[Rozeqloud]

i bought the N6 pretty well right out of the gate , and its still rockin hard

This N8 really excites me

3 immediate questions i have are

1.Will this N8 play SACD isos as well (That was the outstanding feature for me on N6 , all the hi res formats it played)

2. How secure from physical damage will that tube be inside a portable dap ?

3. i have Future sonics MG6 pros i use in my N6 now , but im still curious , can this N8 drive my Sennheiser HD 800s if i chose to do so?

Here i am saving for the Realizer A 16 and this comes along to toss a wrench into that decision UGH

I ve been following that thread for a few years ? now

If they had not taken so long i am sure id have an A16 by now and this would be out of the question for a while

 

[Andykong]

Another vote for matte/unpolished gold accents here.

Would lke to clarify this. The knobs are electroplated, they are not polished to chrome.




The volume knob is designed to offer good grip, but this will limited the finishing we can applied to the surface. We selected electroplating because it is fairly reliable and consistent, especially with gold plating. If we go for matt finishing, we might need to change the detail design in order to accommodate a different finishing technique.

 

[PapaThrust]

I think those knobs look fantastic!

 

[tienbasse]

The texture on the volume knob is not necessary anymore if you go with powder coating, because the grip will be better.
Up to you.

 

[fuhransahis]

Would lke to clarify this. The knobs are electroplated, they are not polished to chrome.




The volume knob is designed to offer good grip, but this will limited the finishing we can applied to the surface. We selected electroplating because it is fairly reliable and consistent, especially with gold plating. If we go for matt finishing, we might need to change the detail design in order to accommodate a different finishing technique.

Understood - however the end result is still highly reflective and... blingy. Whatever the case I don't think it's a deal breaker, but there must be a solution somewhere. Maybe have an extremely fine textured finish applied to it so it's less reflective, like a sandblasted finish? Or embue that texture into the mold? Whatever it is that could get the job done!

I know the price isn't announced but it doesn't seem like it will be cheap, so the less reason you give ppl to choose not to buy it, the better

 

[Andykong]

There is a different between afforfable and reasonable. Every since AK decided that people would pay more, they doubled the price for every new DAP and then realized that around 3k$ was certainly a ceiling that a large chunk of the well off audio enthusiasts were willing to pay.

And then other brands followed suit. If you feel 20k is what you should charge for it, based on costs and target clients, well it is your choice. And clients will buy it or not based on perceived value. Their choice. And I will judge if it is decent or not based on my own metrics as well...

Now the key question for all these products pushing the limit of pricing is : are makers really applying a reasonable margin to amortize production costs, marketing and R&D, or are just doing x3 or x4 because they know we will pay. We will never know in most cases. For cables and certain IEMs, we know it is often the latter. For DAPs it is less clear as production costs are higher. But could most high end DAPs not be sold at half price and still present good margins? For me it is an open question.

Edit : just to be fair, I am way more impressed by what you guys seems to be putting in this device technically than by anything AK has ever put out.

I only meant something less than stratospheric pricing (which $3K would be).

If Cayin asks 10x more for the N8 than their current highest price DAP, more people would take pause. It's bad PR to suddenly price new products so much higher (rather than gradual increases over a long period). Still, hasn't stopped other companies from doing just that.

I understand. But remember, they are working on a high-end DAP, also. The N6ii. That should be a few hundred more than the N5ii. But the N8? This is Cayin trying to build the best DAP the world has ever seen. At least that's how I interpret "price no object". You don't give your engineers that sort of freedom unless you're shooting for the stars.

If you can't afford whatever the final price will be for ONE OF THE BEST DAPS IN THE WORLD (I know I can't), that's alright. That's normal. You are normal. Cayin makes incredible products we can afford. I love the N5ii, and I can't wait to get my hands on the N6ii.

Cayin has mastered the Price/Performance ratio. I simply cannot begrudge them for wanting to see what they are capable of when physics is the only limitation... even if I never get to hear it myself.

I had shared our perspective on the pricing issue previously:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cay...-25th-anniversary.879025/page-3#post-14221584

Please be assured that Cayin is NOT giving up the price-conscious practice, we'll continue to produce DAPs along the N3, N5 and N6 categories down the road, we are expanding our market segment vertically, not shifting our market segment upward as some of the comment has indicated. To remain competitive in the portable audio industries, we must improve ourselves through continuous R&D, and we must realize the R&D cost somehow otherwise we won't be able to sustained. In Hi-Fi business, quite often we put a large chunk of R&D cost into the flagship model as they are indeed carried out because of the flagship model, but this will actually contributed to the mass market products so that they can remain competitive.

