Cayin N3Pro DAP: Dual AK4493 and MQA with Vacuum Tube

[stephenkostas]

Yes, N3Pro supports USB Audio in and out, so you can use it as a USB Digital Transport or wired USB DAC.

If you were to use smartphone as source, most latest Android phone should work fine, earlier models might have incompatible OTG problems. If you are using iPhone, you need a camera connection kit or adapter otherwise you won't get any audio signal from the lighting port.

Just a note on this, I was unable to get this to work during my testing with an iPhone XS Max. When I connected the phone (with the camera connection kit) would display the error message "The Connected Device Requires too Much Power." Interestingly enough, the N3Pro would still receive charge from the phone.

 

[Andykong]

Hi Andy

I'm not sure I have the same problem as this but my left channel always have a "WEE" sound when I turn on tube mode (doesn't matter it's UL or Triode), I place it on a table when I was listening to. So I tried to ask the dealer in HK, they told me "its microphone effect which is a physical phenomena, it happens sometime in Vintage tube", so what can I do about it ?

My experience was that it's very quiet during regular operation, but I did notice some light "tube noise" for a few seconds after switching to the Tube channel. It only lasted 5-10 seconds though, then the device returned to it's normal quiet operation. Whether or not it occurred was somewhat intermittent. I'd say maybe the first time I switched to tube during a listening session I would get some noise, but then I wouldn't get noise switching back and forth after that.

You only hear it at the beginning when switching to tube mode, or if you tap or jolt your player. It goes away, it's like a high pitched ringing. Turn your volume down to 2 or 3 and tap your n3p- you will here it. I guess it's completely normal.

May I also point out that N3p is way less of a brick than N8. To someone like myself who likes more compact daps, this is another factor to consider.

Not important to most, but I can walk around the house with the N3p in my sport shorts pocket. While I'm sure they'd be around my ankles with the N8 in the pocket. If I could fit it, ha ha. I know I'm the exception here, I'm just pointing that out.

Tube noise/distortion can relate to:

(1) Shock and vibration: when compare to KORG Nutube, the JAN6418 are more sensitive to physical movement such as shock and vibration. The new form factor of Nutube and replacing filament with LED are brilliant idea to beef up the anti-shock and anti-vibration capability of the vacuum tube. To minimize vibration of the filament, we housed the JAR6418 in soft silicon case custom make for N3Pro and then we craft a slot in the main PCB so that we hang the silicon on the slot. This will allow the vacuum tubes to suspend with spring movement, but even with that it won't cancel out all physical movement completely. After months of trials and many redesigns, you can now walk around or place the player in a backpack, but you can still tube noise (microphonic effect) in the form of high frequency ringing if you go jogging with N3Pro, knocking or tapping on the DAP, knocking on the table when the DAP is placed on it, ... etc etc. In other word, while N8 is bigger, it might be more "portable" than N3Pro because it of its higher anti-shock capability.

(2) RF interference: basically all tubes are sensitive to RF interference, put a mobile phone next to the vacuum tube area of the N3Pro and then call the phone number, almost certain the N3Pro will be affect and you can hear short pulse sound propagated within a short frequency range. Physical distance from the RF source and orientation of your DAP can have a big effect to the interference result, therefore if you heard this, move your DAP around and turn it into different angle, you might be able to find a place that RF interference is minimum. In my experience WiFi interference is more irritating then BT interference. Someone asked why there isn't any "tube dap with direct streaming", well, online streaming is unavoidably WiFi based, they are almost mutually exclusive unless you can sealed the vacuum tube from the internal Wifi interference completely.

(3) Warming up: You can also hear tube noise when you start up tube amplification. Before the vacuum tube reach a stable operation temperature, the sound will be affected or should we said, distorted. When you turn on the vacuum tube mode in N3Pro, the player will display a warning signal and ask you to wait 5 second. The fact is, the complete warm up process will take approximately 15 seconds, but we know that's far too long to wait for, so after several listening test, we set the waiting time to 5 sec only. As a lot of users have experienced by now, the tube mode of N3Pro sounds pleasants to most, if not all, users after the short 3 seconds warm up. you can still hear the tube noise in the form of very mild "si" sound if you look for it (and knows what to look for), and the noise will go away after ~10 sec.

