[General Accessories] vectron:
This is a Review of Cayin N6 Hi-Res digital audio player (DAP). http://penonaudio.com/Cayin-N6

A lot of people think that upgrading headphones to a more expensive/multi-driver version can improve a sound quality without realizing how much impact a hardware source "plays" in order to take their sound experience to the next level. As some make a leap from using their smartphones or budget audio players to a dedicated quality DAP (digital audio player), you re-discover your headphones all over again and realize what you have been missing. Things can get quickly out of control when we are in search of perfection, don't have access to audition and to compare audio gear, and make assumptions that high quality audio hardware has to come at a premium price. Today I would like to share with you about a new flagship N6 DAP from Cayin that shatters these typical stereotypes while delivering a true high definition audio which sets itself above all mid-fi contenders and aims to challenge a more expensive hi-fi competition. Here is what I found.

I have reviewed Cayin C5 portable amplifier in the past and stayed in touch with Cayin team to quickly realize how much they are obsessed with sound quality and design details as well as customer support. Even when N6 was ready for prime time closer to the end of the last year, they still took their time to perfect everything, including a first test run limited to a small group of local pro-audio users just to get more feedback. All this hard work really paid off, and when N6 was ready for an official release and I finally received my production quality review sample - it already felt like a mature product with a polished hardware and a stable firmware. But everything starts with unboxing.

There is definitely a WOW! factor once you hold N6 box in your hands. They made it very clear you are dealing with a premium product in a premium box. You are not going to find any high res pictures on the outer sleeve, only a hand sketch of the product with some hints of its sexy curves. There is also a very minimum description of main functions and features, mostly referencing types of devices and supported formats with no further description, I guess trying to keep user in suspense. With outer sleeve off and the main box out and open, you are presented with premium "jewelry" box display setting of N6. Out of the box underneath a form fitted tray with N6, you'll find all the included accessories in another partitioned tray.

To be honest, for such a fancy box and premium flagship product, I expected to see more accessories. Don’t get me wrong, it’s on par with other DAPs I have reviewed in the past, but would have been nice to see something like a leather holster or a travel case or maybe to include 2A wall adapter. Still, there were plenty of goodies to go around. You have a quality usb to micro-usb cable, coax adapter, micro-usb to usb card reader, and two sets of round screen protectors with one already being applied to N6. One bonus that I actually found impressive was a keychain with the same carbon fiber finish as featured on the back of N6 – fancy! Also included was a silicone protection skin, but it wasn’t in the box but rather in the packaging envelope. I know it’s a shame to hide N6 curves under the “skin”, but it’s a smart way to protect it from scratches.

Unboxing and Accessories pictures.

Looking at N6 DAP, the first thing you notice is a rather unique round display - a centerpiece of the design. Just like with their C5 portable amp that stood out from a crowd, N6 makes a very bold statement even before you turn it on and plug in your headphones. Even though display looks round, the active part of it is 2.4" IPS square screen with a high contrast and excellent visibility under any condition. With display off, it's hard even to distinguish the square part of the screen, thus you have an illusion of a round display. On the left side of the display like a watch crown you have a thumb control navigation wheel to assist in scrolling and also with a spring-loaded push action to click/select/enter. I found this scrolling wheel to have an excellent tactile response and to be of a great assistance when scrolling through either a long playlist or adjusting volume or just going through menus. It's not really necessary for navigation of N6 since all these functionalities could be done with other buttons, but still comes in very handy and blends in well with a round screen display.

Below the display, you have 4 control buttons in a very unique shape. When it comes to N6 DAP, it looks like Cayin wasn't just creating a functional audio player with a great sound, but also making a piece of art. In theory, these are your typical multifunctional 4 directional buttons with up and down list scrolling or track skip or fast forward/back, and left and right buttons for going back in navigation or selection or play/pause. It takes a little bit to get used to controls, but after a while using these becomes a second nature. I also think a custom shape of these buttons plays a very important role in a flow of navigation and controls as your finger slides across them.

You will also find a more traditional buttons, such as volume up/down in the upper right corner on the side, and a power button on the top. With a screen off, volume buttons do control volume with a single click and skip track with a long press. Also, scrolling wheel controls play/pause with a push when screen is off - a very intuitive control you can access without even looking at the player. At the top, you also have three 3.5mm ports for Line Out (LO), Headphone Out (HO), and Coaxial cable Out (CO). To eliminate confusion, I did cut off HO cover flap in silicone case so I knew right away where to plug in headphones. At the bottom you have micro SD card slot, a reset pinhole, a tiny led light pinhole, and micro-usb port. The body of the case is made out of aircraft-grade aluminum alloy and feels very solid in your hand. The back of N6 has a real carbon fiber finish.

