[Andykong]

I have a quest. From this link: https://www.headphonezone.in/blogs/...things-about-the-cayin-n5ii-that-set-it-apart

"you can easily access the N5ii via HiByLink and control it using your smartphone." -- Is this real? I have never tried yet. How to do it please?

HiByLink required duplex bluetooth, N5ii Bluetooth can only function in Tx mode, that's why HiByLink is not applicable to N5ii or N5iiS

 

[zato23]

HiByLink required duplex bluetooth, N5ii Bluetooth can only function in Tx mode, that's why HiByLink is not applicable to N5ii or N5iiS

Hiby link working on N5II with hiby music app
Probably Hiby updated their app and now it is working
you can try it

 

[nhumdorn]

No, that's blatantly false. HiByLink is not supported on the N5ii.

Thanks so much. Now I can rest secure. No more dreaming of it. LOL.

 

[nhumdorn]

HiByLink required duplex bluetooth, N5ii Bluetooth can only function in Tx mode, that's why HiByLink is not applicable to N5ii or N5iiS

Thanks Andy.

 

[nhumdorn]

Hiby link working on N5II with hiby music app
Probably Hiby updated their app and now it is working
you can try it

I will give this a try. Thanks.

 

[nhumdorn]

Hiby link working on N5II with hiby music app
Probably Hiby updated their app and now it is working
you can try it

Yes I can!!! Hiby Link can switch as "Server" and "Client" so N5ii as "Server" and my phone as "Client". So I can control Cayin N5ii using my phone and can see the song in Cayin N5ii via my phone. So cool. Understandable concept! Great.

 

[Slater91]

Yes I can!!! Hiby Link can switch as "Server" and "Client" so N5ii as "Server" and my phone as "Client". So I can control Cayin N5ii using my phone and can see the song in Cayin N5ii via my phone. So cool. Understandable concept! Great.

So they updated the app to make it work on the N5ii, that's great!

 

[darkwing]

this is a nice surprise

 

[nhumdorn]

this is a nice surprise

Yes it is. This morning I did use this concept along the way to work. Cool indeed.

Control by my galaxy note 8. So I don't need to handle it while changing artists or something else.

 

[Andykong]

We would like to thank all our friends, customers and partners for your continuous support throughout the year. We shall take a short break to reunion with our family and celebrate the Chinese New Year. We shall resume office on 14th February 2019.

 

[Andykong]

I have been inactive for almost a month, by that I don’t just disappeared from N5ii thread but literally all interaction on HeadFi forum or Cayin Social Media. I was fully occupied by CanJam New York preparation after Christmas. We managed to dispatch the CanJam New York exhibition package (over 100kg) before we start our Chin New Year break. For those who are familiar with our regular schedule probably aware of our busy exhibition schedule from February to May every year. Last year I was disappeared until we finished Munich High-end (May 2019), let’s hope we can do better this year. For the record, we'll attend CanJam New York (Feb 2019), CanJam Singapore (March 2019) and Munich High End (May 2019) this year.

Just in case you are not familiar with our practice, New Year break is a big occasion in China, this is the only time of the year that we stop our production line completely, and everyone go back home to reunion with their family. We are talking about more than 3 billion passenger-journeys during this Chunyun exercise every year, and Wiki describe this as the largest annual human migration in the world”.

Fortunately I am only 2 hours away from my Shenzhen office, so I can sit down and catch up my Forum and Social Media backlog while everyone is travelling. I have covered all other Cayin threads in HeadFi forum already, and the N5ii thread is my last stop before I start my holiday.

By the way, my assistant Silvia has started her Maternity leave and we have a new CayinSupport onboard quietly. He needs some time to pick up the pace of his new role (in additional to his busy workload), so please go easy on him.

Regarding the N5ii and N5iiS firmware, we are still working on the 2 sec delay bug before we start our New Year break. As of the last beta version, we can eliminate the 2 sec delay already, but for unknown reason, the USB Audio was severely affected, we’ll continue the debugging and hopefully once we isolate the USB Audio from the operation delay bug, we can release a new firmware already.

The USB Audio is also an on-going improvement work. We’ll release a new USB Audio driver after the New Year break. This will improve the N5ii/N5iiS at certain Hi-Res frequencies (especially 352.8kHz and 384kHz), and enhanced the data buffer management for USB DAC operation. Unfortunately when we release a new USB Audio driver, it will probably be used with other Cayin products, so we need to conduct a lot of verification test beforehand. Hopefully this will be available sooner after the Chinese New year break.

