I see class A to really enhance more neutral sets and class AB to benefit more bassy iems. It’s good to have a choice, especially when having multiple iems/headphones with different sound signatures
I think with an N7 and adding a C9 may be basically an endgame combo for any needs/tastes.
Top of my "settings" is DSD mode. I set mine on PCM. Not what I was lookin for. Could someone explain it from the beginning, please? I am an old duffer and very happy with the amp A sound so far and AB ain't bad.
Top of my "settings" is DSD mode. I set mine on PCM. Not what I was lookin for. Could someone explain it from the beginning, please? I am an old duffer and very happy with the amp A sound so far and AB ain't bad.
Thanks Auricon. That was crystal clear. Even my 75 year old mind can grasp it. This DAP is really singing on A. Jack Johnson has never sounded as good. Thanks you all for helping an old man that has no prior Cayin experience except RU6.
Thanks Auricon. That was crystal clear. Even my 75 year old mind can grasp it. This DAP is really singing on A. Jack Johnson has never sounded as good. Thanks you all for helping an old man that has no prior Cayin experience except RU6.
Folks, could someone please educate me about the various re-samplings we are dealing with nowadays and their relation to the terms bit-perfect vs. non bit-perfect as well as lossless vs. lossy?
I do see what bit-perfect in its strictest sense means. And I figure quite many digital manipulations are non bit-perfect. In particular, EQing is not bit-perfect.
I do also see what the customary definition of lossless is: Not throwing any valuable audio information away. Prime example for lossy is MP3. But wouldn‘t it make sense to include ”not adding unwanted audible artifacts“ in the definition of lossless?
I do also see that bit-perfectness is something many audiophiles and devices strive for, but I think bit-perfectness practically is less important than losslessness. True?
Any downsampling - i.e. reducing the sampling rate or/and reducing the bit depth - is of course non bit-perfect AND lossy.
Here are my particular questions, not necessarily exhaustive:
1.) How would you designate the PCMnnn-to-DSDmmm digital conversion performed in the audio bridges of devices like the N7 and RU7? I figure it can NOT be called bit-perfect, of course. But would it be called lossless or lossy? Difficult to answer maybe, except for those conversions which obviously discard audio information content - e.g. converting PCM 24/176.4 and higher to DSD64 (since the information granularity of DSD64 roughly corresponds to PCM 24/88.2).
2.) What could be said about standard DAC chips (Delta-Sigma) and the NOS (non-oversampling) versus OS (oversampling) modes? Is oversampling lossless, or is it potentially lossy in the sense of introducing unwanted artifacts? And, just generally, is the term oversampling identical to the term upsampling? Why are there two terms?
I hope my questions (underlined above) are not too confused. Thanks to everybody in advance for helping me to gain clarity. Feel free to add more cases in addition to the two outlined above.
Hello all I received my N7 yesterday from Musicteck. As always the shipping is rapid and service excellent. I am upgrading from the Hiby R6 2020 and I use the UM Mest 2. The N7 is about 50-75% thicker but not too big that I can’t travel with it, which is why I selected it vs the TOTL players.
I only had 45 minutes of out of box listening but thought I would share initial impressions. All listening was flac files, class A, medium gain:
1) the sound stage was spacious and immersive, at times I felt I was sitting in the front row. While not an audiophile term, the sound felt “big” - like I was in a concert hall vs a listening room.
2) I could localize and track instruments in space better, and distinguish instruments more clearly in 3D space. The word coherency came to mind as I panned left and right and forward and back.
3) timbre was noticeably better, I could hear more detail and nuance in instruments as well as more emotion and detail (such as breath) in the voices. Voices had weight, but did seem forward and thicker. Strings had more texture.
4) bass is full- bass guitars had more bite, lead guitars more drive, and sub bass would rumble. I don’t know what I think of rumble yet vs tighter sub-bass. Definitely a greater sense of power and dynamics no doubt, classical and rock tracks sounded great. This will be fun and improved an area of concern with the mest 2 (mid-bass in particular).
