[WDitters]

If anyone want to part with his/hers, just PM me

 

[Andykong]

@Andykong would the USB-c to lightning cable make to where I can use the RU6 on my iPhone? If so, I’ll buy the cable… but if not, I won’t bother. It’s my last option, as I’ve given up on listening to music while charging it… that’s a 100% flop of an idea… sorta on my part. Figured I’d ask, before purchasing.

The Cayin C to lightning cable should work fine for RU6, we have tested it and quite a number of users in this thread had used the cable with their iphone already.

 

[emilsoft]

Cayin RU6 vs Chord Qutest...

I'm highly disappointed the RU6 doesn't sound better... yet again another flop from Cayin! I'm never buying anything from them again, makes me so mad....




Seriously though, i actually prefer the RU6 with my Starfield IEMs, it's more chilled and not overzealous to inject details in my eardrums, just delivers them in a chill confident way, sounds almost slower and more plump, looser and less accurate but in a good way - love it!

 

[keenears]

The positives for a DAP though…for some people they're preferable as a means of putting some distance between your music listening/enjoyment and your phone and interruptions from notifications, etc.

THIS. I don’t get the hateful DAP bashing. If it wasn’t for a DAP I would be commuting with my D-EJ01 or WM-EX20.

I want to bury my phone even though I have it on scheduled “do not disturb” outside 6-8 am/pm every day, in order that I engage with others on my own time rather than theirs. Nevertheless, the browsing temptation right at my fingertips is a problem while I transit in the cities I live in and frequent (Milan, Chicago, Austin)… I sold my car long ago to let someone else lose years of their life to the pinballing of other drivers. I select where I live and stay based on the convenience of the tram or elevated train. In that time I need to escape into my music hands-free, not make myself motion-nauseous reading Head-Fi replies. I *LOVE* my Walkman for this. Its screen too small to browse on even when on Wi-Fi, its tape display and TPS case constantly reminding me of when such disconnected zen-escapism was easier.

Simplifying with one battery is appealing, yes, especially with the short life of my Walkman (which I have largely addressed with this cable-less fast-charge miracle that has all connections built-in and wireless https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09BN2BZMD/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?smid=A2SPU154OM6NDD&psc=1). I get it. Simplicity guides me everyday. For example, I know the WM1A is supposedly “better” than my NW-A100TPS (somehow though I doubt the ROI there, since they have almost identical guts), just like the iPhone 13 Pro I sold is “better” than the iPhone 12 mini I replaced it with. But what ever happened to the cross-cultural appeal of the “smaller-is-better” Japanese aesthetic that swept the world from the TPS-L2 through the iPod nano? So I get the dongle. And this RU6 sounds brilliant. I am loving it. And the balanced port is driving my MDR-7s (maybe I don’t need to wait for that Earman Collibri?) But I will only use a dongle with streaming while consumed by my work on my iPad when my Walkman runs out of juice.

 

[econaut]

Anyone speaking Indonesian here? Actually I might be able to get some translation in about a week, but maybe someone else is faster here

 

[keenears]

Anyone speaking Indonesian here? Actually I might be able to get some translation in about a week, but maybe someone else is faster here

You don’t need to speak Indonesian. Everything until 10:09 is specs you already know. Simply going off of cognates, calques, some extant latin root words, his prosity, gestures, and what appears to now be a cross-cultural tech video-review speech genre and turn-taking style, you get that he feels the S2 is slightly more musical while the RU6 renders higher frequencies better, is much more airy with a better soundstage, and renders details more precisely. I’m open to correction because I don’t speak Indonesian of course. His final recommendation is based on who prefers each of those characteristics. He’s skimpy on what “more musical” means

Of course, who is he? If you measure the expertise of a reviewer’s ears by their video-production prowess then his opinion carries good weight lol

 

[All About Metal]

G'day people of the Head-Fi-Verse,

Long time lurker, first time posting, hoping to impose on your collective wisdom.

