Cayin N5ii Android based Master Quality Digital Audio Player

[Andykong]

Yup, i recently did deactivate the animations in android developer menu. I'm not sure i noticed any real improvement since though. One thing for sure is that it didn't change the lag after pressing play/pause button. Might be interesting to hear more about this issue from official Cayin people (eg @Andykong ?).

And again, i mention that i have the N5iis version. I don't know which model have other users in here complaining about UI being slow (as this thread is apparently for both units), but UI response is globally quite good to me. Except of course for the lag with play/pause/equalizer and the covers re-drawing. And i think it's important to consider whether people have the N5ii or N5iiS as the latter has 2Gb ram instead of 1Gb, which might explain why N5ii owners encounters maybe more slowness with UI...

having 64gb internal storage in the N5iiS is a big advantage for Spotify

If you only use the unit to play music stored on the music, its at most "mildly buggy". More like laggy.

But it sounds great.

Now if you want to feed a Mojo, or run apps, things get a bit stickier and you would need to run a search.

So the answer to your question really comes down to your use case. It is, in my opinion, a bit underpowered in terms of CPU/Memory.

Spoiler

interesting points


interesting points you raised up there,

yeah, the N5 is more like an ugly duckling in terms of the UI lol

Spoiler

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

We tested the N5ii during the prototype stage and we find the UI responded satisfactory. What we didn't test is a big music library with lots of album art, and when third party applications are in placed. We have to admit that our unique approach to design the N5ii as a music payer instead of a generic Android device with a custom music app has make things more difficult as the default Hiby App is always loaded, hence eat up some of the RAM permanently. 2GB RAM released a lot of pressure on internal resource management, so we are aware of this and probably won't be taking this route again if we were to develop Android based DAP again.

When we were drafting the N5iiS transition plan, the budget only allow us to pick one "upgrade" out of two options: increase RAM from 1GB to 2GB Ram vs increase internal storage from 32GB to 64GB. I voted the later because the additional internal storage will benefit the offline playlist of Spotify directly (upto 3300 songs, so 32GB is marginal, 64GB is straight forward) while others prefer the RAM option because a sleek UI response will improve the User experience, especially when third party applications or large music library are involved. Finally we included both at the same budget. These upgrades won't affect the audio performance, they are more related to User Experience. As mentioned in previous post, Cayin devotes to the Audio Priority thinking and we put all the resource (and budget) to facilitate high quality audio playback, end up with exactly what have been commented here: best bang for the buck on audio performance, but lacking behind in user experience. Sorry, these are hardware based constraint, I can only hope the extraordinary audio performance of our DAP will compensate for the laggy experience.

 

[Andykong]

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?

This is abnormal, I didn't hear this in my N5ii and N5iiS sample.

A blend new unit? Any change in the noise problem over the past few days? you are using the 3.5mm headphone output and the player is configured to Phone Out, not the line out? Care to tell us the brand and model of your headphones? Try to turn the 3.5mm connector when you hear the noise, any change?

Sorry, Some of these questions sound too obvious to ask, but we did run into someone who use the 3.5mm in line out mode and complained to us, so we developed a question checklist to cover even the most obvious issue.

 

[Andykong]

I was referring to scrolling through different album covers, no music playing.

I was trying to explain the ïnteresting observation you have raised:

The covers redrawing slowly issue is interesting, because when you use another app like Poweramp on the N5iiS the covers draw almost instantly. It's Cayin's native player that needs an update.

Regarding your other question:
why can't we change how many covers per row? 3 is too many. A choice would be nice

Sorry, we can't allow users to select whether they want 2 covers per row, or 3 covers per row, or 4 covers per row. The album thumbnail re pre-generated when you scan your music library. The CPU of the player is not strong enough to resample all the cover art REAL-TIME as you scroll up and down the touch screen. Therefore the "number of cover per row" setting must be a system-level parameter hard-coded in the firmware. In addition, the UI of N5ii is not a frame-based structure like you see through a browser, there is no table feature available in the SoC so everything is hardcoded, changing from two cover per fow to four cover per row is a nightmare to our UI developer.

