[DBaldock9]

I know that the Radsone ES100 BT DAC/Amp has an option setting, that will only charge up to 80%.
But it won't fully charge unless you disable that setting.

 

[Craftsman]

We can sell the battery FOB, we can't find any service provider to send the Lithium battery oversee, not even by sea. If there is a way, we definitely will send battery to our oversee dealers and make them available to local customers. There is a practical reason why no body is doing that, Cayin is just one of them.

I believe you when you say that you would if you could but you can't find a viable way in doing so. However, I do believe that there must be a cost effective way as vendors are selling just the bare lith-ion battery in North America which was made in China. Recently, I purchased off of e-Bay a new battery for my Nexus 7 tablet from a vendor in Canada - the battery is your standard LiPo foil pack with a few leads to a motherboard connector. The vendor must have been able to purchase it cheaply from the Chinese supplier as the price was about the same if I purchased the battery and had it shipped from China off of e-Bay.

One thing that I have noticed on AliExpress is that shipping of LiPo packs is being done to North America but the price varies widely from Free to $90 per shipment for a simple 4 x 5 cm foil pouch battery - just do a search on LiPO and you'll see what I mean. I don't know if they are circumventing the rules (ie declaring it as something it's not so that it will ship) or if the rules have changed.

Question: When you say you can't send the battery overseas, does that mean sending it to a Chinese address is fine? The reason why I'm asking is that I will be traveling in China in September (in and around the Beijing region), and I wouldn't mind having an extra battery and a screen protector while I'm at it.

 

[Craftsman]

Thanks for concurring our repeated advice on proper use of Lithium battery. We have also expressed multiple time that we need to calibrate the battery gauge and provided detail instructions Here and Here (and repeated reference to these posts elsewhere).

You don't need to calibrate the battery gauge that often, I read elsewhere that you should perform a calibration after 20 cycle of swallow charge cycle. To illustrate this concept with the number you suggested, when you charge your battery from 20% to 80%, that is 60% of a charge cycle. If you repeated this 5 times, you achieved THREE charging cycle. so on and so forth. To simplify the practise, if you practise swallow charge regularly, perform a battery gauge calibration every 2-3 months of regularly use, or after 200 hours of usage, that should be fine already.

I've found that as the battery gets older, two things start to happen:

1. It takes much longer to get to 100% with the vast majority of the 'time spent charging' in the over 80% range. In fact, the closer the battery gets to 100% the slower the charge rate becomes.
2. the speed at which the battery requires calibration increases - ie a new battery might 'require' a calibration charge every 20 charges but as the battery ages, the requirement increases. A few of my older devices require a calibration charge every 5 to 6 charges as I find the useful battery life decreases steady until I recalibrate the battery.

I con't recall any DAP or mobile phone provide similar charge management features as you suggested, we all know the theory, but we don't want to get into the customer service nightmare. I can tell you that even stop charging at 99% will bring in a lot of inquiry, a lot more then you can imagine.

Having worked in customer service for consume electronics for more than a decade, I completely understand! That's the reason why I stated that it should be an option that you can turn on and the default setting should be off. I would even go further and say that if the option is turned on, the SOC battery symbol should change to another colour or even a completely different symbol to remind the user that it is on. Of course, the other way of doing it is to change the battery charge scale altogether and remove the percentage when the feature is engaged and readjust the scale so that 80% shows a full battery.

 

[Craftsman]

I know that the Radsone ES100 BT DAC/Amp has an option setting, that will only charge up to 80%.
But it won't fully charge unless you disable that setting.

That might not be automated enough... I can see how some customers will get confused as the battery's calibration gets further and further off as the battery constantly charges to only 80% without an occasional calibration charge.

 

[hiroshi976]

Hello everybody! I evaluated this dap. battery life? 12 hours with flac, it's true?
Another question, how "big" can the usb drive be attached to the otg? Are there better daps in this price range? I'm interested quality sound, battery life, bluetooth for connecting with smartphones. thank you

 

[Craftsman]

Hello everybody! I evaluated this dap. battery life? 12 hours with flac, it's true?
Another question, how "big" can the usb drive be attached to the otg? Are there better daps in this price range? I'm interested quality sound, battery life, bluetooth for connecting with smartphones. thank you

I recently did a similar evalution of DAPs in this price range (of at least the major and mid-sized players) and found this DAP to be, by far, the one that I won't pull the rest of the hair out of my skull when using it. Could it have more 'stuff' or be more advanced? Yes but at this price range and given the current age of the DAP, I don't have any serious complaints.

As for your questions:
1. Battery life - I brought a used one so I might not be the best person to say but according to the thread (yep, I read the whole thing), the answer is yes... the battery life is excellent.
2. Size of OTG drive - I don't believe anyone has hit the limit yet. Just remember that you need to use a flash drive.

 

[Craftsman]

I believe you when you say that you would if you could but you can't find a viable way in doing so. However, I do believe that there must be a cost effective way as vendors are selling just the bare lith-ion battery in North America which was made in China. Recently, I purchased off of e-Bay a new battery for my Nexus 7 tablet from a vendor in Canada - the battery is your standard LiPo foil pack with a few leads to a motherboard connector. The vendor must have been able to purchase it cheaply from the Chinese supplier as the price was about the same if I purchased the battery and had it shipped from China off of e-Bay.

One thing that I have noticed on AliExpress is that shipping of LiPo packs is being done to North America but the price varies widely from Free to $90 per shipment for a simple 4 x 5 cm foil pouch battery - just do a search on LiPO and you'll see what I mean. I don't know if they are circumventing the rules (ie declaring it as something it's not so that it will ship) or if the rules have changed.