I have an RU6 on the way (in Australia we are always behind with new electronic goodies), which will be used on my desk at work when I have to return to the office, post covid, early next year. Up until now I have had a Schiit Modi Multibit/Magni set up, fed from the line out of my A&K SR15, but in the 18 months I have been at home, work has decided no personal electronic equipment can be fed from company power points .

To feed the RU6 from the Micro USB port of the SR15 I am going to use an ifi OTG adaptor, with the USB A to C adaptor supplied with the RU6, and the Cayin C to C cable. While I am sure this will work it is going to be long with a bunch of connections. So my question, does anyone know of a quality Micro USB to USB C OTG cable? I have googled for ages and one doesn't seem to be out there.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[keenears]

G'day people of the Head-Fi-Verse,

Long time lurker, first time posting, hoping to impose on your collective wisdom.

I have an RU6 on the way (in Australia we are always behind with new electronic goodies), which will be used on my desk at work when I have to return to the office, post covid, early next year. Up until now I have had a Schiit Modi Multibit/Magni set up, fed from the line out of my A&K SR15, but in the 18 months I have been at home, work has decided no personal electronic equipment can be fed from company power points .

To feed the RU6 from the Micro USB port of the SR15 I am going to use an ifi OTG adaptor, with the USB A to C adaptor supplied with the RU6, and the Cayin C to C cable. While I am sure this will work it is going to be long with a bunch of connections. So my question, does anyone know of a quality Micro USB to USB C OTG cable? I have googled for ages and one doesn't seem to be out there.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Yeah I really like DDHifi’s cables, they’re high quality. Micro to usb C is their TC03 and about 6 inches. Many reputable sites sell them. They also should have a 20cm version for sale on Aliexpress *through their official store*. They are all unidirectional with an arrow on each plug, which is really useful in some cases of use.

I’ve also purchased these and they are excellent. Extremely pliant. You can configure the ends as you please.

 

[All About Metal]

Yeah I really like DDHifi’s cables, they’re high quality. Micro to usb C is their TC03 and about 6 inches. Many reputable sites sell them. They also should have a 20cm version for sale on Aliexpress *through their official store*. They are all unidirectional with an arrow on each plug, which is really useful in some cases of use.

I’ve also purchased these and they are excellent. Extremely pliant. You can configure the ends as you please.

Interesting, I almost ordered the DDHifi cable on the weekend, but as it is directional and flows in the wrong direction (C to Micro), I didn't think it would work. Being it's OTG and the player has a micro USB port.

 

[dumpsterfire]

I’ve been burning mine in for the last few days and there is a definite improvement in performance. The sound is more coherent, more textured and detailed. Additionally, I’ve become addicted to NOS almost exclusively. So much so that when I upgrade my main DAC, it’s going to be for a NOS device. Very pleased with the RU6! I just need to find a longer USB-C->Lightning OTG cable to go with it.

 

[Goofyboy84]

The Cayin C to lightning cable should work fine for RU6, we have tested it and quite a number of users in this thread had used the cable with their iphone already.

I’ll purchase and hope for the best.

 

[pinkpiglet]

I received my RU6 6 days ago and I've reached more than 50 hours of burn-in time. Here's what I think.

Before I start any further, I would like to tell you about my expectation for the RU6. The RU6 was advertised to have a reference sound, and because of that I was preparing myself for a sound that's similar or in line with the Soekris 2541, but man it couldn't be any farther from the truth. It doesn't sound like it or anything that I would classify as a reference sound.

Before burn-in and warm up
My initial impression for the RU6 was quite bad. I couldn't relate with the impressions that I found online as the RU6 sounds so unrefined. In terms of tonality, it is indeed something different. There's more subbass presence in the RU6 and an elevated bass in general. The mids is more forward, but the highs was not cohesive. It has spikes and it was messy in general. I think this is the reason why people said it was dry or harsh to them. Now, why do I call it bad? It's because of the technical qualities of the sound that was pretty much non existent. For the bass and subbass, there was no texture and seperation. It was muddled up into a jumbled mess. The positioning was also smeared all over the place. Because of this reason, I didn't post my initial impression online.

