Cayin N5ii Android based Master Quality Digital Audio Player

[NicholasS]

Hi Guys,
I have question, while my N5iiS loading I hear strange noise but only in right channel (I use normal unbalanced 3.5mm out). what is more interested it requires near 10 seconds till noise fluctuations tail off. I am curious is this an issue in my instance or normal/regular behavior?

I don't have it while it's loading, but I have a noise while using as a DAC and its screen is on. Don't be surprised, it's not the final issue you meet with this DAP I guess. Always something new

 

[mkrzych]

I don't have it while it's loading, but I have a noise while using as a DAC and its screen is on. Don't be surprised, it's not the final issue you meet with this DAP I guess. Always something new

Well, I hope it is not so much truth I have heard on my side some issue while using it as desktop DAC, but it was already explained here. Another thing I have experienced is that DAP is prone to mobile phone interference and it’s audible while listening to music. Right channel weird sound, crackling, ticking heard as well time to time, but it could be related to mobile interference. It needs good firmware update and Inhope it will come soon!

 

[darkwing]

Since the play services bug had been (temporarily) fixed, lets talk about handling and care

How do you guys take care of N5iiS' finish? Mine starts to show "stains" between the buttons (the most barehand touched parts) or maybe there's some recommendations from Cayin themselves?

Thank you

have you tried a stainless steel polish? just a very very small amount

Hi Guys,
I have question, while my N5iiS loading I hear strange noise but only in right channel (I use normal unbalanced 3.5mm out). what is more interested it requires near 10 seconds till noise fluctuations tail off. I am curious is this an issue in my instance or normal/regular behavior?

what headphones do you have? I have a DM6, which has a high sensitivity, i had to get something like an IEMatch or an Earbuddy, removes the hiss completely

 

[thedud3]

Hi folks.

I have N5II for a while and experiencing some issues with its performance and stability. Especially it's started after I updated its firmware to v3.5. For instance, clicking "Stop" button doesn't stop a sound immediately, but in a couple of seconds with a single sound click-type glitch in the end. Sometimes it disconnects from bluetooth and while trying to reconnect slows UI down that makes it almost impossible to work with. Among other issues I found is an impossibility to play a sound via bluetooth headphones while being connected in DAC-mode and a hiss in while its screen is on in the same DAC-mode. And some other issues that make me a little unhappy by using it often.

So the question is: does anybody have the same problems, or I'm just a lucky one to have them? It's also my second N5II (the first one I sent to a service center because of its buggy "pixelated" screen from a factory), they sent me back a new one.

I also wrote to Cayin's support, but mostly it's just "try to reboot it", "did you double reset it?", "this is a custom Android OS, so not seeing a year picker in calendar is normal", "try to buy another cable", etc. They update their firmware very rare knowing that the same UI has bugs and just simply can be improved dramatically just listening to customers feedback and adding nice changes. But seems they don't pay much attention to it, they don't even take care about their official website that looks like a crap in 2018 for such company. Sorry, I'm kinda a little angry with them, because my experience getting worse with the time of using the DAP... All that makes me thinking about switching to something else. For example, looking towards yummy R6 and upcoming Android 8 with aptX/LDAC that I need a lot.

I'm also having the Play/Pause small delay. I'll add for developers that this 1-2 sec delay happens no matter whether i use the physical Play/Pause button or the Touch Screen.
I'll add that this small delay also happens when changing the equalizer. And these delays are a bit annoying, making the unit not looking very responsive, which is kinda disappointing for such a quite-high-end device IMHO, especially considering the more than 500 € price (i have the N5iiS btw).

Regarding the Bluetooth, i also had disconnects, but for me, it seems to happen when the Cayin being at more than 2 meters distance from my ONKYO A/V Receiver. I'd really like to hear from Cayin what is the max distance for BT transmission as 2 meters definitely looks poor to me. And i couldn't find that information on Cayin's site nor in the manual.

