Cayin have been incredibly short-sighted with the A02 limited production run and will alienate some of their customer base with the decision to only make 500 A02 and no more, EVER.
Cayin said that A02 is a niche product, not many people will want one, but then released a new product, C9, after all the A02's have sold out. C9 is seemingly designed specifically to pair with the N6ii -> A02. ???
Cayin themselves have now created a new demand A02 perhaps above what was originally envisaged.
Cayin, I have no idea how many C9's you are intending to produce perhaps its < 500 too.
Cayin, this whole situation makes no sense from a marketing point of view.
Perhaps there is another reason behind all this A02 situation that they are not telling us. But to me it reads like "we told you so, you didn't listen, its your fault you can't get an A02" not a good way to treat customers Cayin.
Cayin its not too late to reverse the A02 limited run and make some more, please do it now for the sake of your customer base.
Later this year A02 modules will be like the latest XBOX, PlayStation and RTX graphics cards, get your A02 second hand on ebay for > £1000
I can confirm again that Cayin will not produce A02 again. The AKM fire has put an full-stop to this Audio Motherboard.
Sorry for causing your frustration, please relax, you won't be able to enjoy your music if you stress yourselves like this.
When Cayin announced N8, a lot of users said Cayin made a big mistake, we should sell N8 at $999 and selling 10,000 units instead of several hundred units at that price, some unhappy customer even said Cayin turns evil and deserted our customers.
When Cayin announced E01, a lot of users caid Cayin is out of our mind, nobody will pay that kind of money for something that didn't support balanced.
When Cayin announced N3Pro, we have pages and pages of complaint, saying Cayin made a big mistake to give up the old N3 customers who are waiting for an update player at the same price point, and nobody will pay that kind of money for a DAP that don't do streaming.
When Cayin announced the price of C9, people said we are crazy, and they won't pay more then $500/$700/$1000 for a portable headphone amplifier, our C9 will sit in our inventory collecting dust.
Now Cayin make another big mistake with A02.
Let me share a secret with you. The most important and critical marketing plot with C9 is to decouple with N6ii. The C9 must aim at a much larger customer group than N6ii users base in order to reach economic efficiency, Therefore C9 must be marketed as a cross-brand product in order to reach out to its target customers. That's why you won't see me promoting N6ii+E02 in C9 thread, that will be the natural move if we want to marry C9 to N6ii. On the contrary, I keep N6ii in low profile and make rooms for other players from AK, iBasso, L&P, and cultivate the C9 thread into a platform that all DAP users will feel comfortable and enjoy sharing with each other. In addition, C9 should remain active in the market for 5 to 10 years, but we doubt if N6ii can keep its market value beyond 2021, so A02 was never meant to be THE source for C9. A02 is the beachhead to showcase the potential and create a marketplace for C9.
Let me assure you that we know what we are doing.