 

[gazzington]

I am really impressed with the sound on this player. Honestly not far off daps over a £1000 in sq. I'm not bothered with android mind

 

[thedud3]

We tested the N5ii during the prototype stage and we find the UI responded satisfactory

Maybe 'satisfactory' is very subjective from one person to another because to me, having a +/- 1.5s/2s delay when pressing pause before any song effectively stops isn't really 'satisfactory'.
Note that this annoying delay seems to only occurs when pausing, but not when returning to play from pause. When returning to play from pause, the UI effectively responds quite instantly.

See the issue here :



Note that i was using the 3.5 mm jack line out for the test, but this delay occurs also with headphone, i think this issue always occurs no matter what the settings are.
Also the issue occurs whether you use the screen or the physical play/pause button.
It's even sometime worse as sometimes when pausing, it pauses after +/- 1.5s/2s and then it plays an additional few millisecond fraction before pausing (i had this, but it happened inconsistently though)
I've also been testing playing from internal storage and sd card with still the same issue. I also must add the same delay issue unfortunately also occurs with PowerAmp app.

The album thumbnail re pre-generated when you scan your music library. The CPU of the player is not strong enough to resample all the cover art REAL-TIME as you scroll up and down the touch screen. Therefore the "number of cover per row" setting must be a system-level parameter hard-coded in the firmware

Maybe you should try the PowerAmp app (if you didn't already), because their app actually allows changing cover art grid size in real-time. And as @acroyear was saying, the covers also loads faster in PowerAmp. They apparently are using cache and it drastically improves speed of cover drawing. You still have a small delay at first browsing of the covers in their app, but as soon as a specific structure album has been loaded once, scrolling shows covers instantly with no delay at all.

Of course i understand that your team might be more focus on audio quality than working on software features and capabilities. I mean i guess the guys at PowerAmp 'just' have their app to deal with, when your engineers certainly have to deal with hardware plus software, and, of course, all different units too. And at the end, third part apps are often here for letting user finding the app which will suits their needs the best. So at the end, you might effectively consider software somehow not being your #1 priority.

However i must say that i think you definitely should also focus on software capabilities and improvements in order to increase end-user satisfaction right out of the box with their unit, without having the hassle of searching for alternatives.

See, just like i described here, the UI still kinda seems like in pre-production due to all the power/sleep features confusions and bad naming.

And there are still many features missing or not that practical (no queue mode playing, having to return to home page for adjusting equalizer, no shuffle through all songs...).

Plus there is also the BlueTooth disconnects that many users seem to have reported (on my end, i have many disconnects when the device being at more than 2 meters distance). What is the official distance limit btw ? 2 meters definitively being poor to me.

And finally, i have also read many complaints about the DAC mode that i haven't been much testing myself yet.

All of this makes the unit being not far from perfect, BUT probably also makes many users disappointed and wanting to rather buy another brand model (according to what i read here, seems many users are thinking this way).

Last point, athough it's great to have a place for discussing with official Cayin team, having just a single thread for discussing all issues of a device isn't easy at all.
There are 222 pages for N5ii here so far (more than 3.000 replies !) . And everything goes in this one and only specific thread (issues, requests, official announcements, global discussions...).
IMHO there definitely should be some place with dedicated forum and sub-forums for each of your devices and with sub-categories for all type of discussion (again with for instance sub-forum for issues, requests, announcements, discussion...). My2c

 

[SusanoO]