I haven't been using the DAC mode so far so i cannot confirm your issues on this part.

Been playing with the beast since a few days now, I'm adding several remarks to yours while i'm here...

- I'm also a bit puzzled with the automatic-off options :

1° i don't really get why there are 2 'Scheduled Power Off' options, one in the main Cayin app settings, and the other one in the global Android settings. These 2 options doesn't look related as settings seems independent. So these settings looks redundant and i also suspect they might interfer together, although i haven't much investigate in playing with both so far. Or maybe i missed something ?

2° the 'Sleep Time' and 'Scheduled Power Off' in the main Cayin app settings seems to have bad english. Text says : 'Will be 0 stop playing after xx minutes' (and you can adjust the 0 value).
But if i'm not mistaken, it should rather say 'Will stop playing after 0 minutes' (there's no reason to me for letting a fixed 'xx minutes' text). And the same goes for the 'Sleep Time' text option

3° i don't understand the point of the 'Sleep Time' function by the way as it just seems to stop playing after a certain time. From my perspective, a sleep mode should power off the unit, but this is already the purpose of the 'Scheduled Power off' function. So i don't see the use of this automatic stop playing function, but maybe that's just me and some other people might find this function useful.

- i regret that you always have to go back to the home page in order to update the custom equalizer. Double tap or long pressing the icon could eg display the cutom equalizer setting window, this would let user adjust the equalizer a lot more faster IMHO. I also find that setting individual bands isn't that easy as finger are unfortunately not accurate and it's hard to see the sliders while you're moving them. But i must admit i have no idea how this could be improved apart from allowing using the physical buttons for adjusting the equa while its window is opened, but i'm not sure this could be easily implemented. I would also have appreciate to have at least 2 custom equalizers.

- the same issue of unaccurate slider through touch screen goes with the track time player slider. no matter which player theme is used, reaching near the end of the track with the slider is always very hard and you instead easily jumps to the next track.

- i wish there was some accelerate playing sound of the song when fast forward and rewind, helping me to hear what happens. And i would also have prefer a progressive acceleration (slow on start pressing, then faster after a while), instead of the constant speed which is quite very fast right from the start to me.

- i also wish there was a way to display the remaining time (you could eg switch between remaining and total time displayed by tapping on total time)

- i miss a queue playing mode. i had this on previous mp3 player i had in the past and it was definitely handy for improvising dance night sessions

- i regret that the cover art constantly re-drawing while scrolling. it makes the unit look almost buggy and such lag seems rather disappointing for, again, such a high-end unit in 2018.

- i wish the screen saver screen should display more info on the current track playing as although it's rather beautiful, i don't really see the use of that animated song-note-icon using quite half the screen.

- playlists created through the unit are sorted in created date order. I wish there would be a setting for choosing to also sort them alphabetically if user want to.

Now i also want to add some good points. The sound is rather outstanding to me and i overall like my beast so far. It looks is also great and beautiful, and the screen quality is also very good.
I like the volume wheel, plus also that you can adjust the volume with swiping up/down on the center of the touch screen after turning the wheel (which is faster than tapping the +/- icons). I found this by myself as i don't think it's actually mentionned in the manual. Another thing not mentionned in the manual and that i found by myself is that keeping pressing the play button unload the current track and leads you back to the home page. Quite useful as i always miss a stop button on all of these recent players (yeah i'm a kinda old-school guy ^^)

Ok, i'll end here, forgive me for the quite long report and thanks if you read all
I've been a beta-tester for a long time for another audio brand, this certainly explains all my concerns i've listed so far (and i have not reported everything i was thinking of ^^).

 

[NicholasS]

I'm also having the Play/Pause small delay. I'll add for developers that this 1-2 sec delay happens no matter whether i use the physical Play/Pause button or the Touch Screen.
I'll add that this small delay also happens when changing the equalizer. And these delays are a bit annoying, making the unit not looking very responsive, which is kinda disappointing for such a quite-high-end device IMHO, especially considering the more than 500 € price (i have the N5iiS btw).

