[BartSimpson1976]

Chrome is no longer fitting in this day and age.

Obviously it's main target is the Chinese market. And there they still like bling-bling.

 

[seanwee]

Seems like the second part of the press release is already available in Chinese.

English version is not available yet.

 

[justrest]

We still don't know the price, right?

 

[seanwee]

We still don't know the price, right?

Nope

 

[ilcanzese]

strong Technic but really bad style, i hope for Cayin a update for occidental people

 

[Makiah S]

First Heading,
A Custom In House DAC FPGA Style

• With Built in Digital Filters
• Or Possible use of Mini Tube Buffered Output [Though I doubt it's this]

Second Heading
Fully Balanced Class A Discrete Design

• With User Adjustable Current Gain
• An Fully Balanced Line Out

Third Heading
Re-deisnged Android UI sitting on a Custom QualComm Processor

• X Number of Powerful cores for a smoother, faster more robust experience

That's my story and I'm sticking to it! I just hope your not going with a modular Amp section...

I have put the N8 @ High End 2018 Press Release to First post of page 1, hopefully that will provide a clear picture of what Cayin N8 is going to be.

Regarding the game to speculate the key selling points of N8, these are the keywords in my Press Release:

1. Dual AK4497
2. choice of Direct Heated Triode vacuum tube and full balanced solid state
   
3. I2S Digital output (via micro HDMI)
4. full balanced line out
5. 3D toughened Gorilla glass (rear panel)

Did anyone get all 5 points correct? or 4 points out of 5? Please show your hands if you have four out of five correct?

Nah but I think I nailed the Analog output section which is most important right ;3

Seriously though, I was skeptical but REALLY hoping you guys would run the same SolidState/Tube output options like on the N8 as what I heard on the iDac-6! An YOU DID even better you used the NuTube!!! So frankly I'm happy as a clam!!! Even better you ALSO nailed it with the balanced line out AND the dedicated Single Ended line Out!!!!

Plus I had the Hifiman HM 602/801 back in the day and I liked the Black Finish and Gold Accents, I would like to see an All Black unit with those same Gold Accents to be honest

Got it, will wait for your official price then.

Id consider the SE 100 high fi to summit fi.

Correct me if I'm wrong but personally I look at DAP price tiers like this
Budget fi : +-$150 or below
Mid fi : +-$300-$700
Hi Fi : +-$800-1600
Summit fi : +-$2200+

I like that and I'ma steal it, but seriously good range I think you've certainly hit the nail on the head! As for the N8's price, is it's 20 000 RMB that's like 3.6K USD... which isn't stellar but... ehh I could swing it maybe. Summers coming so I should get pretty busy, still though I'm more excited to see the trickle down into the N6ii Refresh. Espically if they can do a NuTube output option in that one as well!

choice of Direct Heated Triode vacuum tube and full balanced solid state in one portable package

Though am I understanding that with the Fully Balanced output it's just Solid State? If so that's not to bad, means I don't have to worry AS much about balanced connectors as I would be quite happy to run the Tube Output via the 3.5mm LO inot my existing solid state amps. Though having both options would be cool which is again the whole theme I'm seeing here, options! Options for every one an everything

 

[seanwee]

Though am I understanding that with the Fully Balanced output it's just Solid State? If so that's not to bad, means I don't have to worry AS much about balanced connectors as I would be quite happy to run the Tube Output via the 3.5mm LO inot my existing solid state amps. Though having both options would be cool which is again the whole theme I'm seeing here, options! Options for every one an everything

I think the 3.5mm line out bypasses the tube amps.

 

[seanwee]

Found a video about the N8 on youtube

 

[gr8soundz]

I think the 3.5mm line out bypasses the tube amps.

So it has 3 output jacks but only 1 uses the Nutube?

 

[Pictograms]

Why would the line out bypass the tubes? On the specs it says: “3.5 miniature...tube triode...”
“Balanced quadruple solid state”
Right... because line out bypasses the amp section

 

[Andykong]

I have updated the press release on the front page, I just noticed I used an older version of Press Release draft when I need to do a last minute editing before I send out the press release, The revised version reads "It features two AKM AK4497EN DAC chipsets and can native decode up to DSD256 and 32 Bit/ 384kHz, sorry for the misunderstanding I have caused. The previous specification was written based on the capability of AK4497, the updated was in place because of the limitation of MCU and DSP engine before we feed the data bit-stream to AK4497.

 

[470221]

Definitely not my design. Tons of gold, and this strange triangle below. Nope.