After burn-in and warm up.
After the burn-in everything improves significantly. The thing that I noticed as an immediate improvement was in the cohesiveness of the highs (upper mids and treble to be exact). It sounded way nicer and mellow to some extent. Then there's also the improvement in layering and positioning. So let me break it down one by one.

Tonality:
The RU6 had an emphasis on the lower bass and subbass region. The presentation for the mids is also more forward, but interestingly the highs is more subdued. For this reason I would call the RU6 as a warm sounding DAC.

Soundstage, layering and postioning:
The RU6 presents everything in a larger soundstage. You can hear that it extends deeper and a little bit higher when compared to LP W2 and Lotoo S1, but if I'm going to look at how the RU6 layers the sound, I would say that it doesn't do a great job in it. The instruments that are layered by the RU6 bleed to one another, giving a smeared impression for me. And the same thing happens for positioning. It was wider and deeper than W2, but the positioning is not pin point exact. It's a smeared image.

Timbre:
For me RU6 sounds more natural than the competitions. What I found really nice is the way it presents violin and trumpet (or brass instruments in general). Sometimes there's a little grittiness in the way they're presented, but not in the RU6.

Transient and decay:
For me this is the major problem for the RU6. Well depends on how you look at it. The transient was slow and the decay was long. These qualities becomes an advantage when you are listening to acoustic or classical music, but a problem to electronic music and fast beating music. For acoustic music, the long decay and soft transient made the strings sounded cohesive and better mimics the real one, but when it comes to a fast beating music, you lose the impact and the definition of the melody. When there's a snare hit, it felt like the snare was still going when it should've stopped. Hi-hats also doesn't have this sharp and definitive body, which I suspect caused by the soft transient.

Conclusion:
For me the RU6 is far from a reference sounding DAC. When someone claims something to be reference sounding, I'm expecting it to present the music as how it is, not giving anything more or taking anything away, but that's not the case for the RU6. The RU6 makes soundstage larger and it also had a soft transient and long decay. The tonality is also quite warm for my taste. If I take away the fact that the RU6 is an R-2R dongle DAC, I would say that the RU6 is a pretty good DAC. It's a natural sounding DAC, but that's about it.

Edit:
Practicality:
In terms of practicality, I don't feel like the RU6 to be the most practical one. The resistor array that is used for the volume is the major thing that hinders it from being a practical DAC. There's a slight delay when you change song or videos and the same when you are changing the volume. After a while it becomes annoying, especially when you are watching videos online or going through your playlist quickly.

Edit:
Apparently it was never advertised as reference. I must be drunk seeing it as reference somewhere.

 

[emilsoft]

I received my RU6 6 days ago and I've reached more than 50 hours of burn-in time. Here's what I think.

Before I start any further, I would like to tell you about my expectation for the RU6. The RU6 was advertised to have a reference sound, and because of that I was preparing myself for a sound that's similar or in line with the Soekris 2541, but man it couldn't be any farther from the truth. It doesn't sound like it or anything that I would classify as a reference sound.

Before burn-in and warm up
My initial impression for the RU6 was quite bad. I couldn't relate with the impressions that I found online as the RU6 sounds so unrefined. In terms of tonality, it is indeed something different. There's more subbass presence in the RU6 and an elevated bass in general. The mids is more forward, but the highs was not cohesive. It has spikes and it was messy in general. I think this is the reason why people said it was dry or harsh to them. Now, why do I call it bad? It's because of the technical qualities of the sound that was pretty much non existent. For the bass and subbass, there was no texture and seperation. It was muddled up into a jumbled mess. The positioning was also smeared all over the place. Because of this reason, I didn't post my initial impression online.

