[originalsnuffy]

Andy,

It appears to me that the future of high end hi if is going to involve Android. Certainly Cayin gets that with its current product line.

I know the old firmware for the N5II came from HiBy. But woujldn’t it be great if Cayin developed a portable OS and put that on the N5II?

Just a thought. I really like the sound of this unit but the limited Android capability and the inability to use this as a DAC for a iPhone is less than originally suggested. By gettting a modern port you would be sending a great message to the market.

 

[thedud3]

You tried to back track the problem back to Feb 2019 but according to your post on August 2019, your unit "seems like being back from repair ! It's so much of a pleasure to finally have a responsive device re this play/pause function !!!" so I assume your previous issues has been recovered at some point. This is tiring and I do not see the productivity of further discussion. I have no further comment to your case, please contact your dealer and let them take care of your case.

In August 2019, i was here referring to the play/pause delay being adressed in latest fw v1.7en. My unit actually never went to repair (thus my 'seems like'), but the play/pause delay was to me like feeling having a kinda faulty unit due to this not-so-user-friendly delay , so this is why i wrote this at this time.

And of course as i also stated here :

At this time, it could restart properly after a few restart attemps as far as i remember, and it even didn't required a double wipe

In February 2019, the boot issue occured only once and never came back... until this january 2020. So i was just mentioning this February 2019 boot issue to point out that a similar issue already occured once in the past with my unit during warranty period.

Now regarding mailing to Cayin, i also did this and i'm still waiting for an answer from them since January 18th. And you already have clarified in the meantime that there is no support during 2 weeks due to Chinese New Year (yet another bad luck for me).

I feel sorry to bother everyone here with my own case, i am just trying to make working a device i paid for about a year ago.

And forgive me if i try to fix this on my end but i haven't much options being left alone. And of course i might be wrong, but i can't help thinking that if i was anyhow assisted in investigating the issue (maybe there's just some bad files causing constant crash that i could delete or whatever...), this could save time (thus also money) for everyone : you, me, my retailer, Cayin's engineers... plus we could maybe nail down a fix for other potential users having similar issue, and we would also prevent a unit from travelling across the world and increasing carbon footprint.

There was actually some offer of user-self-fix-assist in this thread a few months ago : https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cay...al-audio-player.862763/page-256#post-15016437

If you have formatted the internal memory, yes, you definitely will run into some operation problem. It can be rescued if you have good understanding and hands-on experience with either Android and Linux, we can send you some tools and files to recover the system. If you are not a hands-on person, you should send the N5ii to your dealer for repair service, your dealer probably will ship the unit back to us eventually.

I guess i was kind of expecting similar proposal for my own issue.

But no worries i understand this won't happen as i cannot have further help from Cayin re my issue in this board and i won't quote or @ you anymore re this subject.

Thanks for all your replies (no sarcasm here).

I will wait for my retailer or Cayin's mail feedback.

Peace to everyone.

 

[thedud3]

But woujldn’t it be great if Cayin developed a portable OS and put that on the N5II?

I definitely think this would save them from multiple potential Android-related issues that they certainly cannot properly investigate. I think we all remember the recurrent 'Google Play Service has stopped' we had and i certainly remember the 'Google Framework services has stopped' i was having every second very recently.

But what seems rather sure to me is that they certainly won't put time and efforts in this for a discontinued product. Maybe for future products though.

Now the question is can they live without the Play Store and all its apps ? Certainly not. So maybe they could provide a way for sideload of apk. But then this might also imply complications for users not familiar with these procedures. I think Fiio have this (apk install instead of Play Store) although they do have an Android OS AFAIK.

And also, there might be some legal issues related to using apps without Android...

 

[originalsnuffy]

The few apps I have tried on the Cayin were all sideloaded. I did get Sirius XM to work OK. Tidal can work but only stores to the internal memory.
Amazon HD never quite loads even though in theory it is compatible with Android 5 based units.

 

[thedud3]

I was mainly using native Cayin Audio app, but i was also quite often using ONKYO HF Player (for its crossplay capabilities + more advanced EQ + live playlists & possibilty to hear music while seeking through), Rocket Music Player (similar features with ONKYO player but with also perfect handling of album arts browsing/scrolling - no latency and more customizable), TuneIn Radio and also Deezer (mainly for just previewing new songs as i don't much use streaming, my entire collection being on TF cards).

But although i know that streaming audio on DAPs might sound heretic for some pure audio lovers (i'm not talking for you here ^^) due to not-that-high quality (so far...), i think any owner has the right to decide what he wants to do with his unit. And i think that's why many users are also using streaming apps like Spotify/Deezer/Tidal with these kind of devices. Besides, streaming quality improves each year, and we cannot exclude it might be the future standard.

Well this to say that i think Play Store and all its apps are certainly an important feature to many users, but i might be wrong.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Given all the problems with Google Play Store, seems like sideloading APKs from sites like APKPure may be the way to go. I do acknowledge that a few apps need to purchased from Google play due to licensing / purchase issues.

I have no faith in the Android app capability of this unit. Some apps work, some work partially, some don't work.

With regard to audio apps; I bet that very few can overcome Android limits of 24 bit 48 khz. The native Cayin music app does override the Android limits, but I don't think this unit has made that capability available to other apps. Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[thedud3]

I know that Onkyo HF player paid version claims to support up to 192 khz (free version being limited to 44/48 khz though). You might give it a try, maybe you would enjoy its features

And i think Uapp and Neutron can aslo override Android audio limits.