 

[Andykong]

I have put the N8 @ High End 2018 Press Release to First post of page 1, hopefully that will provide a clear picture of what Cayin N8 is going to be.

Regarding the game to speculate the key selling points of N8, these are the keywords in my Press Release:

1. Dual AK4497
2. choice of Direct Heated Triode vacuum tube and full balanced solid state
   
3. I2S Digital output (via micro HDMI)
4. full balanced line out
5. 3D toughened Gorilla glass (rear panel)

Did anyone get all 5 points correct? or 4 points out of 5? Please show your hands if you have four out of five correct?

The Munich High End 2018 is a very busy show, I was basically fully occupied whole day long and fallen behind on other supporting role on Cayin products, so I decided to take half day off from the frontline of the show and take care of some Q&A before too late.

Let me start by explaining our design philosophy on these key factors:

1. AK4497 DAC chipset
I think everyone expected a full balanced framework with dual DAC chipset when Cayin announce a new flagshp DAP is in place, we have considered three DAC chipset seriously, PCM1792 is still our favorite DAC chip for sound signature, unfortunately the limitation on digital capability (upto 24/192 and DSD64) is a big risk if we build our new generation DAP around this chipset. The ESS9038pro and AK4497 are both extremely high performance chipset for portable application, they both carry their own sound signature but Cayin is confident to use both chipset to produce the audio performance we aimed at, At the end of the day, we decided to use ESS9038Pro on our desktop reference CS-100DAC and dual AK4497 for N8. The main consideration is actually the power requirement to keep these DAC chipset in optimum operation.

2. Choice of Direct Heated Triode vacuum tube and full balanced solid state
For the record, we used Korg Nutube in N8 tube output section

https://korgnutube.com/en/
We have seen Nutube in several desktop or portable DAC/amp applications, but we probably are the first one to make this work (public demonstration) in a DAP. We sure hope this idea will generate more interest to adopt this fantastic product into portable applications. We received our first sample of Nutube almost two years ago and we have spent considerable effort to resolve various difficulties to implement this into our flagship DAP. It is not a simple plug and play project and to certain extend, far more difficult to implementing a new DAC chipset into a DAP, so we are not surprise that only a handful of manufacturers will bite the bullet and go through the trouble.

Providing users with the choice of Tube and Solid State output is a common feature in Cayin's high-end CD players, the CDT-15a (2009) is our first digital product that introduced this features and we have done this many time ever since, so we are excited when there is a technically feasible option to achieve this in our DAP. The R&D involved is almost unjustified because its unlikely that we'll pass this technologies down to our other DAP products, but we definitely want to give it our best try when we have the opportunity to do this and make this our statement to Personal Audio industry.


3. I2S Digital output (via micro HDMI)
Since we introduced I2S into our iDAP-6 Digital Transport, we sincerely appreciate the technical advantage of this digital interface, that's why we have implemented this in our newly announced reference digital product CS-100DAC and N8 DAP. Since we used HDMI for iDAP-6 and CS-100DAC, it is natural that we adopt mini HDMI connector for I2S implementation with N8. In our product planning roadmap, we have anticipated the option to use N8 as a source for our CS-100DAC, so all these new products can be integrated into one system: N8->CS-100DAC->HA-300.


4. Full balanced line out
We have this feature since the very early day of N8 conceptualization. I proposed mXLR for this purpose because this is a standard connectors that users can buy from regular hardware store, but then 4.4mm jumped into the spot light and it is simply perfect for this application because the TRRRS design enable a grounded balanced connection. So we decided to pull the plug and adopted 4.4mm into N8, replacing our 2.5mm balanced connectors in previous DAPs. We understand this might cause inconvenience to our previous DAP users as they have used 2.5mm balanced cable for a while, so we decided to make a 4.4mm male to 2.5mm female L-adapter so that 2.5mm balanced IEMs can plug into our N8 DAP conveniently.




5. 3D toughened Gorilla glass (rear panel)
Since we implement wireless capability into our DAP, we always look out for material that can be used to complement CNC metal chassis, the basic requirements are robust, non-slip, scratch proof, can survive drop test (upto 1m) and allow 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless signal to pass through effectively. We have tried the plastic sheet on N5ii which it work fairly but not truly high quality as the tempered glass protector is a bottleneck. We have considered wood sheets but it will be fairly thick in order to achieve the kind of robust we want and its only suitable for small scale production as the pattern and quality of wood varied significantly. Finally we decided to use Corning Gorilla Glass because it really fit all the requirements we listed and it looks very good.

 

[Andykong]

Thats a nice touch. Whats hdmi for though? Outputting to a tv?