Regarding the Bluetooth, i also had disconnects, but for me, it seems to happen when the Cayin being at more than 2 meters distance from my ONKYO A/V Receiver. I'd really like to hear from Cayin what is the max distance for BT transmission as 2 meters definitely looks poor to me. And i couldn't find that information on Cayin's site nor in the manual.

I haven't been using the DAC mode so far so i cannot confirm your issues on this part.

Been playing with the beast since a few days now, I'm adding several remarks to yours while i'm here...

- I'm also a bit puzzled with the automatic-off options :
...

Man, I'm totally with you. I have the same (even maybe longer) list of bugs/feature requests, but seems that Cayin support doesn't care much to provide any information about future firmware updates, will smth be fixed or not, how long to wait for the next firmware update. No updates for major UX & performance issues for months. So yeah, if u split it up into 2 parts — hardware & software — the first one in terms of sound quality is good, but when u wrap everything for this price with such crappy unsupported slow UI without any every-day-usage features that modern apps have (bandcamp, spotify, etc.) this is sorta brick. The best part of this DAP's UI is a volume wheel, honestly :-D

Hello, Cayin! Knock-knock! You damn customers are unhappy and u r loosing them just because of... what? Even a simple damn bluetooth is so unstable and slows the DAP down that the music interrupts like the DAP is dying, and putting it in a pocket prevents me from hearing the music on headphones. This is ri-di-cu-lo-us for such money and such attitude to customer requests.

Next week switching it R6. Buy, Cayin. Hello, HiBy!

 

[darkwing]

interesting points

I'm also having the Play/Pause small delay. I'll add for developers that this 1-2 sec delay happens no matter whether i use the physical Play/Pause button or the Touch Screen.
I'll add that this small delay also happens when changing the equalizer. And these delays are a bit annoying, making the unit not looking very responsive, which is kinda disappointing for such a quite-high-end device IMHO, especially considering the more than 500 € price (i have the N5iiS btw).

Regarding the Bluetooth, i also had disconnects, but for me, it seems to happen when the Cayin being at more than 2 meters distance from my ONKYO A/V Receiver. I'd really like to hear from Cayin what is the max distance for BT transmission as 2 meters definitely looks poor to me. And i couldn't find that information on Cayin's site nor in the manual.

I haven't been using the DAC mode so far so i cannot confirm your issues on this part.

Been playing with the beast since a few days now, I'm adding several remarks to yours while i'm here...

- I'm also a bit puzzled with the automatic-off options :

1° i don't really get why there are 2 'Scheduled Power Off' options, one in the main Cayin app settings, and the other one in the global Android settings. These 2 options doesn't look related as settings seems independent. So these settings looks redundant and i also suspect they might interfer together, although i haven't much investigate in playing with both so far. Or maybe i missed something ?

2° the 'Sleep Time' and 'Scheduled Power Off' in the main Cayin app settings seems to have bad english. Text says : 'Will be 0 stop playing after xx minutes' (and you can adjust the 0 value).
But if i'm not mistaken, it should rather say 'Will stop playing after 0 minutes' (there's no reason to me for letting a fixed 'xx minutes' text). And the same goes for the 'Sleep Time' text option

3° i don't understand the point of the 'Sleep Time' function by the way as it just seems to stop playing after a certain time. From my perspective, a sleep mode should power off the unit, but this is already the purpose of the 'Scheduled Power off' function. So i don't see the use of this automatic stop playing function, but maybe that's just me and some other people might find this function useful.

- i regret that you always have to go back to the home page in order to update the custom equalizer. Double tap or long pressing the icon could eg display the cutom equalizer setting window, this would let user adjust the equalizer a lot more faster IMHO. I also find that setting individual bands isn't that easy as finger are unfortunately not accurate and it's hard to see the sliders while you're moving them. But i must admit i have no idea how this could be improved apart from allowing using the physical buttons for adjusting the equa while its window is opened, but i'm not sure this could be easily implemented. I would also have appreciate to have at least 2 custom equalizers.