N5ii was launched back in 30 October 2017, it has way passed our regular product development stage already. We shall continue to support the product and handle the outstanding bugs the best we could, but it is unlikely that we can accommodate new features or refinement based modification will be unlikely. I hope users can understand that Cayin didn’t desert our products but we'll run out of resource if we don't follow priority seriously. Being efficient is the only way to delivery low cost high performance products to the market.

I'll try to read through the discussion in past 4-5 weeks and answer as many questions as possible, but I am doing this without the Engineering or documentation/customer support, I hope I didn't make any silly mistakes in due course. Wish me luck.

 

[KwyjiboVenneri]

I'm thinking about getting this but want to know if you're able to choose the download location of your Tidal and Spotify music? I'll really only be downloading my music from those services and if i can only download them to the internal memory then this will kind of suck :/

Thanks guys!

 

[Andykong]

Hello cayin. I'm reading through as much of the 229 page thread as I can. Now that I have a n5ii. Sucks about the screen shortage causing the discontinue.

Question: How do I know if mine is a early production model with the weaker 2.5mm jack?

..and I would like to know if N5iiS is also proned to that issue on 2.5mm jack @CayinSupport ?

Good question SoundDouble, I would like to know that too. Probably based on the serial number they can tell us that. Also would be nice if they had some sort of DIY method to reinforce the jacks on our N5ii.

First of all, let's take a look at the 2.5mm and 3.5mm sockets.

The N5ii board is on the left, and the N5iiS is on the right. The sockets are securely mounted on the PCBs, regardless of N5ii or N5iiS, this is how they were mounted since Day 1. So where were the problem comes from?

We have tested the socket installation thoroughly and confirmed they are properly secured. Unfortunately, the situation changed dramatically when we insert a 2.5mm male connector into the socket and push it downward because the leveraging force will creating a much larger lifting force and it will dislocate the socket. Take a look on the proportion of 2.4mm TRRS tips when compare tot the exoctic connector barrel. Theoretically a bigger male connector barrel will generate a stronger lifting force, that's leveraging theory.

In other word, this is an inherent problem of 2.4mm TRRS connection. Similar problems appeared in some DAPs that involve 2.5mm socket, and some of them are even a lot more expensive than N5ii. I won't name the brands or models but if you look harder, you should be able to identify them.

So what can we do to remedial the situation?

First of all, we can take a look at Cayin's reinforcement of 2.5mm socket. This is a photo taken by @seanwee and you can refer to his original post HERE.

Since the problem was caused by the leveraged lifting force of 2.5mm connector, so we added a metal guard to make sure the socket will not be "lifted". However I would like to raise two suggestions to 2.5mm headphone users:

1. Unless you are listening to music playback, please unplug your headphone before you put your DAP into backpack. Be reminded the DAP will move around inside your backpack and pump into all sorts of things in due course, having a headphone connector plugged in and bumping around certain will introduced a lot of pressure to the headphone socket, especially the not-so-strong 2.5mm socket.
2. If there is a choice, right-angle headphone connector will cause less stress to the phone socket than regular "straight" headphone connector.

The 3.5mm socket has a much bigger footprint, so it will survive regular use alright but these recommendation will also applicable.

@SusanoO Will this be considered as a DIY solution to reinforce the phone socket? Finding or making the appropriate metal guard can be a problem but not impossible.

@SoundDouble I don't have the production record on hand, I can roughly recall the reinforced procedure was introduced somewhat around 1700, and we have performed the reinforcement procedure to all N5ii units in our inventory. Since the N5ii was launched in China market on 30 Oct and available to International market by mid December, most of the early production batches was sold to domestic market.

@mkrzych the reinforcement procedure were implemented way before we started N5iiS, so all N5iiS should have the metal guard in place. Having said that, we can't 100% guarantee that all 2.5mm sockets are bullet proof. The socket is still relatively vulnerable and that is a design limitation of 2.5mm balanced headphone connection.

 

[darkwing]

I'm thinking about getting this but want to know if you're able to choose the download location of your Tidal and Spotify music? I'll really only be downloading my music from those services and if i can only download them to the internal memory then this will kind of suck :/

Thanks guys!

you can choose the download location of your Spotify music, haven't tried Tidal

 

[Pete7]

"N5ii was launched back in 30 October 2017, it has way passed our regular product development stage already. We shall continue to support the product and handle the outstanding bugs the best we could, but it is unlikely that we can accommodate new features or refinement based modification will be unlikely. I hope users can understand that Cayin didn’t desert our products but we'll run out of resource if we don't follow priority seriously. Being efficient is the only way to delivery low cost high performance products to the market."

That's 15 months. We should at least expect full functionality without a multitude of bugs via future updates; that should be priority regardless of the clock ticking.