Well, this is disappointing to notice the tone of discussion suddenly turns stressful. This is not a court or boxing ring and Personal Audio is supposed to be a hobby to maxima our satisfaction when we listen to music, so let’s remain cheerful and supportive during our exchanges and sharing.
I have no idea why someone comes here to declare he is not going to buy N8. I am not saying you are not allowed to do that, but it does sound very odd. Are you somehow feel obliged to buy N8? Or someone has pressurized you to buy the N8? Or you have been solicited or harassed by someone to buy the N8 and you want to shake him away? Did Cayin did anything wrong that hurt or damaged your interest? I really don’t understand the reason to making this claim publicly.
My name has been called twice (or more than that?) in recent discussion, and were put it in a negative way to imply that I should have responded and there is something suspicious when I remain silent. This is very unfair, I don’t see similar “speculation” in other brands or products, maybe I should stop participating in the thread and only show up irregularly to avoid this kind of understanding. That’s will be something I’ll consider later, but let’s try to be productive and get the doubt out of the way..
Just to clarify, as of today, Cayin does not have a free battery replacement policy. Maybe we’ll revise this sometime later, but I am not optimistic. Instead of putting up a promising future, I want to thank you for considering our product, and I wish you all the best in finding a DAP that suit your preference and requirements.
@Rozeqloud I am very interested to find out more detail about the battery replacement plan or 1-free replacement practice you have mentioned. I spend the whole night digging in and out Sony and AK website but I can’t find any reference to similar practice. Since this has been used as the base to convince everyone that Cayin should offer similar service, I think it's time to look into it seriously. I promise if you can provide the detail, I’ll present it to our senior management and consider your suggestion seriously.
For those who concern the long term usage of N8, I think the critical issue is not whether the battery can last for 2 years or 3 years or 5 years because the number varied according to usage. There are good practice to extend the life of your battery and there are practice that will shorten the life of your battery, but that is not our current topic so we can leave it another time. In other word, and all calculation are nothing more than assumptions, and we can argue about these assumptions forever, so I am going to waste your time along this line.
The situation will change dramatically if we can replace the battery, or more important, repair the player when needed. Cayin cannot promise component availability after three or five years, to the best of our knowledge, this is not a common practice among Consumer Electronic manufacturers. We do our best to standby our product and so far we have been doing very well. We have customers sending their 15 years old amplifier to us or repair, so we are pretty good on that. Please be reminded that Cayin is a “real” manufacturer, our head office is actually a 4-storey purposively design factory plant with over 100 fulltime workers working there 5 days a week, so we have strong in-house engineering capability to support our product.
If you think these are irrelevant for DAP customer, let’s try something solid. N6, our first DAP, was launch back in December 2014, so that is four years old already. I have run a quick check, we have around 50 pieces of N6 battery in-stock and they are recently acquired to refill our inventory, so we have keep our side of professional practice and take good cares of our components supply.
Next question, how much does it cost to replace the battery? We’ll go through two options, be warned this is going to be longer and more complicated that you’ll expected.
Option 1
If you are living within ground transportation distance from our factory, we can, theoretically sell the battery to you directly and you can either install it yourself or find a local technician to do that for you.
Option 2
Send the N8 to your dealer, let the dealer ship the N8 to us, we replace the N8 battery and then ship the N8 back to your dealer. The cost of this transaction will involve the following items:
Repair + Dealer + Shipping FR + Shipping TO + Custom (maybe)
Repair = Cayin charges part and labor for all repair outside warranty period
Dealer = Dealer administration
Shipping FR = Shipping from dealer to Cayin (insurance included)
Shipping TO = Shipping cost from Cayin to dealer (insurance included)
Custom = Custom according to local legislation
Cayin charges US$25 to cover the battery, the carbon fiber back panel and labor. If you are familiar with the structure of N6, you’ll aware that you need to dismantle the carbon fiber back panel in order to access to the screws to unlock the chassis, so we need to factor that into the repair cost. You dealer will take care of the logistic to and from China, custom clearance to China, and maybe custom clearance from China, and all necessary documentation, accounting and taxation process. Some dealer will charge their Admin cost upfront, and collect the repair cost after the repair, other dealer might quote you one price that combine their admin cost and our repair cost.
The Shipping cost varied a lot. If you want to do it quick, you’ll have to pay for the premium. If you can wait, maybe we attach the repaired player with the next shipment of the dealer and cut down your cost. Custom is optional and you should know it better than me.
The N8 is 380g, you don’t need to send in the leather case or original box, so we probably can pack it up within 1kg. You can estimate the total cost for this to happen in your country.
If someone is in doubt about my explanation (or claim, whatever you want to call it), send us a N6 and see if we can replace the battery for you. You don’t have to tell me in advance, you do test us anonymously.
You can call this expensive, but hey, if you consider the battery as the only considerable of your DAP and you have to pay 3% to 5% of the “system” cost to extend the players for several years, it’s a good deal to me.
Last but not least, if your battery is dead, you can plug the N8 into your USB charger and use it as a desktop, or bundle it up with a power bank to make it a “transportable”. We don’t recommend you to listen and charge at the same time when your battery is healthy, because when the battery and charging and powering the player at the same time, it will operate at very higher temperature and might affect the lifetime of the battery. This is what we called technically feasible but practically not recommended. However if your battery is not healthy or dead, you got nothing to lose and since the battery is not charging, it is not going to run hot even you are using it with a charger.
Any further question regarding the battery issue?
PS. I was occupied by an project with HiFi+ magazine and have been working day and night over the past few days, and I am busy drafting a firmware release note for next week, I read the forum but I couldn't spare the time to participate in discussion. Hope they clarified the "speculation", if there is any.
Sorry just couldn't resist, now I literally have nothing else to say, I promise this time honest 
In many cases LDAC feature has nothing to do with availability of technology, but with waiting to get Sony's approval, they have to certify you before you can enable it.