Unfortunately running into more issues with my N5ii.
I performed the fix from page 217 for Google Play services (clearing cache and uninstall updates), and while the "Unfortunately, Google Play services has stopped" error message is gone, I have other problems now.
First is Tidal is now unusable, trigerring a notification saying that Google Play needs to be updated for it to work again (App is opening but I can't play any song either online or offline).
While spending two hours tinkering with the player to make it work, I had many instances where I had to reboot because the interface would freeze, or Cayin Audio would repeatedly stop working, or because of issues with my TF cards.
I have a 64Gb (Samsung Evo) that is working properly (took me some time to figure out that it needed to be formatted in FAT32 for it to work, not sure why exFAT wouldn't, but now it's fine).
The problem is with the 2nd one (128Gb Sandisk Ultra Plus): it used to be in my Cayin N3 and I never had an issue with it, was in exFAT so I had to format to FAT32 like the other one for it to be recognized, but took multiple reboots until the N5ii was able to recognize it and display the good amount of space (several times it would just say calculating space and stay like that forever without succeeding).
At some point (after two hours of playing with it...), I was finally able to make everything work (player not making errors, TF cards recognized),and I could play music from the TF or Spotify online, and the sound is really great. But even then, at startup, the player takes a lot of time (in my opinion) to initialize and actually recognize the TF cards, almost 3 minutes before it actually shows the space available and I can access their content. Not sure if that to be expected or not, but my N3 wasn't behaving like that with the exact same 128Gb TF card.
I would love to love this DAP, as I mentioned the sound is really great, but it is a little frustrating to have such number of issues that you need to work around and spend time troubleshooting before you can enjoy that sound quality.
Still willing to use it for a week or two and see how it goes, before I decide if I want to keep it or return it, and buy something like a Fiio M9 (I was hesitating between the two at the time of purchase).
I understand Cayin's commitment to give us the best audio quality for an affordable price tag at the slight expense of user experience, but if you can't even enjoy your music half of the time you are using your player, I am not sure it is worth it.
Having said that, I'll still give my N5ii a chance, because again I love its sound, and also its design / form factor. Hopefully my experience will improve.
Keep up the good work Cayin, and thanks Andy for being responsive and considerate about our concerns.

 

[acroyear]

Maybe 'satisfactory' is very subjective from one person to another because to me, having a +/- 1.5s/2s delay when pressing pause before any song effectively stops isn't really 'satisfactory'.
Note that this annoying delay seems to only occurs when pausing, but not when returning to play from pause. When returning to play from pause, the UI effectively responds quite instantly.

See the issue here :



Note that i was using the 3.5 mm jack line out for the test, but this delay occurs also with headphone, i think this issue always occurs no matter what the settings are.
Also the issue occurs whether you use the screen or the physical play/pause button.
It's even sometime worse as sometimes when pausing, it pauses after +/- 1.5s/2s and then it plays an additional few millisecond fraction before pausing (i had this, but it happened inconsistently though)
I've also been testing playing from internal storage and sd card with still the same issue. I also must add the same delay issue unfortunately also occurs with PowerAmp app.



Maybe you should try the PowerAmp app (if you didn't already), because their app actually allows changing cover art grid size in real-time. And as @acroyear was saying, the covers also loads faster in PowerAmp. They apparently are using cache and it drastically improves speed of cover drawing. You still have a small delay at first browsing of the covers in their app, but as soon as a specific structure album has been loaded once, scrolling shows covers instantly with no delay at all.

Of course i understand that your team might be more focus on audio quality than working on software features and capabilities. I mean i guess the guys at PowerAmp 'just' have their app to deal with, when your engineers certainly have to deal with hardware plus software, and, of course, all different units too. And at the end, third part apps are often here for letting user finding the app which will suits their needs the best. So at the end, you might effectively consider software somehow not being your #1 priority.

However i must say that i think you definitely should also focus on software capabilities and improvements in order to increase end-user satisfaction right out of the box with their unit, without having the hassle of searching for alternatives.

See, just like i described here, the UI still kinda seems like in pre-production due to all the power/sleep features confusions and bad naming.

And there are still many features missing or not that practical (no queue mode playing, having to return to home page for adjusting equalizer, no shuffle through all songs...).

Plus there is also the BlueTooth disconnects that many users seem to have reported (on my end, i have many disconnects when the device being at more than 2 meters distance). What is the official distance limit btw ? 2 meters definitively being poor to me.

And finally, i have also read many complaints about the DAC mode that i haven't been much testing myself yet.

