[Andykong]

Andykong,
if there news about LDAC ?

I don't have any news about LDAC today.

 

[Andykong]

Hey Andy, has their been any new decision regarding adoption of MQA playback?

I’m on the verge of buying N8 but after testing the MQA I do believe future is about MQA .

We don't have any schedule on MQA, we have discussed with them, but we are still in feasibility stage, so if this is important to you, maybe you should consider other option before you revisit N8

 

[audionewbi]

You must be a Lotoo fan boy. The Touch seriously sounded , umm , boring. The Touch ui is better but not its sound. N8 solid state amp sounded better and ofcourse the tube sounded better than the Touch.

If I was, I would have bought it when I had the chance.

 

[audionewbi]

We don't have any schedule on MQA, we have discussed with them, but we are still in feasibility stage, so if this is important to you, maybe you should consider other option before you revisit N8

Beside AK, which its house sound I disagree with, Cayin is the only other DAP that is considering MQA. More importantly the only good sounding DAP which is looking into it. MQA on Sony sounds not right.

 

[Rozeqloud]

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.

Thanks Andy

1st off i hope im not the one being seen as aggressive ?

I am a lover of cayin and of the fine support i have received ( The fine service i have received in past has , i guess , set a height, standard , and i didnt mean to imply your absence was suspect to the product or your character )

" 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"

I am also very interested in more details on this , as i trust you have looked hard into this

This is information i was given by more than one Canadian dealer , in fact i kept notes in my shopping for this , and one dealer was more clear than any to tell me " I dont know why Cayin does not have a 1 battery replacement guarantee . In fact most others in this level do . In fact as an example , Astell & Kern do" His words

My posting that comment was me going on trust , repeating what dealers were telling me

i was not trying to spread "FAKE NEWS" (Sorry if thats a pun

I didnt feel he was trying to mislead or sway me from Cayin , it seemed he really wanted me to have the N8 . He praised its quality , and Cayin period , he even saved me one when it came in (I had to back out for now tho)

I dont feel it will serve any positive purpose to mention dealers by name , as i dont feel malice or anti Cayin sentiments from tham atall

But that one dealer in Hong Kong we spoke of . definitely tried to mislead me And tried to convince me to buy another product

"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."

That brought me a sweet smile , tho i dont live that close , i live in Canada . But could i safely assume (after warranty of course) from your comment , that if i or someone i know is skilled enough , i / they can disassemble and replace battery ?

If so that is great news

"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”.

If i understand that correctly , IM SOLD SOLD SOLD And SOLD

Thats the longevity i was in need of

Andy , your reply was polite and well informed

If i understand all i read , i am again SOLD

"I was occupied by an project with HiFi+ magazine and have been working day and night "

Well its like i suspected and even suggested , im sure i said he is likely busy with concerns outside this forum (Will i be able to read about Cayin or even N8 soon in that magazine ? i often read it)

i sincerely hoep i was not appearing to attack your or Cayins character ?

i have nothing but praise for the character and product that is Cayin

I was just expressing my concerns , and my reply did follow after someone else who was way more aggressive than i Maybe i got lumped in by default ?

i really felt the need to express my concerns , of which now you have alleviated

Thank you Andy

 

[Rozeqloud]

I contacted A&K yesterday with a battery question (and usually get reply right away), while never heard back from them.

Regarding gear that lasted you for decades, I'm sure we are not talking about a consumer grade portable digital audio player, but probably a desktop amp? Consumer electronics falls into a different category. Entry level and mid-fi DAPs usually use a lower quality cheaper components (and those are refreshed with new models more often), while flagship DAPs usually get more design attention and get refreshed every few years (actually, Cayin released their flagship 4 years after the last N6 - maybe it's part of their flagship cycle?). Regarding the prices, I don't even know what to say, I'm a reviewer not a consumer, and I do feel your pain. I'm just doing my best to describe how the product works and how it sounds, leaving it up to my readers if it fits their budget and meets their expectations. It's easier to talk about price/performance ratio of DAPs under $500, above it the price spread is too wide. And from talking to many people, I noticed that some don't even care about the price, and for them $3k is similar to someone else's $500. But the good news, there are many choices in every price bracket.


Hey mate

I had a longer , and polite response for you , then i seen Andys reply and all my concerns are alleviated

It appears if im talented enough , or if i know someone who is (i know plenty) a battery can be bought and replaced

Andys reply was well informed , the stuff i ve become accustomed to with Cayin

i also hope i wasnt seen as the aggressive one by simply expressing concerns

I can answer these of your questions tho


"what DAP are you using right now, or what is your current audio source? Just curious."