Still, i totally agree with you that if Cayin could get rid of Android and Playstore, they would drastically reduce the risks of unexpected bugs to track.

On the other hand, i guess using Android OS also prevent them from the hassle of coding and updating a lot of standard OS features.
And also as i earlier mentionned, i still think that average user might prefer Playstore simplicity instead of sideloading apps.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Android is weird. I strongly suspect that any non Cayin app won't provide 192khz on this device. Doesn't matter how it is specified. It is only a recent feature to bypass Android limits system wide.

It does not matter what we think about the OS; Cayin has politely told us that the operating system is at a dead end. I was just throwing out the idea that if Cayin had a portable Android implementation maybe it could be hosted on this unit which would get us much closer to the originally advertised features.

I am a bit surprised that they did not offer some kind of trade in program for the N6 or some such given how much this unit fell short of what was promised.

 

[CayinSupport]

Dear customers,

According to the government's latest notice, due to the Coronavirus outbreak in the nation, the Chinese New Year holiday has been extended for a week, to Sunday, February 9th. All team members will be back in the office on February 10th.

However, you can still contact us on our Facebook page if you have any enquiry about our products or customer service.

We wish everyone a healthy and happy 2020.

 

[thedud3]

I feel sorry for all the people concerned with this virus.

And i wouldn't want to be the support team who will have to deal with 3 weeks of mails at their return ! By chance here in France (and in many other countries too of course), we have many companies who put in place remote access to their internal network and mails, so that people can keep working, even from their home.

 

[CayinSupport]

Dear customers,

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak in the country, we will restore limited service tomorrow on February 10th. Until the next notice, you still can contact us on our Facebook page for inquiry of our products and customer service.

Best regards,

Cayin

 

[thedud3]

Short update on my story for those of you interested : my online shop finally allowed me to return my defective unit to them so that they will send it to Cayin afterwards.

I'll let you guys know how this will end...

 

[Chucky75]

Dear All,
Need some help.My Cayin N5ii is having trouble with the wifi.Cannot detect.So i did the factory reset.After the reset it went back to normal and i updated the latest firmware edition.But the problem is i cant seem to login to Spotify eventhough using my acct.Been trying for 2 days already and it kept on pops out a message saying ‘Something Went Wrong Pls try again later’.Not able to login to Spotify at all.
Can anyone advise?
@CayinSupport
@Andykong

 

[Andykong]

Dear All,
Need some help.My Cayin N5ii is having trouble with the wifi.Cannot detect.So i did the factory reset.After the reset it went back to normal and i updated the latest firmware edition.But the problem is i cant seem to login to Spotify eventhough using my acct.Been trying for 2 days already and it kept on pops out a message saying ‘Something Went Wrong Pls try again later’.Not able to login to Spotify at all.
Can anyone advise?
@CayinSupport
@Andykong

Other then you can't logon the Spotify, can you use the WiFi connection at all? you can download a browser or whatever simple enough to confirm that there are actual data communication over the Internet after you have login your WiFi?

Another option is to remove your spotify and download from Google Play again. Maybe a fresh installation will work.

 

[thedud3]

Hi there, here's the final update to my story :

So my web shop told me Cayin couldn't repair my N5IIs and i thus got a refund (glad the shop did this although i was at my 13th month-product-old, as i was not sure that the european 24 months warranty would have been easy to request for me otherwise).

Now i ordered a Fiio M11 and i must say that this beast definitely beats the N5IIs almost everywhere for me so far !

SQ is as good, if not better, UI experience is waaaaaay more better globally (especially speed). Boot time is also faster. Of course, screen being bigger, it's also a real better experience in terms of screen size. I was initially afraid that the unit would be too bulky compared to N5IIs but if it's a bit bigger, it's still not 'that big' (at least for me). Bluetooth range is defnitely better and it connects perfectly to my Bose QC35ii when N5IIs never could ! The stock player is rather good too. I will though miss the vu-meter that i was quite enjoying on my N5IIs. Also, Fiio M11 perfectly plays movie and supports Youtube (sure it's not the main usage for a DAP but it's still nice that it can achieve this too). Casting to Chromecast even works through the Rocket Player app !

The 2 other things i might miss from N5IIs are the quick sleep-timer access (on M11 this require going into android settings) and i also liked the 'Smart Cleaning' feature (including the play-button-keep-pressed-shortcut). Note that there also is a 'Pure Audio' mode on M11 (like the Cayin Audio Priority mode) which disable all fancy android extras. Also there's only 2 gain-level settings (High and Low) on M11 vs 3 on N5IIs, but i'm not sure it's that important at the end. One last thing i don't really like on M11 is audio sockets being located at the bottom of the unit. I think Fiio was used to this design-choice since a while, although they moved these sockets on top on their latest M15, but not the same price range of course !

But overall, i'm way more satisfied with this new DAP so far after a few weeks of usage. And Fiio looks quite responsive so far in terms of support and fw upgrade. They just recently add Play Store when you previously had to go through their internal quite-limited store or through apkpure for installing apps.

So maybe my N5IIs dying was my Karma and i should at the end thank @CayinSupport for pointing me to a better product