To be realistic, the market expectation in DAP are more then just audio performance. N6 was our first DAP and we pretty much followed that direction: putting audio as top priority. N6 was well received by customer sharing the same priority but unfortunately we have also received a lot of negative comment on the design, UI and portability issues. In other word, we should price a DAP according to FOUR areas at least:

1. Audio performance
2. Design/look-and-feel/workmanship
3. Features and UI (EQ, Music Categorisation, playlist, .... )
4. Portability (size, weight, heat, battery duration, ... etc)

From what we observed, if we build a budgeted product, we only need to excel in one or two of the four areas and a fair performance on the others, but if we are going to build a flagship DAP, we need to get all four things right otherwise we'll take a lot of heat. Therefore I think its unfair to compare a flagship DAP to a mid-range DAP solely on audio performance only. You can call this your personal preference, but please do not label them as hype because they have to face the global market trend as a whole.

By the way, our biggest bottleneck on N8 development is not physics, Supply Chain is our biggest limitation. When MoQ is not on our side and we don't have any strategy relationship with the semiconductor giants, our choice are limited.

 

[Mimouille]

I had shared our perspective on the pricing issue previously:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cay...-25th-anniversary.879025/page-3#post-14221584

Please be assured that Cayin is NOT giving up the price-conscious practice, we'll continue to produce DAPs along the N3, N5 and N6 categories down the road, we are expanding our market segment vertically, not shifting our market segment upward as some of the comment has indicated. To remain competitive in the portable audio industries, we must improve ourselves through continuous R&D, and we must realize the R&D cost somehow otherwise we won't be able to sustained. In Hi-Fi business, quite often we put a large chunk of R&D cost into the flagship model as they are indeed carried out because of the flagship model, but this will actually contributed to the mass market products so that they can remain competitive.

To be realistic, the market expectation in DAP are more then just audio performance. N6 was our first DAP and we pretty much followed that direction: putting audio as top priority. N6 was well received by customer sharing the same priority but unfortunately we have also received a lot of negative comment on the design, UI and portability issues. In other word, we should price a DAP according to FOUR areas at least:

1. Audio performance
2. Design/look-and-feel/workmanship
3. Features and UI (EQ, Music Categorisation, playlist, .... )
4. Portability (size, weight, heat, battery duration, ... etc)

From what we observed, if we build a budgeted product, we only need to excel in one or two of the four areas and a fair performance on the others, but if we are going to build a flagship DAP, we need to get all four things right otherwise we'll take a lot of heat. Therefore I think its unfair to compare a flagship DAP to a mid-range DAP solely on audio performance only. You can call this your personal preference, but please do not label them as hype because they have to face the global market trend as a whole.

By the way, our biggest bottleneck on N8 development is not physics, Supply Chain is our biggest limitation. When MoQ is not on our side and we don't have any strategy relationship with the semiconductor giants, our choice are limited.

I am completely for sale, send me a review unit and I will say it is great value for money, and even reasonable

 

[Andykong]

I really like the design of the N5ii and the gold volume wheel fit perfectly.
On the N8 the gold accents are polished and I personally think they would look ok better against a titanium/charcoal color of the stainless steel body, to add some contrast between the 2.
Another possible solution is to change the finish of the gold elements, from polished to mat so that they don’t stand out too much.

Said that, I’m still looking forward to demo it as soon as available in the US, and if it’s perform very well, I would consider to buy it even if the wheel buttons were pink .

I agree, I would have liked my N5ii to have a gold wheel too.

If you like the gold volume wheel with N5ii, stay tuned.

 

[Chik0240]

I had shared our perspective on the pricing issue previously:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cay...-25th-anniversary.879025/page-3#post-14221584

Please be assured that Cayin is NOT giving up the price-conscious practice, we'll continue to produce DAPs along the N3, N5 and N6 categories down the road, we are expanding our market segment vertically, not shifting our market segment upward as some of the comment has indicated. To remain competitive in the portable audio industries, we must improve ourselves through continuous R&D, and we must realize the R&D cost somehow otherwise we won't be able to sustained. In Hi-Fi business, quite often we put a large chunk of R&D cost into the flagship model as they are indeed carried out because of the flagship model, but this will actually contributed to the mass market products so that they can remain competitive.