After burn-in and warm up.
After the burn-in everything improves significantly. The thing that I noticed as an immediate improvement was in the cohesiveness of the highs (upper mids and treble to be exact). It sounded way nicer and mellow to some extent. Then there's also the improvement in layering and positioning. So let me break it down one by one.

Tonality:
The RU6 had an emphasis on the lower bass and subbass region. The presentation for the mids is also more forward, but interestingly the highs is more subdued. For this reason I would call the RU6 as a warm sounding DAC.

Soundstage, layering and postioning:
The RU6 presents everything in a larger soundstage. You can hear that it extends deeper and a little bit higher when compared to LP W2 and Lotoo S1, but if I'm going to look at how the RU6 layers the sound, I would say that it doesn't do a great job in it. The instruments that are layered by the RU6 bleed to one another, giving a smeared impression for me. And the same thing happens for positioning. It was wider and deeper than W2, but the positioning is not pin point exact. It's a smeared image.

Timbre:
For me RU6 sounds more natural than the competitions. What I found really nice is the way it presents violin and trumpet (or brass instruments in general). Sometimes there's a little grittiness in the way they're presented, but not in the RU6.

Transient and decay:
For me this is the major problem for the RU6. Well depends on how you look at it. The transient was slow and the decay was long. These qualities becomes an advantage when you are listening to acoustic or classical music, but a problem to electronic music and fast beating music. For acoustic music, the long decay and soft transient made the strings sounded cohesive and better mimics the real one, but when it comes to a fast beating music, you lose the impact and the definition of the melody. When there's a snare hit, it felt like the snare was still going when it should've stopped. Hi-hats also doesn't have this sharp and definitive body, which I suspect caused by the soft transient.

Conclusion:
For me the RU6 is far from a reference sounding DAC. When someone claims something to be reference sounding, I'm expecting it to present the music as how it is, not giving anything more or taking anything away, but that's not the case for the RU6. The RU6 makes soundstage larger and it also had a soft transient and long decay. The tonality is also quite warm for my taste. If I take away the fact that the RU6 is an R-2R dongle DAC, I would say that the RU6 is a pretty good DAC. It's a natural sounding DAC, but that's about it.

Edit:
Practicality:
In terms of practicality, I don't feel like the RU6 to be the most practical one. The resistor array that is used for the volume is the major thing that hinders it from being a practical DAC. There's a slight delay when you change song or videos and the same when you are changing the volume. After a while it becomes annoying, especially when you are watching videos online or going through your playlist quickly.

Give it some more burn in - 50 hours is not enough I think.

Also you have to consider what reference actually means in this context - reference in comparison to d/s dacs like the LP W2 or reference like a good analogue setup (vinyl)? Attack/decay - what is reference? very fast or slower like the RU6 that makes instruments sound more relaxed and natural? It's not so straight forward - if I compare it to my "reference" d/s dac RME ADI 2 fs, it sounds less vivid, less clear, less "technical" but when I compare my RME ADI 2 fs to a good record player setup, it sounds too vivid and excitable, as if its trying too hard to be detailed/neutral... ofcourse RME is 4 times more expensive so overall it's still better even for a d/s dac, but the RU6 does give a taste for some of that analogue organic sound many of us crave in a good vinyl setup. I think for the money and size, the RU6 is the top dog dongle sound, it sounds quite different vs most other d/s dongle and Cayin have accomplished a major feat here. I am excited to see if they will take this topology and try to push the sound quality even more in future products

 

[dumpsterfire]

I received my RU6 6 days ago and I've reached more than 50 hours of burn-in time. Here's what I think.

Before I start any further, I would like to tell you about my expectation for the RU6. The RU6 was advertised to have a reference sound, and because of that I was preparing myself for a sound that's similar or in line with the Soekris 2541, but man it couldn't be any farther from the truth. It doesn't sound like it or anything that I would classify as a reference sound.