Design detail pictures.

As impressive as it looks outside, inside of N6 you will find a true audio powerhouse. Everything from dual core processor, powerful enough to support native DSD hardware decoding as well as other formats up to 24bit/192kHz resolution with MP3/WAV/FLAC/OGG/APE/ALAC/AAC/WMA/M4A and even CUE, to 8GB of internal memory and microSD card supporting up to 128GB size. You also have a very impressive array of internal chips with top performance dual PCM1792A DACs arranged to process left and right channel separately to control high definition of a sound and a width of soundstage separation. There is also a dedicated high performance PGA2311 volume control chip, and even 3 different TCXO crystal oscillators to meet low jitter clock requirements. Power is provided by a high capacity 5600 mAh lithium battery which does a great job of supplying enough juice for up to 7-8 hours of continuous playback. For a piece of audio equipment with so many power hungry ICs, this is actually not a bad performance. Also, Cayin is constantly working on battery life optimization, especially in standby mode, so perhaps with some future firmware upgrades they might even be able to improve a total playback time.

Another important spec worth mentioning is the HO and LO output performance where HO is rated at 220mW+220mW w/32ohm load and super low output impedance of 0.26ohm, and LO rated at 1.7V of output power. I had no issues driving any of my IEMs or open/closed back full size headphones, and even in low gain setting had a volume at only 30%. Even with low sensitivity headphones I never exceeded 50% of volume level. With high sensitivity headphones, I didn't hear any hissing and found background to be solid black. But in general, if you need to drive power hungry high impedance full size headphones, you can always pair up N6 with another member of Cayin family - C5 portable amp.

Furthermore, besides being a standalone digital audio player, N6 also functions as an asynchronous USB DAC which you can connect to your laptop or computer to turn N6 into an external sound card. One thing you need to know, the internal memory of N6 has a zip file with all the necessary drivers to setup the connection. Once installation is complete, moving forward it’s a simple plug'n'play operation as long as you have DAC mode enabled in your System setting of N6.

Even with so much electronics and a large battery, N6 still feels pocket friendly and not that heavy. For a comparison, I put N6 next to X5, both wearing a silicone case, and found N6 to be 248g with 128mm x 70mm x 20mm dimensions, and X5 to be 218g with 118mm x 70mm x 16mm dimensions.

Pictures of N6 next to C5 and X5.

It is a little bit taller and thicker in comparison to X5, but overall weight felt the same and inside of the pocket N6 was actually a lot easier to operate "blind" with fast access to play/pause, skip, and volume controls.

Before I get into a sound of Cayin N6, the next topic I would like to discuss is GUI interface. Of course the sound characteristic is the most important factor, but a poorly designed controls and user interface can ruin your experience of enjoying the music even if it sounds great. I already mentioned about how much I like buttons/wheel controls of N6, and the same positive experience extended to graphic user interface as well. When you hold the power button to turn it on, you are greeted with a round vinyl-disc main interface resembling a turn table. In there, you have 5 main menu choices of Playing Now (which goes to your current playing song), Music Library (where you have an option to update the library, to view Local memory content, and removable card content), Music Category (were everything is sorted by My Favorite, Recent Played Songs, Albums, Artists, Genre, and a list of All Songs), System Setting, and Music Setting. Playing Now and Music Library is self explanatory, while in Music Category you have My Favorite based on a quick playlist you can create by tagging songs as Favorite, and the rest of the menu choices with songs sorted based on the ID tags of your music files.

Music setting has an extensive selection of options with Gain setting (low and high), Digital Filter (added in fw1.1 where you have SHARP and SLOW with a subtle change of sound attack, my personal preference being SHARP), DSD gain compensation, EQ setting (10 band EQ with 8 presets and a separate Customizable option). Play mode (to cover different repeat modes), Breakpoint resume, Gapless playback (after fw1.1 it's nearly perfect!!!), Max Volume limit setting, Startup Volume, Startup volume value, Balance control (L/R), Album art (display on/off), and Lyrics (display on/off). In a System setting you have Language selection, USB Mode (usb connection to read and to transfer files or USB DAC setting as external soundcard), Backlight time, Brightness setting, Schedule Power off (enable/disable), Schedule Power off time (this will turn off N6 after a preset time; Sleep time option is coming in the next firmware update), Reset (to factory setting), About the Player (which has model and firmware number, as well as local and microSD card total and remaining free memory capacity). Also, within "About the Player", you can skip pages from the main screen to see a very comprehensive electronic manual of the N6 with all the controls and functionality description.