- the same issue of unaccurate slider through touch screen goes with the track time player slider. no matter which player theme is used, reaching near the end of the track with the slider is always very hard and you instead easily jumps to the next track.

- i wish there was some accelerate playing sound of the song when fast forward and rewind, helping me to hear what happens. And i would also have prefer a progressive acceleration (slow on start pressing, then faster after a while), instead of the constant speed which is quite very fast right from the start to me.

- i also wish there was a way to display the remaining time (you could eg switch between remaining and total time displayed by tapping on total time)

- i miss a queue playing mode. i had this on previous mp3 player i had in the past and it was definitely handy for improvising dance night sessions

- i regret that the cover art constantly re-drawing while scrolling. it makes the unit look almost buggy and such lag seems rather disappointing for, again, such a high-end unit in 2018.

- i wish the screen saver screen should display more info on the current track playing as also it's rather beautiful, i don't really see the use of that animated song-note-icon using quite half the screen.

- playlists created through the unit are sorted in created date order. I wish there would be a setting for choosing to also sort them alphabetically if user want to.

Now i also want to add some good points. The sound is rather outstanding to me and i overall like my beast so far. It looks is also great and beautiful, and the screen quality is also very good.
I like the volume wheel, plus also that you can adjust the volume with swiping up/down on the center of the touch screen after turning the wheel (which is faster than tapping the +/- icons). I found this by myself as i don't think it's actually mentionned in the manual. Another thing not mentionned in the manual and that i found by myself is that keeping pressing the play button unload the current track and leads you back to the home page. Quite useful as i always miss a stop button on all of these recent players (yeah i'm a kinda old-school guy ^^)

Ok, i'll end here, forgive me for the quite long report and thanks if you read all
I've been a beta-tester for a long time for another audio brand, this certainly explains all my concerns i've listed so far (and i have not reported everything i was thinking of ^^).

interesting points you raised up there, yeah, the N5 is more like an ugly duckling in terms of the UI lol I actually had a chance to choose it (N5iiS) and the Hiby R6, used them both for a week, in the end, I preferred the sound of the Cayin, hard to describe it but it sounds more 'alive/bright'? the UI on the R6 is super fast though the other con on the R6 is the 32GB internal memory, I experienced the Spotify re-download issue on the R6 when I saved the offline data on the external card, good thing the N5iiS has 64GB

the perfect DAP for me at this price range would be the sound of the Cayin and the UI/Bluetooth capability of the R6

the N5 is literally like the beauty and the beast

 

[rezaswandira]

have you tried a stainless steel polish? just a very very small amount



what headphones do you have? I have a DM6, which has a high sensitivity, i had to get something like an IEMatch or an Earbuddy, removes the hiss completely

Have you tried it though? I do consider the ss polish but i concerned about the markings though. Im not quite sure if the stainless is coated with something else or not. If there is no another coating, the ss polish could lose the markings.

 

[seanwee]

I'm also having the Play/Pause small delay. I'll add for developers that this 1-2 sec delay happens no matter whether i use the physical Play/Pause button or the Touch Screen.
I'll add that this small delay also happens when changing the equalizer. And these delays are a bit annoying, making the unit not looking very responsive, which is kinda disappointing for such a quite-high-end device IMHO, especially considering the more than 500 € price (i have the N5iiS btw).

Regarding the Bluetooth, i also had disconnects, but for me, it seems to happen when the Cayin being at more than 2 meters distance from my ONKYO A/V Receiver. I'd really like to hear from Cayin what is the max distance for BT transmission as 2 meters definitely looks poor to me. And i couldn't find that information on Cayin's site nor in the manual.

Bluetooth is indeed the worst part of the N5ii imo. Its very very prone to interference resulting in horribly short range in areas with loads of interference. In a room full of Bluetooth signals the range I got was about 20cms before there was a lot of interference and static.