I have the N6 , i flogged the DX 100 and got that (i have a drawer full of other portable music devices i had since time began .My grand weans are eyeing 2 original IPODs in there LOL,they still work . Not even a scratch on them as im real anal with my gear)

I have Future sonics MG6 Pro CIEMS , and a fair bit of money in cables (Mostly from Drew Baird)

Im also saving for new CIEMs , looking hard at 64 Audio AT16 ( or is it 18?)

That would be my next purchase after a top shelf DAP

Or do you mean My home gear ?

Hegel H360 , Dynaudio focus 340 , RSA darkstar headphone amp ,Sennheiser HD800


Thank you for the replies mate , and your sound reviews

You deserve a free DAP or a deep discount for your reviews . i know you sold me on it , and my longevity concerns were all that held me back


I love the Cayin line and their products , this in no way is meant to be a Cayin bash

Have a sweet wknd mate

 

[Rozeqloud]

Odd how my reply looks

Sorry i dont know what happened

 

[twister6]

Odd how my reply loos

Sorry i dont know what happened

It's not lost, just that your reply got posted inside of /QUOTE, I can still read it above, so we are all good!

 

[milesjunkie]

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.

Andy you are a champion as ever. I have just sold my N6 and while the N8 is too much of a stretch, I’m all in on the N6II whenever that drops. Love the Cayin house sound, and the way you conduct yourself.

 

[dhc0329]

Frankly I don't enjoy hearing sort of arrogant tone of this guy but hey~ you got the best product out there so I give a full credit for that...

 

[fish1050]

I contacted A&K yesterday with a battery question (and usually get reply right away), while never heard back from them.

Regarding gear that lasted you for decades, I'm sure we are not talking about a consumer grade portable digital audio player, but probably a desktop amp? Consumer electronics falls into a different category. Entry level and mid-fi DAPs usually use a lower quality cheaper components (and those are refreshed with new models more often), while flagship DAPs usually get more design attention and get refreshed every few years (actually, Cayin released their flagship 4 years after the last N6 - maybe it's part of their flagship cycle?). Regarding the prices, I don't even know what to say, I'm a reviewer not a consumer, and I do feel your pain. I'm just doing my best to describe how the product works and how it sounds, leaving it up to my readers if it fits their budget and meets their expectations. It's easier to talk about price/performance ratio of DAPs under $500, above it the price spread is too wide. And from talking to many people, I noticed that some don't even care about the price, and for them $3k is similar to someone else's $500. But the good news, there are many choices in every price bracket.

Btw, what DAP are you using right now, or what is your current audio source? Just curious.

I don't agree with that completely, I often see the same DAC chip used in a mid-fi DAP also used in entry level DAP's as well. The screen on the N8 is lower resolution than the screen on the Sony A50 for example which costs a heck of alot less. The more expensive the DAP the higher the profit margin has to be to generate a profit as sales will be lower. I promise you Cayin has sacrificed some quality in other components to reduce cost and improve profit like the screen for example. I am willing to bet you will see components in the N8 make it into much cheaper DAP's as well. How much more does it cost to manufacture the N8 vs say the N5iiS? Probably not alot but the profit the margin on the N8 has to be huge to offset the significantly smaller sales volume it will generate.

I would love to see a manufacturing cost comparison of DAP's from say Cayin to see how much more it really does cost to make the N8. This is where the diminishing return for the consumer comes in, as the DAP gets more expensive the profit margin goes up but the actual gain for the connsumer in quality for the price starts to decline rapidly.

It wouldn't surprise me if the nutube for example doesn't make it into some cheaper DAP's at some point once there is real world proof from Cayin that it is a viable option in a portable DAP.

 

[oldmate]

I'm sure we are not talking about a consumer grade portable digital audio player, but probably a desktop amp?

Uh, no. I still have a iPod 4th Gen. Working fine thank you very much.

 

[milesjunkie]

Wow. Do all TOTL forums go this pear shaped?

 

[WindowsX]

My friend bought Cayin N8 and he missed ROM optimizations on his previous i5 I modded for him so he lent me his N8 yesterday for cooking Purist ROM here.

http://www.fidelizer-audio.com/cayin-n8-purist-rom-version-1-1-released/

 

[Decreate]

My friend bought Cayin N8 and he missed ROM optimizations on his previous i5 I modded for him so he lent me his N8 yesterday for cooking Purist ROM here.

http://www.fidelizer-audio.com/cayin-n8-purist-rom-version-1-1-released/

Thanks for sharing, however as I am unfamiliar with the purist rom, could you let us know what differences there are between this and the original rom? Would I still be able to use the HibyMusic app on my mobile to control the device?