So this is my understanding of tube noise in N3Pro. if you encounters something beyond this, try to describe the condition of operation and what you heard, I'll try my best to figure whether that is related to tube noise.

 

[Andykong]

Does anyone ever compared N3Pro to n8 and n8 brass?

Yes just wondering how much better are the n8 and if they are worth the money to upgrade? Also are the normal n8 and brass version different sounding?

QUOTE="Green Golden Retriver, post: 15896109, member: 536362"]
What are the main factor that makes expensive dap like N8 sound better than the N3PRO: Is it the better dac, more powerful amp, better tube used, or other components and design implementations?
[/QUOTE]

QUOTE="ionier, post: 15892578, member: 507988"]
So as promised, i compared them n8ss in tube mode high gain p+, n3pro high gain ultralinear. Used Anole Vx (all switches off)which will do justice to the daps because of its high resolution less coloration(for my ears).
Songs all flac: Abba Gimme Gimme, Alphaville Big in Japan, Eagles Hotel California, John Williams Revenge of The Sith, Megadeth Tornado of Souls, Metallica Master of Puppets.

I can say that N8 has better soundstage, more airy with better separation and resolution but if you ask me there is no 6x price difference, n3pro is almost there , considering the other totl daps n8 price must be correct but there is something wrong with n3pro pricing
If you have the cash to burn and then some, n8 is the clear choice, if spending that 3299$ will give you nightmares n3pro will not upset you.
[/QUOTE]

As it was mentioned, all of the above. But, and don't take it in a wrong way, reading between the lines I see that you are trying to justify 6x price difference. I don't want to make an assumption how long you have been in this "game", but this is all part of diminishing returns when you try to compare prices to justify the difference. If that is a case and you don't have demanding hard to drive headphones and you focus more on tube output than solid state, N3 Pro will be the way to go in your case.

Thanks to @ionier and @twister6. I'll take "there is something wrong with n3pro pricing" as a compliment, a strong endorsement on what we have achieved in terms of price/performance.

If you ask me whether N8 WORTH the money to upgrade, my immediate answer is NO.

The moment you want to quantify the performance of a high-end audio product, the inevitable answer of your measurement is no, it won't worth that much.

I am not being sarcastic because that's the last thing I should behave publicly in marketing professional. To me, high-end audio is about attitude, preference and lifestyle, its a very subjective experience. If you discard or deprioritize these subjective attribute and focused solely on the objective, measurable and comparable attributes of high end audio, I bet 99% of the the result is no, it won't worth that much.

I know diminishing returns is the most frequently quoted reason to explain the value of high end audio products, but I am not contented with that answer because diminishing returns is an attempt to explain the different trends/observations of quantified attributes. IMHO, this is not a good answer because we have not factor our subjective experience into the equation correctly.

PS. You don't have to agree with me, this is subjective.

 

[Andykong]

Seems like I am also hearing some tube noise/distortion. For example if there's a low level recorded solo bass on moderate-loud listening level, with every bass note played there seems to be added noise like dirt/modulation - it's definitely tube related as on non-tube mode the bass notes are very clear without any added distortion. I know with tubes we are meant to get some added, but this seems a bit much.. I'm guessing this is a design flaw, I get it on both tube modes..
Once all the instruments come in and the song kicks off the distortion is masked, but I can almost feel it's still there dirtying things up a bit.

I'd be interested to know how many of us have this..the way to test for this would be to have a low level recorded solo instrument - guitar or bass, and raise the volume on your player- compare solid state vs tube.

Update: I tested the same file but through USB Dac mode from my computer, and it didn't have this issue. It's a DSD file, so I thought to check the player settings - i had Native DSD set, for some reason this causes the added audio pollution when in tube mode. Using DoP mode does not have this problem anymore which is a relief. There's some background hiss which is acceptable but no other funny stuff going on from what I can hear

This is very interesting. I'll try to consult our engineer and seek his opinion privately.

