Hi nmatheis, I recently purchased the Cayin N3 after reading your review. I have to admit that the N3 is a good sounding DAP for the price but there's a few things that I'm not too happy about. Firstly, the high frequencies seem to have an edgy digital edge which is not as refined as my iBasso DX90 but in all fairness, the DX90 is about twice the price of the N3. I've tried all the digital filters but I've found that "Sharp" setting has edgy digital highs, "Short dealy Sharp" setting still has that digital edginess to it and the rest of the settings cuts off too much of the high frequency extension, Secondly, the CTIA remote support is not working with my iPhone as well as my Android standard IEMS. There's no settings on the N3 to change the CTIA support setting so I assume I have an N3 with defective CTIA remote support. It's really a shame because I really really like the N3. I don't know if Cayin will develop a future firmware update to remedy both these issues,
I actually prefer the sound signature of my DX90 but unfortunately it doesn't have Bluetooth streaming and it doesn't have DSD support. I have also checked out the Aune M1s and I really like the sound quality but unfortunately it doesn't have Bluetooth streaming support. The reason why I'm looking for Bluetooth streaming support with Apt-X is because I want to stream Spotify and Tidal from my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and also my iPad and laptop too. Occasionally I'd also want to stream audio from my Smart TV so that I can watch the TV while my wife is asleep
I've been looking around and noticed that you just received the Shanling M2s which has almost identical specs with the N3 and was wondering if the sound quality is along the line of DX90 and Aune M1s. Please share your honest opinion and perhaps that will help me and other users decide if we should upgrade to the M2s. Thanks for your ongoing contribution to the HeadFi community. I look forward to hear from you.
PS: Sorry for the long post. I tried to PM you but somehow the PM link is not available on the new updated HeadFi forum.