5) sibilance was reduced or gone in many tracks and treble was definitely smoother and enjoyable. It had a good sense of air, but I didn’t pick up as much splash on things like cymbals. Violins weren’t quite as energetic and forward, but still sounded good. Another area I’ll pay attention to with burn in.
It’s a fun experience to hear tracks that I’ve listened to on the R6 hundreds of times presented in a way that is materially different. So now I have to listen to all of my music again for the first time so to speak.
I’m happy with the purchase and looking forward to diving deeper in the next few days…
Introduction: Thanks, Andykong, for arranging this review unit and Tour.
Let's begin with the basics.
UI/Hardware:
The UI is very intuitive, and it makes me see what I was missing out on in the higher-end spectrum. Clean, fast, and very responsive. Must be because of the Snapdragon 665. A very good mid-range mobile ARM-based SoC that doesn't compromise speed. However, it probably would've been better to go for the Snapdragon Kyro 660 because of the Big.LITTLE configuration of the ARM chip. That could help in thermal performance, which is the N7's main problem. The N7 gets hot when using higher audio formats such as ALAC, FLAC, and DSD. This makes it difficult to use in warmer places. Overall, I'll give this category a 4.5/5.
Sound:
As for the sound, let's start off with what I used most to determine the N7's capabilities.
Speaking of which, the sound is really what got me reeled in. The nuances and grace of every note have been given life by the N7's Class A/AB amps. Now, about those amps. They are powerful and give a very clean sound. The Class AB amp gives the best battery life of nearly 10 hours (with a mixture of ALAC/FLAC format on Apple Music). However, the Class A amp gives the cleanest sounding and most detailed sound, with a battery life rating of 6.5 hours (with a mixture of ALAC/FLAC format on Apple Music). Class A has a touch more analog sonic characteristics, while Class AB sounds a touch colder. These are the more striking characteristics I've noticed between both amps.
Apple Music (All Lossless of varying Formats)
My own music through Cayin Music App
Soundstage: I had to talk about this segment immediately, and you'll see why soon enough. The stage on my Penon Audio Volt is typically cavernous with my Fiio M11 Plus LTD, but the N7 took that and improved on it immensely. Not only it's cavernous, but it's pitch black, and the spatial cues are very distinct. Speaking of spatial cues, the headspace feels like you're floating in a pitch-black abyss. The sound pops out at you much easier, and it gives that wow factor.
Bass: The octaves. THE OCTAVES! Come through very well with the N7. I was mesmerized by the quick and engaging bass when listening to bass-heavy tracks like "Dominare" by Gold Geisha (Apple Music). Cyberpunk music sounds so good with the N7. Any genre sounds excellent with the N7. The bass was at another level. Not even my M11 Plus LTD could give me goosebumps. Overall, the N7 opened a new experience of refined low frequencies. I give the N7's bass performance a 5/5.
Mids: Clear, crisp, and snappy. Although not too warm or cold. It's just perfectly right in the middle. I enjoyed listening to Boston's music with the M11 Plus LTD, but the N7 took Boston's music a few notches higher. The cymbals were shimmering with finesse, and the guitar had the right amount of crunch. I was even hearing extremely subtle sounds coming up from the background. This must be due to the N7's excellent dynamics. It does have an impressive SNR of 116 to 117 dB. Anywho, the N7 can demonstrate world-class midrange performance in ways I've never of heard for $1,999. But then again, this is the second Cayin DAP I have reviewed in four years. I give the mids from the N7 a 5/5.
Treble: Refined like diamonds, but doesn't gleam like one (I mean that as a good thing). It glints more like gold. The N7's treble performance demonstrates proper control and refinement. Epic Scores such as "Kill Drill" by Robert Ruth (Apple Music) are conveyed in such a manner, which doesn't make the listening experience overwhelming. But instead, the excellent clarity of the violins get you moving and you don't want to stop. It's so moving. I give the N7's treble performance a 5/5
Please correct me if I am wrong: I entertain the thought that DSD64 is roughly (!) equivalent to PCM 24/88.2, DSD128 to PCM 24/176.4. Note: By number of bits per sample times samplerate, which I might call information content (EDIT) or - better - information granularity.
