[aaf evo]

I'm not sure if this was answered or not or I might have just missed it, with the 2.1 update can you now used the 2.5m balanced output without automatically going into Audio Priority mode which disables 3rd party apps?

I have no way of testing this myself as I lack the cable, but I'm looking to buy one but it wouldn't make sure for me as I use Apple Music as my source of music.

TIA

 

[pfurey89]

I'm not sure if this was answered or not or I might have just missed it, with the 2.1 update can you now used the 2.5m balanced output without automatically going into Audio Priority mode which disables 3rd party apps?

I have no way of testing this myself as I lack the cable, but I'm looking to buy one but it wouldn't make sure for me as I use Apple Music as my source of music.

TIA

Whenever you plug/unplug 2.5 now it will prompt if you want to enter Audio Priority mode, and I click no. It doesn’t prompt again unless you plug/unplug. Works perfectly. Sounds so much better balanced to me as well.

 

[aaf evo]

Whenever you plug/unplug 2.5 now it will prompt if you want to enter Audio Priority mode, and I click no. It doesn’t prompt again unless you plug/unplug. Works perfectly. Sounds so much better balanced to me as well.

"7. Modify output setting of balanced phone out, enable user to select Audio Priority Mode manually."

Yep just found it myself, I guess I didn't even see #7 when I updated. Whoops! Thanks anyways!

 

[Andykong]

My hesitation with the N5ii is that sabre dac. Most implementations I find to have brittle and sometimes artificial treble. Even my DX90 I have is a bit lacking here (which is why I'm replaceing it. It also doesn't have quite the headroom I want for the PM3)

The Sabre chip implementation is excellent. I've been a fan of the AKM 4490 chip until now, so I'm not an expert on Sabre-based DACs. But the N5ii sounds smooth and analog, not brittle or harsh. The tuning is neutral with a slight warmish tilt, with plenty of detail up and down the frequency range. Plenty of headroom with the PM-3, if I'm understanding you correctly. Can be driven to different dynamic level either on low or medium gain.

I agree with PopZeus that the relationship of DAC chipset and overall sound signature has been overwhelmed. It might well be true that the chipset has certain implication to the sound signature, but a proper design "around" the chipset with a purposely designed analog circuit that "compensate" the tonal characteristic, the ESS can sound very different from the original ESS reference board. N5ii is a good example of this theory. Although the perceived sound signature of ESS9018K2M is very different form Cayin house sound, but the N5ii remain in Cayin bloodline very well.

 

[Andykong]

I have been experiencing something weird with my unit. The volume adjustment screen sometimes shows up whenever I do the following:

1. Connect a Type-C USB cable to the unit.
2. Connect a 3.5mm earphone.
3. Turning the unit on to see what song is playing.

I just had the unit last Saturday and updated it to the latest FW on the same day. Didn't really tinkered with the unit 'till Sunday and started noticing this. Is anyone experiencing this? Can anyone suggest a fix?

Looks like a new bug to me. Need more information in order to preliminary access the cause of the problem.

The volume screen will ALWAYS appear when you do one of the three things listed above? or it will shoe up "occasionally" with reference to the three actions?

When the volume screen shows up, will it disappear after a few second? or will it keep coming back?

When the volume screen shows up, you can control the volume by turning the volume knob or using the +/- button on the screen? Or will it locked up and don't allow you to control the volume?

 

[Andykong]

Hello again sir Andy or Cayin or anybody, just like to ask if the usb audio out is functioning or not? Because Ive tried connecting my Firefly Black with an usb c adapter, the Firefly's led do comes on but there's no sound coming out of my phone.
Do I need to change some settings or I'll need some special cable? Help please and thanks

USB Audio is working, but need to improve on compatibility. We have received report about high background noise and we are working on that. It's a bit strange if you didn't get any sound out of it.

The USB C adapter, are you sure this is an OTB type C adapter? Some C adapter will only be good for charging, you need a C adapter that can do both charging and data transfer.

In additional, you need to change the USB mode to DAC. This can be done at the Notification Center of the pull down menu.

 

[Andykong]

On the N5II how do i play dsd files natively not via the two options it says?
If i download hiby app it can possibly do native??

If you playback a DSD file locally, it will be natively decoded unless you set it to D2P purposely. DoP is a trick to fake the DSD security system when you need to TRANSMIT the DSD bitstream to an external DAC.

You cannot download or install HiBy Music App to N5ii because it will crash with the build-n HiBy player.

 

[Andykong]

I tried USB from the N5ii to my Qyestyle CMA400i and DSD will not play smoothly. Flac files choke, make clicking and popping noises. I never tried my phone before, but it works great via USB to the DAC/Amp.

Maybe I should try the USB C to coax cable....

Also, my N5ii can’t drive my Aeon closed very well.

I like the Hiby software. I might just return the N5ii and order an R6.

As stated in previous discussion, we'll proceed to improve USB Audio feature after the V2.1EN is settled, but you can try the USB C to coaxial cable any time. S/PDIF Coaxial is a very stable, and I have customers prefer coaxial over USB from sound signature perspective.

 

[aaf evo]

Guys I found a little "hack" if you will on getting the hardware buttons (rewind/play/fast forward) to work with Apple Music... I mentioned yesterday that on FW 2.1 that it was fixed but that doesn't seem to be the case, but I have found a way to make them work.

If you have the music open like this and you shut off the screen, the hardware buttons WILL NOT work with Apple Music.

If you have the music open like this and you shut off the screen, the hardware buttons WILL work with Apple Music. Tested multiple times. Can anyone confirm this?