The tube distortion (or tube sound?) you have described might be a combination of excessive even-order harmonic distortion and progressive distortion:

"Not only is tube amplifier distortion harmonious, it increases as things get louder - exactly as they do in a musical performance. As instruments play louder, or as you hit a percussion instrument or piano key more strongly, they generate more harmonic content. As notes decay, the percentage of harmonic content drops again. ... Just like our ears, musical instruments and just about everything else natural, tube amplifiers have the least distortion at the lowest levels. This is why a tube amplifier can sound great played softly, while with transistor amplifiers people are usually needing to turn it up to have it sound best."
Why Tubes Sound Better

 

[Andykong]

I said 6500, not 65000. N3 Pro can scan max of 20000 tracks.

For the record, N3Pro can scan upto 20,000 tracks, but that is the library size for music categorisation and is related to playback control such as play by album, artists and genre. This 20,000 limit has nothing to do with maximum titles in playlist.

To safeguard the overall operation stability, each playlist can hold upto 1000 titles only, but you can have as many playlist as you wanted in your TF card. Long playlist will take up a lot of resources when we need to analysis and load the file address into the RAM of the DAP when you select the playlist. It will downgrade the operation stability and UI response of your DAP. The situation is similar to loading a very big file and takes up all the usable RAM in your computer, everyone slows up suddenly, and if you keep pressing button (i.e., issue commands) at this time, the system will crash.

 

[Stuff Jones]

This looks like a very intriguing little DAP. There really is nothing like that tube sound, and the ultralinear mode sounds like that sweet spot between overly warm tube sound and overly analytical SS.

How is the USB DAC feature? Anyone use it regularly? Any issues?

As a sidebar, I'd like to see us customers stop falling for gimmicks and demanding manufacturers comply. A well implemented SE output is better than a mediocre balanced output, and yet we must have balanced because... balanced! This DAP might have been even smaller, better sounding and/or cheaper if we didn't have customers who made purchase decisions based on such superficial features.

 

[Andykong]

Thank you for your clarifications.

I understand many DAPs have this noticeable lag constraint.. But it's not inherent to the async necessarily - my ifi nano idsd is also using async USB, but it's lag is so small it can be used for real time applications such as making music without any issues. I guess the main reason for the lag is the slower audio buffer on most DAPs.

I don't think its the speed but the size of audio buffer that matters. A larger buffer will reduce the jitter and enhance the audio performance. You can reduce the buffer size of at the Control Panel of Cayin USB Audio driver, this will reduce the lag of USB Audio, but this will degrade the sound slightly. The problem is, even at lowest setting, the lag is still noticeable with Cayin DAP.

 

[Andykong]

Has anyone been experiencing what seems like battery drain when the device is turned off?

I purchased the Cayin N3 Pro on Wedneday Sept 30 in store from @Audio46. I charged the device up to 100% and used it for the first time on Friday 10/2.

I used the device from 3:34pm to 4:34pm while out on a walk using Tube Mode, Ultra Linear, Medium Gain, 64 volume. The battery when down from 100% - 93%. I then turned the device off. When I turned the device back on at that same day, a few hours later at 6:01pm, the battery was down to 91%, so the battery lost a full 2% while it was powered completely off. I listened to the player from 6:01pm to 7:05pm and the battery went from 91% to 80%. I again turned the player off. I turned the player back on on Sunday 10/4, 2 days later. The battery was down to 76%. So over the 2 days when the device was completely powered down, it lost a full 4%. @Andykong, @Audio46, or anyone else on here, should I be seeing battery drain like this when the device is completely powered off, or is there a problem with my player or the battery in the player?

Thanks for your help.

We have come across similar instance previously (HERE). The battery reading is an estimation of battery capacity based on historical data. It can be a wrong reading before you finish your first charging cycle. Keep it running for 2-3 charging cycle, the estimation should be a lot more accurate.

 

[Andykong]

Just a note on this, I was unable to get this to work during my testing with an iPhone XS Max. When I connected the phone (with the camera connection kit) would display the error message "The Connected Device Requires too Much Power." Interestingly enough, the N3Pro would still receive charge from the phone.

We have received report on this issue back in September, you can check our previous discussion from #577 to #605 (1-2 Sept 2020). Sorry, we were ambushed by an unannounced change and we can't resolve the problem as of today.

 

[stephenkostas]

We have received report on this issue back in September, you can check our previous discussion from #577 to #605 (1-2 Sept 2020). Sorry, we were ambushed by an unannounced change and we can't resolve the problem as of today.