We used HDMI connector for I2S in iDAP-6 Digital Transport and CS-100DAC reference DAC/preamp, so naturally for portable products we use compatible micro HDMI connector for I2S implementation.

 

[seanwee]

vvvvv

The Munich High End 2018 is a very busy show, I was basically fully occupied whole day long and fallen behind on other supporting role on Cayin products, so I decided to take half day off from the frontline of the show and take care of some Q&A before too late.

Let me start by explaining our design philosophy on these key factors:

1. AK4497 DAC chipset
I think everyone expected a full balanced framework with dual DAC chipset when Cayin announce a new flagshp DAP is in place, we have considered three DAC chipset seriously, PCM1792 is still our favorite DAC chip for sound signature, unfortunately the limitation on digital capability (upto 24/192 and DSD64) is a big risk if we build our new generation DAP around this chipset. The ESS9038pro and AK4497 are both extremely high performance chipset for portable application, they both carry their own sound signature but Cayin is confident to use both chipset to produce the audio performance we aimed at, At the end of the day, we decided to use ESS9038Pro on our desktop reference CS-100DAC and dual AK4497 for N8. The main consideration is actually the power requirement to keep these DAC chipset in optimum operation.

2. Choice of Direct Heated Triode vacuum tube and full balanced solid state
For the record, we used Korg Nutube in N8 tube output section

https://korgnutube.com/en/
We have seen Nutube in several desktop or portable DAC/amp applications, but we probably are the first one to make this work (public demonstration) in a DAP. We sure hope this idea will generate more interest to adopt this fantastic product into portable applications. We received our first sample of Nutube almost two years ago and we have spent considerable effort to resolve various difficulties to implement this into our flagship DAP. It is not a simple plug and play project and to certain extend, far more difficult to implementing a new DAC chipset into a DAP, so we are not surprise that only a handful of manufacturers will bite the bullet and go through the trouble.

Providing users with the choice of Tube and Solid State output is a common feature in Cayin's high-end CD players, the CDT-15a (2009) is our first digital product that introduced this features and we have done this many time ever since, so we are excited when there is a technically feasible option to achieve this in our DAP. The R&D involved is almost unjustified because its unlikely that we'll pass this technologies down to our other DAP products, but we definitely want to give it our best try when we have the opportunity to do this and make this our statement to Personal Audio industry.


3. I2S Digital output (via micro HDMI)
Since we introduced I2S into our iDAP-6 Digital Transport, we sincerely appreciate the technical advantage of this digital interface, that's why we have implemented this in our newly announced reference digital product CS-100DAC and N8 DAP. Since we used HDMI for iDAP-6 and CS-100DAC, it is natural that we adopt micro HDMI connector for I2S implementation with N8. In our product planning roadmap, we have anticipated the option to use N8 as a source for our CS-100DAC, so all these new products can be integrated into one system: N8->CS-100DAC->HA-300.


4. Full balanced line out
We have this feature since the very early day of N8 conceptualization. I proposed mXLR for this purpose because this is a standard connectors that users can buy from regular hardware store, but then 4.4mm jumped into the spot light and it is simply perfect for this application because the TRRRS design enable a grounded balanced connection. So we decided to pull the plug and adopted 4.4mm into N8, replacing our 2.5mm balanced connectors in previous DAPs. We understand this might cause inconvenience to our previous DAP users as they have used 2.5mm balanced cable for a while, so we decided to make a 4.4mm male to 2.5mm female L-adapter so that 2.5mm balanced IEMs can plug into our N8 DAP conveniently.




5. 3D toughened Gorilla glass (rear panel)
Since we implement wireless capability into our DAP, we always look out for material that can be used to complement CNC metal chassis, the basic requirements are robust, non-slip, scratch proof, can survive drop test (upto 1m) and allow 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless signal to pass through effectively. We have tried the plastic sheet on N5ii which it work fairly but not truly high quality as the tempered glass protector is a bottleneck. We have considered wood sheets but it will be fairly thick in order to achieve the kind of robust we want and its only suitable for small scale production as the pattern and quality of wood varied significantly. Finally we decided to use Corning Gorilla Glass because it really fit all the requirements we listed and it looks very good.

Appreciate the effort

I think everyone can agree that the back of the N8 looks really good. Not many are a fan of the triangular home button though :/

I feel like the choice of using either the solid state or tube amplification should have been a user selectable option instead of being tube for SE only and Solid State for balanced only. I think Cayin would have done it if possible though so maybe my idea isn't feasible.