Thus, I would think that choosing DSD64 as the standard for converting incoming PCM to before it gets sent to the 1-bit DAC actually means downsampling for incoming PCM 24/176.4 and PCM 24/192.
On the technical front there'd unlikely be anything to gain going below DSD512 PCM conversion unless trying to extend or preserve a single battery charge.
I'd also aim for DSD128 to be the minimum conversion in such an event, as noise problems above 26Khz creep into single-rate DSD64.
From a mathematical point of view, upsampling is some kind of interpolation, you are adding "noise" to your source file according to a certain algorithm. If you look at the problem from this perspective, you probably will guess that while some noise can enhance the perceived quality, more "noise" is not always better. If you can't imagine this scenario, think of it as the Unsharp Mask (USM) feature of Photoshop: adding a small amount of USM is almost always welcome to viewers, but if you drag the bars too far to the right, the picture will be over-enhanced and won't look natural despite every point and every line are very sharp and clear.
Having said that, you might or might not hear the difference, it probably depends on your IEM/headphone, and your choice of music.
So I agree with several contributors here. I'll set mine to DSD128 as default and only switch to DSD256 or DSD512 when I want to listen to 384kHz or above PCM files critically.
Just about Done loading my music on a Scan Disk Ultra 1 Tb card. Will plug N7 into low power charging and run it non stop for a week. Anybody
have any idea of how long to break in N7?
Up to this point, I have broken in DAPs by just connecting an IEM and plugging in to power, letting it play around 200 hours. Can I do that with my N7?
@Andykong what do you suggest for a permanent break in setup?
My experience is LO is running cooler and consuming less battery.
Is that mode advisable using some burn in cable or better just connecting to some external offline amp?
Claud W
I asked and Andy answered this question earlier in this thread
He mentioned about 50-75hours, I ran about 100 Hrs, but first set the battery limiter in the Android OS to something like 80% max (you can change it later - and the limiter only works when the OS is running) which should help with battery life/heat dissipation. He also suggested burning on on A/B amp setting (Lower heat signature, and still benefits Class A amp setting)
To help dissipate the heat I left my N7 plugged in case off and running but sitting on a large finned heat sync, with IEM's hooked to it running a playback loop
The device got warm but never hot, burned in nicely (there was some changes in SQ doing this, I noticed around the 50 hour mark some nice changes to SQ and staging. From 50 to 100 hours it was much more subtle, but IMO it was there. Beyond 110 no real changes)
Of course Burn-In seems to launch many religious wars on these forums, so I'll just say did I hear a change? Yes but YMMV.
Others I've talked to the did not do burn in and enjoyed it as is and let the time using it help them enjoy the device.
First of all, I have written burn-in advice in N8ii thread (HERE), while the DAC of the two DAP are different, and the N8ii is equipped with more options in its amplification circuit, the burn-in process is technically the same thing. With DSD64+Class AB+low gain + 4.4 phone out, playback standard 16/44.1 material non-stop at a volume between 30-50, the DAP probably will not run at high temperature even when you charge and playback at the same time, especially when you place it at a well-ventilated location, or put it on top of a piece of metal (as a heatsink).
Yes, I don't recommend charging and playback at the same time, not as a habit. But if you only do this during the first 50 hours, kind of like playback for 7 hours and then charging+playback for 3 hours, and so on, you'll only be charging+playback concurrent for .... ~15 hours (5 charging cycles). I'll consider this acceptable but if you are not in a rush and can afford to stop the player and charge it up before another burn-in session, that would be even better.
Yes, but you need to send the DAP back to us for battery replacement,
I believe we still have the N8, N8ii, N6ii and N3Pro batteries in stock, and we can offer battery replacement for these DAPs.
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