Edit: Sorry about the size of the pictures, they're much smaller on the preview. I don't know how to make them smaller

 

[gibby]

As stated in previous discussion, we'll proceed to improve USB Audio feature after the V2.1EN is settled, but you can try the USB C to coaxial cable any time. S/PDIF Coaxial is a very stable, and I have customers prefer coaxial over USB from sound signature perspective.

Thank you for the reply Mr. Kong. I did buy the Cayin cable and will try with it. I'm willing to stick it out and hopefully get a few of these quirks sorted out. I understand that you guys are working on improvements and fixes with new firmware.

I did find another odd thing with mine. After charging it with my phone charger, when I unplug it, the light stays on brightly and the battery drains from that. I have to push the power button a few times to get the light to go off, or turn it on and turn it back off.

 

[Soundtrap]

When provided with proper instruction,open up the unit should be fairly straight forward, I didn't check with the battery connection of N5ii but my guess is you need to do some simple soldering to replace the battery, any local repairman and do that in no time.

However, the problem that stop us from doing this is not technical consideration. We simply can't find any fright forwarder willing to accept one piece of uninstalled Li-On battery, they'll only accept installed battery. In other word, the only option is to send the DAP back to us, we'll install the new battery at our factory, and then send it back to you.

If anyone can source a fright forwarder to accept uninstalled Li-On battery, please let me know, Cayin will be more then happy to sell you a new battery and let you replace it yourself.

Andy, this is how I got replacement Li-Polymer battery for my One +1 phone: seller from China sent it (through Ebay) inside a throwaway cheap plastic toy car, which would have cost no more then 5 cents. You take the battery out and dump toy in to the bin, unless offcourse you can fool your kid that it is a Ferrari (Lol!). Toy contains no insides, but technically battery is installed inside a device and therefore passes customs with no problems.

 

[haveblue]

If one buys the chinese version with firmware 2.0CN, could it be reflashed to the 2.1EN firmware?

 

[Brownman_80]

Looks like a new bug to me. Need more information in order to preliminary access the cause of the problem.

The volume screen will ALWAYS appear when you do one of the three things listed above? or it will shoe up "occasionally" with reference to the three actions?

When the volume screen shows up, will it disappear after a few second? or will it keep coming back?

When the volume screen shows up, you can control the volume by turning the volume knob or using the +/- button on the screen? Or will it locked up and don't allow you to control the volume?

Good day Andy.

The first one is the closest. It occasionally shows up when I do one of the three things I mentioned. I can definitely assure you that I did not, in any way, nudge the volume adjustment wheel whenever I experience this. It is kinda difficult for me to send a video proof as it occurs when you least expect it. I'll post it here if ever I caught it on cam.

I also want to add another observation which I forgot to include. This has something to do with the clock and the cover art

-Missing Clock-
I'm always on Audio Priority Mode since I only listen to my music collection and not with any streaming services like Tidal or Spotify. There are times that I notice that there's no clock on the main screen. It is present on the lockscreen but after you have unlocked the unit, it doesn't display the time. To be honest, I haven't read the manual but is this one of the functions when the unit is in this mode? Below is a pic for your reference.

-Cover Art-
I am kinda O.C. with it comes to my audio files and I make sure that the information within them is complete and uniform. Items like album covers, year published, etc. are present in each file that I have. There are cases when I go the tab after Music, which is Album, It'll show all the albums (with its cover art) available for me. But when I start playing the song, the album art shown is the Cayin Default album art. This will be the same for all the albums. This happens even if I didn't do any changes on the storage, say adding or deleting albums. What I do to remedy this is to have the unit re-scan again all the songs and have it restarted. After some time, like a day or two, It'll happen again as if I have removed all the album covers from all the files.

I really like this unit and I like the fact that it sounds great and can do many things for an affordable price. I hope that this gets to be improved on the next FW versions.

 

[Andykong]

So far the only issue I have is that the one third party app I want to use is skipping like mad. Keeps toggling between play and pause. Works fine on the other android player I have. Just tried with the updated firmware and still not good

Thanks.

N5ii is operated on a fully customized Android 5.1, we believe most, if not all, music based application should work with it, but we can't be 100% sure. Occasionally if the app requested some service that we can't provided (e.g., contact list, camera, sms, ... etc), the app will not be able to function as intended.

Mind telling more detail about the third party app that you have troubled with? or by PM? If this is a relevant app, I'll try to include this in the optimization list for our future work.

 

[Andykong]

@Andykong

Received N5II latest firmware pre installed many thanks.

Three things when i hit track forward or back volume screen appears (all be it very briefly)
On DSD playback can we have an option to select native as well as other two options currently there.
(As the Hiby music app allows this and Cayin version is modded on Hiby.)

Lastly any chance of Custom EQ being implemented allowed for DSD playback and third party apps.

All in great little Dap

Thank you

The HiBy App is a generic platform design to be compatible with as many devices as possible, the Native HiBy app in N5ii is fully customized to the hardware and system architecture of N5ii. They share a lot of common design and features, but we can't change something simply because the generic HiBy has that option.

Our EQ works in digital domain and is limited to digital audio up to 48kHz (sampling frequency) only. To use EQ on DSD playback, we need to downscale DSD from 1Bit 2.82MHz to 24Bit 44.1kHz, that will be a very substantial downgrade on audio quality, so we didn't offer that.

Is it possible via FW update to allow the built in EQ to work with third party apps like Apple Music (no EQ)? I figured that isn't possible, but doesn't hurt to ask

To use EQ on third party applications, it would be straight forward if the EQ in N5ii is operated in analogue mode. We can't feed our digital EQ to the Third party app output, that'll require all app to go through our DSP engine, and this will introduce new compatibility problem.