Question: When you say you can't send the battery overseas, does that mean sending it to a Chinese address is fine? The reason why I'm asking is that I will be traveling in China in September (in and around the Beijing region), and I wouldn't mind having an extra battery and a screen protector while I'm at it.

@Andykong - Any comment on the possibility of getting another battery while I'm in China?

 

[Andykong]

@Andykong - Any comment on the possibility of getting another battery while I'm in China?

Theoretically yes, but which city? China is a big place, we can send battery to most area in domestic market but there are places that are too remote and far away. PM your date and location and I'll try to arrange it for you.

 

[ohcrapgorillas]

Just a few pics of my mobile setup. Everything fits very neatly into the pouch that came with my Etys.

• Etymotics ER4XR w/ Shure Olive tips
• Chord Mojo
• Cayin N3
• HiBy USB C to coax cable
• iFi USB OTG adapter
• USB A male to USB B male adapter, plus slide-in USB A female to USB micro male converter
• spare foam and silicone tips, spare barrel inserts, cleaning tools

I have found that, with the iFi OCC USB OTC OMG What BBQ cable plus male-to-male adapter, going into the Gen5 USB input of the Bifrost Multibit, the Cayin N3 makes for a noticably better source than my Oppo BDP-103. Going from the adapter to USB cables mitigates some of the improvements. I appreciate the HiBy Link in my use case since it's a pain to always bend over the desk (and hot tubes) to change the song.

I am having an issue though, if the player goes to sleep while connected to an OTG device, when it wakes up it will not transmit music until restarted. I am using firmware v3.1 which I believe is the latest. This happens with three different DACs.

I'm also wondering if there's a cable or adapter that could be use to get a S/PDIF RCA out of the N3? I have the USB C to 3.5mm coax adapter, but I'd like to try the N3 as a transport using the coax RCA in of my desktop DACs.

 

[ohcrapgorillas]

Also, the EQ on my unit does not seem to be responding to... anything. It doesn't work with the analog or digital outs, not with a custom setting or with preset EQs. It worked before, not sure what's changed but it won't work.

edit: did some searching through the thread and realized that EQ only works for files less than 48kHz... that's severely disappointing and an extremely confusing design choice to be honest. Now I am thinking about selling/upgrading to something that can actually do EQ on all my music, regardless of sampling rate, and might as well look for something that can do streaming while I'm at it. I'm sure a better DAP would make for an even cleaner transport anyway. I'll probably just look for a good price on a used FiiO X5iii, so I can also stream from Tidal/Plex and not have to worry about loading up an SD card.

 

[actorlife]

Also, the EQ on my unit does not seem to be responding to... anything. It doesn't work with the analog or digital outs, not with a custom setting or with preset EQs. It worked before, not sure what's changed but it won't work.

Try resetting it if you can.

 

[ohcrapgorillas]

Nah, turns out it's not working by design (no EQ above 48kHz). Very disappointing. There are some good used FiiO units on eBay that I'm looking at now. I'd prefer to have something with streaming anyway.

 

[Andykong]

Also, the EQ on my unit does not seem to be responding to... anything. It doesn't work with the analog or digital outs, not with a custom setting or with preset EQs. It worked before, not sure what's changed but it won't work.

edit: did some searching through the thread and realized that EQ only works for files less than 48kHz... that's severely disappointing and an extremely confusing design choice to be honest. Now I am thinking about selling/upgrading to something that can actually do EQ on all my music, regardless of sampling rate, and might as well look for something that can do streaming while I'm at it. I'm sure a better DAP would make for an even cleaner transport anyway. I'll probably just look for a good price on a used FiiO X5iii, so I can also stream from Tidal/Plex and not have to worry about loading up an SD card.

N3 EQ is performed in digital domain, and DSD definitely won't work, we need to convert the DSD to multi-bit format before it can be digitally manipulated, that's why all studio mastering will convert DSD to DXD before they can "manipulate" the audio signal digitally. For PCM, the EQ can only work for digital bitstream at or below 48kHz, the processing power has limited the handling capability of the EQ algorithm.

 

[Andykong]

Just a few pics of my mobile setup. Everything fits very neatly into the pouch that came with my Etys.

• Etymotics ER4XR w/ Shure Olive tips
• Chord Mojo
• Cayin N3
• HiBy USB C to coax cable
• iFi USB OTG adapter
• USB A male to USB B male adapter, plus slide-in USB A female to USB micro male converter
• spare foam and silicone tips, spare barrel inserts, cleaning tools

I have found that, with the iFi OCC USB OTC OMG What BBQ cable plus male-to-male adapter, going into the Gen5 USB input of the Bifrost Multibit, the Cayin N3 makes for a noticably better source than my Oppo BDP-103. Going from the adapter to USB cables mitigates some of the improvements. I appreciate the HiBy Link in my use case since it's a pain to always bend over the desk (and hot tubes) to change the song.

I am having an issue though, if the player goes to sleep while connected to an OTG device, when it wakes up it will not transmit music until restarted. I am using firmware v3.1 which I believe is the latest. This happens with three different DACs.

I'm also wondering if there's a cable or adapter that could be use to get a S/PDIF RCA out of the N3? I have the USB C to 3.5mm coax adapter, but I'd like to try the N3 as a transport using the coax RCA in of my desktop DACs.

I assume this is what you are looking for:
https://shop.musicteck.com/collections/cayin/products/type-c-to-coaxial-cable?variant=37432238606

 

[Meshaboo]

@Andykong ,

Looks like the N3 is sold out on Amazon and the MusicTeck website. Is there any reason why this is so?

Long story short, I sent my N3 back 2 months ago for hardware AND software service and it took a month for it to just only have the hardware issue fixed. Because of that, I've decided that I'll eventually need to purchase a new one. I'm pretty bummed out that I might not even be able to do that.