To be realistic, the market expectation in DAP are more then just audio performance. N6 was our first DAP and we pretty much followed that direction: putting audio as top priority. N6 was well received by customer sharing the same priority but unfortunately we have also received a lot of negative comment on the design, UI and portability issues. In other word, we should price a DAP according to FOUR areas at least Audio performance

1. Design/look-and-feel/workmanship
2. Features and UI (EQ, Music Categorisation, playlist, .... )
3. Portability (size, weight, heat, battery duration, ... etc)

From what we observed, if we build a budgeted product, we only need to excel in one or two of the four areas and a fair performance on the others, but if we are going to build a flagship DAP, we need to get all four things right otherwise we'll take a lot of heat. Therefore I think its unfair to compare a flagship DAP to a mid-range DAP solely on audio performance only. You can call this your personal preference, but please do not label them as hype because they have to face the global market trend as a whole.

By the way, our biggest bottleneck on N8 development is not physics, Supply Chain is our biggest limitation. When MoQ is not on our side and we don't have any strategy relationship with the semiconductor giants, our choice are limited.

This is impressively honest and reasonable in my book, first thing first - I am a Chinese, but to be honest quite some Chinese brand start off with very affordable and quality products off their mark just to jump to ridiculous pricing after they've established their name, for example, Hifiman is always releasing products that amaze me, but my last purchase from them was the HE500 and RE600, after that the pricing and build quality don't catch up and rocketed into the stratosphere (I am still massively impressed by their latest and greatest on what is possible on both build quality and sound, but price just went off my radar for future purchase)

As a not so well off audiophile, I perfectly understands that once you hike up to a certain level on the technology/ flagship of whatever product, your price will get tens of times higher, true for computers, phones, cars, and on and on. But a company being able to offer solid mid range cost products are what I love the most, AK lost this on the DAP market for folks like me as they have no true mid priced DAP with competitive sound quality (AK70 mk II is 20% more expensive than Onkyo PD-S10 in Hong Kong, but sound, feature and build quality wise at most they are on par at best). among my small circle ppl tend to choose either sony or onkyo, pioneer for budget to mid range DAPs, hope Cayin could catch up and get something really good, personally I would hope for more not so "me too" kind of dac chip of the era like the ES9018K2M/C2M chips, but offer some sort of Curris logic, Burr Brown or AK dac chips for different favor is nice!

May I ask in the future models do you plan to prioritize Wifi and streaming services such as Tidal or Spotify support? coz for the flagship models, serious audiophiles would listen to nothing but lossless mostly, but for budget users who just want to enjoy occasionally with different music those streaming would be handy, but phone don't work for both sound quality and batter life

 

[Andykong]

i bought the N6 pretty well right out of the gate , and its still rockin hard

This N8 really excites me

3 immediate questions i have are

1.Will this N8 play SACD isos as well (That was the outstanding feature for me on N6 , all the hi res formats it played)

2. How secure from physical damage will that tube be inside a portable dap ?

3. i have Future sonics MG6 pros i use in my N6 now , but im still curious , can this N8 drive my Sennheiser HD 800s if i chose to do so?

Here i am saving for the Realizer A 16 and this comes along to toss a wrench into that decision UGH

I ve been following that thread for a few years ? now

If they had not taken so long i am sure id have an A16 by now and this would be out of the question for a while

You still keep your N6? N6 is still an unique DAP consider it runs with dual PCM1792 DAC chips in BTL circuit. i

1. N8 will play SACD-ISO, N6 didn't supply DXD, we should be able to add this into N8 support list.
2. The tube is completely concealed inside the CNC stainless steel chassis with a small tempered glass window display the LED, we believe it is very safe.
3. N8 will have enough power to drive the HD800S to very loud level, it should be reasonably fun but definitely not as good as our desktop gears such as the iDAC-6 and iHA-6.

I have tried the Realizer A16 about a year ago, was completely shocked and I probably will take my card out immediately if the A16 is available immediately. I'll definitely give it a try again when the production version is available.