BTW, did you try setting the animations and stuff in developer options to x0.5? I find that it helps with smoothness.

lol I actually had a chance to choose it (N5iiS) and the Hiby R6, used them both for a week, in the end, I preferred the sound of the Cayin, hard to describe it but it sounds more 'alive/bright'?

Dynamic?

 

[NicholasS]

Bluetooth is indeed the worst part of the N5ii imo. Its very very prone to interference resulting in horribly short range in areas with loads of interference. In a room full of Bluetooth signals the range I got was about 20cms before there was a lot of interference and static.

BTW, did you try setting the animations and stuff in developer options to x0.5? I find that it helps with smoothness.

I personally switched all animations off. It didn't fix the bluetooth, ofcoz & unfortunately :-D, but UI feels a little quicker some moments.

 

[darkwing]

Have you tried it though? I do consider the ss polish but i concerned about the markings though. Im not quite sure if the stainless is coated with something else or not. If there is no another coating, the ss polish could lose the markings.

I just tried it now, it doesn't help, it seems to be stain from the sweat from our fingers? if that is possible lol i need to try something else

Bluetooth is indeed the worst part of the N5ii imo. Its very very prone to interference resulting in horribly short range in areas with loads of interference. In a room full of Bluetooth signals the range I got was about 20cms before there was a lot of interference and static.

BTW, did you try setting the animations and stuff in developer options to x0.5? I find that it helps with smoothness.

Dynamic?

yeah, I guess you could say it's more dynamic? lol

for now, I just accepted the quirkiness of the UI and gave up on the bluetooth since it doesn't do LDAC anyway, i mainly do Spotify on the Cayin and just control the app via my phone

but that Hiby R6 was sure smooth as butter compared to this, but at the end of the day, in my opinion, the n5 sounded better , my father who got the Hiby R6 instead after I tested both, agreed with me but he can't put up with the UI/menu of the n5 so he was happy with the R6

 

[Metalomaniac]

I'm also having the Play/Pause small delay. I'll add for developers that this 1-2 sec delay happens no matter whether i use the physical Play/Pause button or the Touch Screen.
I'll add that this small delay also happens when changing the equalizer. And these delays are a bit annoying, making the unit not looking very responsive, which is kinda disappointing for such a quite-high-end device IMHO, especially considering the more than 500 € price (i have the N5iiS btw).

Regarding the Bluetooth, i also had disconnects, but for me, it seems to happen when the Cayin being at more than 2 meters distance from my ONKYO A/V Receiver. I'd really like to hear from Cayin what is the max distance for BT transmission as 2 meters definitely looks poor to me. And i couldn't find that information on Cayin's site nor in the manual.

I haven't been using the DAC mode so far so i cannot confirm your issues on this part.

Been playing with the beast since a few days now, I'm adding several remarks to yours while i'm here...

- I'm also a bit puzzled with the automatic-off options :

1° i don't really get why there are 2 'Scheduled Power Off' options, one in the main Cayin app settings, and the other one in the global Android settings. These 2 options doesn't look related as settings seems independent. So these settings looks redundant and i also suspect they might interfer together, although i haven't much investigate in playing with both so far. Or maybe i missed something ?

2° the 'Sleep Time' and 'Scheduled Power Off' in the main Cayin app settings seems to have bad english. Text says : 'Will be 0 stop playing after xx minutes' (and you can adjust the 0 value).
But if i'm not mistaken, it should rather say 'Will stop playing after 0 minutes' (there's no reason to me for letting a fixed 'xx minutes' text). And the same goes for the 'Sleep Time' text option

3° i don't understand the point of the 'Sleep Time' function by the way as it just seems to stop playing after a certain time. From my perspective, a sleep mode should power off the unit, but this is already the purpose of the 'Scheduled Power off' function. So i don't see the use of this automatic stop playing function, but maybe that's just me and some other people might find this function useful.