All of this makes the unit being not far from perfect, BUT probably also makes many users disappointed and wanting to rather buy another brand model (according to what i read here, seems many users are thinking this way).

Last point, athough it's great to have a place for discussing with official Cayin team, having just a single thread for discussing all issues of a device isn't easy at all.
There are 222 pages for N5ii here so far (more than 3.000 replies !) . And everything goes in this one and only specific thread (issues, requests, official announcements, global discussions...).
IMHO there definitely should be some place with dedicated forum and sub-forums for each of your devices and with sub-categories for all type of discussion (again with for instance sub-forum for issues, requests, announcements, discussion...). My2c

Excellent post. I will note that I've switched from PowerAmp to Rocket Music Player. The cover art once established is absolutely seemless on my N5iiS. And play/pause issue is vastly improved. It's better than PowerAmp. Can't detect any decrease in sound quality from the native player.

 

[xLoud]

I think they should drop app support, becuse you can hardly use TIDAL/UAPP. Its too much laggy. Eith they upgrade the CPU chip or better drop the whole android app thing. I mostly use "Audio Priority Mode" to get somewhat better user experience and "Audio Priority Mode" deactivate everything except the basic audio playback.

 

[thedud3]

Excellent post. I will note that I've switched from PowerAmp to Rocket Music Player. The cover art once established is absolutely seemless on my N5iiS. And play/pause issue is vastly improved. It's better than PowerAmp. Can't detect any decrease in sound quality from the native player.

Thanks for your words. And thanks also for the Rocket app suggestion, i'll definitely give it a try

 

[acroyear]

Thanks for your words. And thanks also for the Rocket app suggestion, i'll definitely give it a try

My pleasure... Look:

 

[thedud3]

My pleasure... Look:

Looks really great. Cayin should definitely have a look at what other apps developpers are able to do in terms of UI advanced features.

Or maybe they should just stop bothering having their own app layer and directly have some partnership with the best player app available on the android market that they would directly include (just like eg with ES explorer). Of course this would be only valid with their units having android with app install capabilities.

Thanks anyway for taking the time to upload this

 

[acroyear]

Looks really great. Cayin should definitely have a look at what other apps developpers are able to do in terms of UI advanced features.

Or maybe they should just stop bothering having their own app layer and directly have some partnership with the best player app available on the android market that they would directly include (just like eg with ES explorer). Of course this would be only valid with their units having android with app install capabilities.

Thanks anyway for taking the time to upload this

I went through about 15 different apps until I discovered this one. It was a two day obsession Haha.. How many times have you turned on your dap and realized you don't know what you want to listen to? That's why it's called a "browser" . How do most people like to browse albums? Cover art. It's a REALLY big deal to a lot of people.

 

[alter4]

Maybe 'satisfactory' is very subjective from one person to another because to me, having a +/- 1.5s/2s delay when pressing pause before any song effectively stops isn't really 'satisfactory'.
Note that this annoying delay seems to only occurs when pausing, but not when returning to play from pause. When returning to play from pause, the UI effectively responds quite instantly.

See the issue here :

Have the same issue but ready to live with that.

Issue with noise in headphones when the my N5iiS starts looks only happens with low impedance high sensitivity headphones. But I'll check 32Ohm headphones I soon as I get them from a friend and post results here. Another issue that bothers me is the following:
Player skins changing doesn't work normally. On first click it changes controls but not skin. Later when I unlock player it open player with previously selected skin, then in a second it changes skin to something else. (See I recorded video ) Could anybody confirm this?

And last but not the list Is there any official reply from cayin support related "google services" issue? Have I missed something?

 

[MRobi]

I went through about 15 different apps until I discovered this one. It was a two day obsession Haha.. How many times have you turned on your dap and realized you don't know what you want to listen to? That's why it's called a "browser" . How do most people like to browse albums? Cover art. It's a REALLY big deal to a lot of people.

Try Onkyo HF Player.

 

[acroyear]

Try Onkyo HF Player.

Ok. I've used that before, but not with the N5iiS. Rocket Music Player is so good, I doubt it'll beat it. I'll try it though.