Thanks for the clarification on that! It's not a major issue for me, but it helps to know the specifics for things like this in case a customer has a problem or to advise someone who's looking to make a purchase whether or not the device will work with their use case.

Any idea as to whether or not it could be fixed in a future firmware update, or is the nature of the issue not something that can be easily fixed in an update?

 

[abitdeef]

RIP, the great Edward Van Halen is no longer on this mortal coil with us. I remember when the first VH album dropped. The guitar was otherworldly and nobody had heard anyone play like that, truly one in a million.

I'd like to think he's jamming with Niel right now, or showing God some new riffs

 

[Green Golden Retriver]

QUOTE="Green Golden Retriver, post: 15896109, member: 536362"]
What are the main factor that makes expensive dap like N8 sound better than the N3PRO: Is it the better dac, more powerful amp, better tube used, or other components and design implementations?

QUOTE="ionier, post: 15892578, member: 507988"]
So as promised, i compared them n8ss in tube mode high gain p+, n3pro high gain ultralinear. Used Anole Vx (all switches off)which will do justice to the daps because of its high resolution less coloration(for my ears).
Songs all flac: Abba Gimme Gimme, Alphaville Big in Japan, Eagles Hotel California, John Williams Revenge of The Sith, Megadeth Tornado of Souls, Metallica Master of Puppets.

I can say that N8 has better soundstage, more airy with better separation and resolution but if you ask me there is no 6x price difference, n3pro is almost there , considering the other totl daps n8 price must be correct but there is something wrong with n3pro pricing
If you have the cash to burn and then some, n8 is the clear choice, if spending that 3299$ will give you nightmares n3pro will not upset you.
[/QUOTE]



Thanks to @ionier and @twister6. I'll take "there is something wrong with n3pro pricing" as a compliment, a strong endorsement on what we have achieved in terms of price/performance.

If you ask me whether N8 WORTH the money to upgrade, my immediate answer is NO.

The moment you want to quantify the performance of a high-end audio product, the inevitable answer of your measurement is no, it won't worth that much.

I am not being sarcastic because that's the last thing I should behave publicly in marketing professional. To me, high-end audio is about attitude, preference and lifestyle, its a very subjective experience. If you discard or deprioritize these subjective attribute and focused solely on the objective, measurable and comparable attributes of high end audio, I bet 99% of the the result is no, it won't worth that much.

I know diminishing returns is the most frequently quoted reason to explain the value of high end audio products, but I am not contented with that answer because diminishing returns is an attempt to explain the different trends/observations of quantified attributes. IMHO, this is not a good answer because we have not factor our subjective experience into the equation correctly.

PS. You don't have to agree with me, this is subjective.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the explanation. I will be sticking with the N3Pro for now

 

[truenobzr]

For the record, N3Pro can scan upto 20,000 tracks, but that is the library size for music categorisation and is related to playback control such as play by album, artists and genre. This 20,000 limit has nothing to do with maximum titles in playlist.

To safeguard the overall operation stability, each playlist can hold upto 1000 titles only, but you can have as many playlist as you wanted in your TF card. Long playlist will take up a lot of resources when we need to analysis and load the file address into the RAM of the DAP when you select the playlist. It will downgrade the operation stability and UI response of your DAP. The situation is similar to loading a very big file and takes up all the usable RAM in your computer, everyone slows up suddenly, and if you keep pressing button (i.e., issue commands) at this time, the system will crash.

hope the next firmware can scan upto 30000 tracks...

 

[Sabre2]

Any idea if the red indicator light will be off / turn green when the device finish charging ? Thank you

 

[Andykong]

@twister6 in order to get replacement I have to ship my unit back to UK, thing is I'm from Poland, so it's approx. about 6 days in shipping. Then Phil will send me my replacement which also gonna take almost a week to come. We know how Youtube doesn't like channels with pretty rare uploads, that's why I've decided to make a review on this defective one because main functionality which is playing music works pretty fine.

I hope you'll receive a new N3Pro very soon, we are looking forward to collect the player from Phil and find out what happened. Did you send the faulty N3Pro back to Phil already?