

I hope I have make my point: the problem is not whether C9 has enough output power to drive HD800 to 96dB, its the voltage swing that matters, and low-voltage battery powered amplifier has a congenital defect on this issue.

 

[Andykong]

Cayin has no more stock until March ?

You probably are not familiar with our routine of Chinese New Year.

We'll stop our production line by end of this week, start to deep clean our facilities (you can only do this once per year), and then lock up the facilities just before Chinese New year. Workers will go back to their home town meeting up with their family. Over half of the working population will move around at the same time, check out Chunyun if you want to find out more.

The new year break is 7 days only "officially", but employees who come from very distance province such as Heilongjiang orXīnjiāng Province will start their journey earlier and come back late, so the more realistic schedule will be 14 - 18 days before we can resume production.

If you deduct 14-18 days from February, resume C9 production in March is an optimistic schedule, especially when Cayin are building over 70 products actively from our production line. (15 CD players/DAC, 37 amplifiers, 19 Personal Audio products)

 

[Whitigir]

Quoting exactly where your post was, in your OWN WORDS, a general comment as to voltage swing.

Now you just made me want to cancel my purchase. Instead of going half way like this for nothing or merely anything, I rather stay with desktops or portable only, no stacking

 

[xand]

Now you just made me want to cancel my purchase. Instead of going half way like this for nothing or merely anything, I rather stay with desktops or portable only, no stacking

Well, personally I've already ordered and will take delivery regardless of the responses in the thread ... but I had the chance to demo it first (Utopia/Zeus though).

 

[Andykong]

Now what if you drive the C9 directly with external supply ? Why did Cayin not incorporate a way to drive the amp directly by external supply like DMP Z1 ?

Cayin developed C9 as a portable headphone amplifier, not a battery powered transportable headphone amplifier, we have our own definition of portable, and C9 is more or less the limit of that at 550g + DAP.

Beside, we never intend to make high impedance headphones as our primary target. With the form factor and weight constraint, we have to narrow down our plan. The fact is if we optimise C9 for HD800 or similar high impedance headphone, it is very likely that we need to give up a large portion of IEM market.

 

[bye2]

Honestly I really hope the c9 could have a desktop mode to switch to.

 

[Whitigir]

Honestly I really hope the c9 could have a desktop mode to switch to.

How and why ?

 

[xand]

Actually what I think it might be fun to do is to listen to the C9 in preamp mode out of a Naim Atom... The Atom kinda sucks as a headphone source because the built-in headphone amp is not great, and it cannot do a line output - but the C9's preamp mode kinda solves that.

I really don't want to be tempted to buy an Atom though, so I will not be doing that demo.

However, I'm just leaving this here in case someone else wants to consider it...

 

[bye2]

How and why ?

'cos I can't stop listening it on balanced tube mode and I can tell the measured battery life is quite accurate.

 

[xand]

'cos I can't stop listening it on balanced tube mode and I can tell the measured battery life is quite accurate.

They have a solution for the battery life issue - buy a second battery tray.

 

[bluestorm1992]

'cos I can't stop listening it on balanced tube mode and I can tell the measured battery life is quite accurate.

Quick question - sorry if I missed this from earlier posts - can you charge while you are listening?

 

[LabelH]

'cos I can't stop listening it on balanced tube mode and I can tell the measured battery life is quite accurate.

the charging time also accurate

 

[bye2]

Quick question - sorry if I missed this from earlier posts - can you charge while you are listening?

Think it would hurt? Haven’t try as it (the manual) hasn’t explicitly said so. It will drain the battery continuously and make it dies faster if there isn’t any protection.

 

[Whitigir]

They have a solution for the battery life issue - buy a second battery tray.

The tray better have expandable space so you can fit in more than 4 at the expenses of being thicker, and go for much longer

'cos I can't stop listening it on balanced tube mode and I can tell the measured battery life is quite accurate.

Are you listening to any headphones at all ?

 

[xand]

The tray better have expandable space so you can fit in more than 4 at the expenses of being thicker, and go for much longer

Haha I mean you have to stop listening, switch the tray, start listening, put the used tray to charge (rinse and repeat)...