Before burn-in and warm up
My initial impression for the RU6 was quite bad. I couldn't relate with the impressions that I found online as the RU6 sounds so unrefined. In terms of tonality, it is indeed something different. There's more subbass presence in the RU6 and an elevated bass in general. The mids is more forward, but the highs was not cohesive. It has spikes and it was messy in general. I think this is the reason why people said it was dry or harsh to them. Now, why do I call it bad? It's because of the technical qualities of the sound that was pretty much non existent. For the bass and subbass, there was no texture and seperation. It was muddled up into a jumbled mess. The positioning was also smeared all over the place. Because of this reason, I didn't post my initial impression online.

After burn-in and warm up.
After the burn-in everything improves significantly. The thing that I noticed as an immediate improvement was in the cohesiveness of the highs (upper mids and treble to be exact). It sounded way nicer and mellow to some extent. Then there's also the improvement in layering and positioning. So let me break it down one by one.

Tonality:
The RU6 had an emphasis on the lower bass and subbass region. The presentation for the mids is also more forward, but interestingly the highs is more subdued. For this reason I would call the RU6 as a warm sounding DAC.

Soundstage, layering and postioning:
The RU6 presents everything in a larger soundstage. You can hear that it extends deeper and a little bit higher when compared to LP W2 and Lotoo S1, but if I'm going to look at how the RU6 layers the sound, I would say that it doesn't do a great job in it. The instruments that are layered by the RU6 bleed to one another, giving a smeared impression for me. And the same thing happens for positioning. It was wider and deeper than W2, but the positioning is not pin point exact. It's a smeared image.

Timbre:
For me RU6 sounds more natural than the competitions. What I found really nice is the way it presents violin and trumpet (or brass instruments in general). Sometimes there's a little grittiness in the way they're presented, but not in the RU6.

Transient and decay:
For me this is the major problem for the RU6. Well depends on how you look at it. The transient was slow and the decay was long. These qualities becomes an advantage when you are listening to acoustic or classical music, but a problem to electronic music and fast beating music. For acoustic music, the long decay and soft transient made the strings sounded cohesive and better mimics the real one, but when it comes to a fast beating music, you lose the impact and the definition of the melody. When there's a snare hit, it felt like the snare was still going when it should've stopped. Hi-hats also doesn't have this sharp and definitive body, which I suspect caused by the soft transient.

Conclusion:
For me the RU6 is far from a reference sounding DAC. When someone claims something to be reference sounding, I'm expecting it to present the music as how it is, not giving anything more or taking anything away, but that's not the case for the RU6. The RU6 makes soundstage larger and it also had a soft transient and long decay. The tonality is also quite warm for my taste. If I take away the fact that the RU6 is an R-2R dongle DAC, I would say that the RU6 is a pretty good DAC. It's a natural sounding DAC, but that's about it.

Edit:
Practicality:
In terms of practicality, I don't feel like the RU6 to be the most practical one. The resistor array that is used for the volume is the major thing that hinders it from being a practical DAC. There's a slight delay when you change song or videos and the same when you are changing the volume. After a while it becomes annoying, especially when you are watching videos online or going through your playlist quickly.

I’m not trying to gain say your impressions, but I’m wondering where you got the concept this was meant to be a “reference” device? I don’t see that terminology used in the marketing for this device at all.

 

[pinkpiglet]

When someone claims something to be reference sounding, I'm expecting it to present the music as how it is, not giving anything more or taking anything away

Also you have to consider what reference actually means in this context - reference in comparison to d/s dacs like the LP W2 or reference like a good analogue setup (vinyl)? Attack/decay - what is reference?

but the RU6 does give a taste for some of that analogue organic sound many of us crave in a good vinyl setup

To me, what you said is not a reference setup. It's a natural setup. Let's say I have a reference setup. Then from that setup I have to be able to differentiate a sample sound that's digitally made and naturally recorded. Maybe this makes sense maybe this isn't, but if you listen to a digitally sampled piano and a naturally recorded piano, a reference setup would present those two sounds as it is, but for me it is not the case for the RU6.