- i regret that you always have to go back to the home page in order to update the custom equalizer. Double tap or long pressing the icon could eg display the cutom equalizer setting window, this would let user adjust the equalizer a lot more faster IMHO. I also find that setting individual bands isn't that easy as finger are unfortunately not accurate and it's hard to see the sliders while you're moving them. But i must admit i have no idea how this could be improved apart from allowing using the physical buttons for adjusting the equa while its window is opened, but i'm not sure this could be easily implemented. I would also have appreciate to have at least 2 custom equalizers.

- the same issue of unaccurate slider through touch screen goes with the track time player slider. no matter which player theme is used, reaching near the end of the track with the slider is always very hard and you instead easily jumps to the next track.

- i wish there was some accelerate playing sound of the song when fast forward and rewind, helping me to hear what happens. And i would also have prefer a progressive acceleration (slow on start pressing, then faster after a while), instead of the constant speed which is quite very fast right from the start to me.

- i also wish there was a way to display the remaining time (you could eg switch between remaining and total time displayed by tapping on total time)

- i miss a queue playing mode. i had this on previous mp3 player i had in the past and it was definitely handy for improvising dance night sessions

- i regret that the cover art constantly re-drawing while scrolling. it makes the unit look almost buggy and such lag seems rather disappointing for, again, such a high-end unit in 2018.

- i wish the screen saver screen should display more info on the current track playing as also it's rather beautiful, i don't really see the use of that animated song-note-icon using quite half the screen.

- playlists created through the unit are sorted in created date order. I wish there would be a setting for choosing to also sort them alphabetically if user want to.

Now i also want to add some good points. The sound is rather outstanding to me and i overall like my beast so far. It looks is also great and beautiful, and the screen quality is also very good.
I like the volume wheel, plus also that you can adjust the volume with swiping up/down on the center of the touch screen after turning the wheel (which is faster than tapping the +/- icons). I found this by myself as i don't think it's actually mentionned in the manual. Another thing not mentionned in the manual and that i found by myself is that keeping pressing the play button unload the current track and leads you back to the home page. Quite useful as i always miss a stop button on all of these recent players (yeah i'm a kinda old-school guy ^^)

Ok, i'll end here, forgive me for the quite long report and thanks if you read all
I've been a beta-tester for a long time for another audio brand, this certainly explains all my concerns i've listed so far (and i have not reported everything i was thinking of ^^).

N5ii can be used as a DAC? I missed that feature. Wouldn't that circumvent most if not all the UI and UX issues were having?

 

[NicholasS]

N5ii can be used as a DAC? I missed that feature. Wouldn't that circumvent most if not all the UI and UX issues were having?

Like glueing it to a laptop and put in a pocket while walking?
Even so, the same bluetooth doesn't work in DAC mode, so only wires around.

 

[darkwing]

Like glueing it to a laptop and put in a pocket while walking?
Even so, the same bluetooth doesn't work in DAC mode, so only wires around.

yup, I just use my phone instead of the n5 for Bluetooth headphones

 

[Metalomaniac]

Like glueing it to a laptop and put in a pocket while walking?
Even so, the same bluetooth doesn't work in DAC mode, so only wires around.

Shouldn't I be able to attach a USB cable to my phone, and use its UI to drive the N5ii as a DAC, to benefit from the improved audio quality over my phone? Never had a DAC so not sure how it works.

 

[NicholasS]

Shouldn't I be able to attach a USB cable to my phone, and use its UI to drive the N5ii as a DAC, to benefit from the improved audio quality over my phone? Never had a DAC so not sure how it works.

Yes, this is exactly how it's supposed to be used. Slide from the top to open options and click on USB/MTP/whatever is selected and pick DAC, connect with USB-C.

For some people this is not an option, because it's:
a) bulky
b) discharges both batteries
and my personal (don't laugh at me, I'm serious) c) I do not have a smartphone...
well, and d) I hate wires, especially on the go or doing sport, so without bluetooth it's a no-no for me.