 

[Andykong]

This is impressively honest and reasonable in my book, first thing first - I am a Chinese, but to be honest quite some Chinese brand start off with very affordable and quality products off their mark just to jump to ridiculous pricing after they've established their name, for example, Hifiman is always releasing products that amaze me, but my last purchase from them was the HE500 and RE600, after that the pricing and build quality don't catch up and rocketed into the stratosphere (I am still massively impressed by their latest and greatest on what is possible on both build quality and sound, but price just went off my radar for future purchase)

As a not so well off audiophile, I perfectly understands that once you hike up to a certain level on the technology/ flagship of whatever product, your price will get tens of times higher, true for computers, phones, cars, and on and on. But a company being able to offer solid mid range cost products are what I love the most, AK lost this on the DAP market for folks like me as they have no true mid priced DAP with competitive sound quality (AK70 mk II is 20% more expensive than Onkyo PD-S10 in Hong Kong, but sound, feature and build quality wise at most they are on par at best). among my small circle ppl tend to choose either sony or onkyo, pioneer for budget to mid range DAPs, hope Cayin could catch up and get something really good, personally I would hope for more not so "me too" kind of dac chip of the era like the ES9018K2M/C2M chips, but offer some sort of Curris logic, Burr Brown or AK dac chips for different favor is nice!

May I ask in the future models do you plan to prioritize Wifi and streaming services such as Tidal or Spotify support? coz for the flagship models, serious audiophiles would listen to nothing but lossless mostly, but for budget users who just want to enjoy occasionally with different music those streaming would be handy, but phone don't work for both sound quality and batter life

If we have to discuss the DAC chipset, Cayin considers PCM1792 as the reference chipset that is nearest to our house sound, that's why we used them in our premium CD player back in 2013 (CDT-17A MK2) and our ice-breaking DAP (N6, 2014). Unfortunately the PCM1792 is the last reference chipset from Burr Brown and if I remember it right, it was a 2005 product, so I don't see a lot of company will devote significant resources to develop new product around this aged DAC chipset. AKM and ESS both have their merit, we can tune them to our preferred sound signature but Cayin prefers AKM chipsets on portable products, that's why we used them in our N5, i5, and N3 and N8 DAPs. With Ak4493 round the corners, there is a good chance that this norm will continue into next product generation.

Check out our N5ii DAP if you intended to use streaming service on-the-go, it is an Android-based DAP with Google Play pre-installed. You can run Spotify and Tidal on it alright. If you are coming from Hong Kong, then I can tell you in advance that N5ii can install MOOV but not KKBox. We know streaming is an important features for portable audio and we'll definitely include them as a priority items in our subsequent Android based DAP.

 

[Chik0240]

If we have to discuss the DAC chipset, Cayin considers PCM1792 as the reference chipset that is nearest to our house sound, that's why we used them in our premium CD player back in 2013 (CDT-17A MK2) and our ice-breaking DAP (N6, 2014). Unfortunately the PCM1792 is the last reference chipset from Burr Brown and if I remember it right, it was a 2005 product, so I don't see a lot of company will devote significant resources to develop new product around this aged DAC chipset. AKM and ESS both have their merit, we can tune them to our preferred sound signature but Cayin prefers AKM chipsets on portable products, that's why we used them in our N5, i5, and N3 and N8 DAPs. With Ak4493 round the corners, there is a good chance that this norm will continue into next product generation.

Check out our N5ii DAP if you intended to use streaming service on-the-go, it is an Android-based DAP with Google Play pre-installed. You can run Spotify and Tidal on it alright. If you are coming from Hong Kong, then I can tell you in advance that N5ii can install MOOV but not KKBox. We know streaming is an important features for portable audio and we'll definitely include them as a priority items in our subsequent Android based DAP.

Ic, I am from hk but only used Spotify once a while, actually I’ve tried the n5ii a bit but the es9018 signature is a bit off my taste, are there any plannings on n6ii in near future?

 

[Andykong]

I am completely for sale, send me a review unit and I will say it is great value for money, and even reasonable

Well, aren't you going to check out the N8 Engineering sample this weekend at Asia Hotel (北京亚洲大酒店)? I am looking forwards to your impression.

 

[Andykong]

Ic, I am from hk but only used Spotify once a while, actually I’ve tried the n5ii a bit but the es9018 signature is a bit off my taste, are there any plannings on n6ii in near future?

Yes, there will be N6ii down the road, but we don't have a release date yet.

 

[Chik0240]

Yes, there will be N6ii down the road, but we don't have a release date yet.

Alright, but any hint on dac chip? Can’t wait to see, for current off the shelf options I am more leaning to the sony for the sound signature