GUI and Setting pictures.

Uh, so here comes a sound, and the first word out of my mouth was: WOW!!! To be honest, I personally don’t care about what DAC or volume IC or processor is being used in the design. It’s irrelevant because you can pick’n’choose the best available audio components and still mess up the signal flow, the circuit design, the layout of the board, etc. I look at every DAP as a black box, evaluating it on a sound quality, control usability, and GUI. In my opinion, Cayin N6 delivered a nearly perfect score in every single of these categories.

Reviewing sound quality of a DAP is not an easy task. What you hearing is not a direct “sound” of the audio player but rather a sound delivered by headphones according to their sound signature. So a better evaluation of a DAP is by referencing it to other sources for comparison. I have a number of DAPs in my collection, such as FiiO X1 and X5, HiFiMAN HM700, Hidizs AP100, and more budget oriented audio players from xDuoo, Sandisk, Ruizu, and also my Galaxy Note 4. If I pick the best source out of this bunch, which happens to be X5, and even after pairing it up with either of my favorite portable amps, C5 and E12A, I still can’t get anything closer to a near perfection reference sound I get from HO of N6. Yes, that good!!!

N6 sound is very detailed, transparent, and musical, with an organic tonality, close to reference quality without being cold or analytical. It has an excellent separation and layering of instruments with a wide and deep airy soundstage. Relative to headphones in my collection, there is no hissing or background noise (though I don’t have SE846 to confirm which always comes up as being over-sensitive), and I found it to have a black background. In comparison, the level of detail retrieval from N6 is on a much higher scale than X5, and the soundstage presentation is significantly better as well. As a matter of fact, the soundstage directly from N6 will remind you a lot of C5 paired up with X5. And that is a beauty of N6 where you don’t need to pair it up with any external portable amps to improve the sound quality or staging unless you want to experiment with coloring of your sound by introducing other amps. I paired up N6 with E12A, but found it handicapping the soundstage width and depth. Pair up of N6 with C5 is great if you really need to drive a demanding high impedance cans, but comparing N6 HO in low gain to N6+C5 (in low gain as well) – sound tonality was almost identical to my ears, and the only benefit was a slight improvement in width and depth of soundstage.

This brings me to how well N6 pairs up with different headphones. In this analysis, I found it more beneficial to compare every pair of headphones to see how it sounds on N6 vs X5. Also, please keep in mind, X5 is one fantastic DAP and it costs $270 less than N6. This is like a relative comparison. But my point is that value of N6 is highly justifiable considering sound quality improvement without a need to use external amps and special LO cables.

UM Pro 50:

N6 - richer bass texture, better 3D positioning/imaging, better dynamics, sound is more organic/analog, a little smoother/musical.

X5 - sound is flatter, a little more digital in comparison.

CRK10:

N6 - sound is more airy, staging a bit deeper, improved bass texture, sound has more body.

X5 – sound has less sparkle, a bit narrower staging.

A83:

N6 - amazing bass texture, super wide/airy sound, smoother upper mids/treble.

X5 - reduced soundstage, less sparkle in upper frequencies.

DITA Answer:

N6 - higher level of detail retrieval, sound is more airy, improved soundstage.

X5 - sound is a bit flatter and not as organic.

IM03

N6 - sound has richer texture, more natural, smoother, improved staging.

X5 - sound is a bit flatter, not as dynamic.

Titan 1

N6 - sound has more sparkle, wider soundstage.

X5 - sound is smoother and warmer, a bit narrower.

VSD3

N6 - bass texture is richer and more detailed, wider staging, more airy sound.

X5 - sound is flatter, less dynamic, and a bit harsher.

In conclusion, next to my other audio players and amps Cayin N6 DAP is without a doubt TOTL audio equipment. Of course a question begs to be asked how it compares to AK120 II or AK240 II, and perhaps in a near future I might be able to answer this. But N6 is still 1/2 the price of the cheaper AK120 II, and that needs to be factored in. Do I think N6 represents an absolute perfection? Well, it has a sound signature which is near a sound perfection to my ears, and I got used to and enjoying its controls very much. But based on the size and the weight, it’s not exactly super portable or a pocket friendly for everyone’s taste. Plus, I wish battery life would be a few more hours longer. I know Cayin is working hard on firmware optimization, and they have done an amazing job delivering a very stable FW1.0 followed by FW1.1 only a month later with a lot of improvements. So I hope they can do some magic to squeeze even more out of their battery life. But even as it stands, this digital audio player represents an amazing value with a true hi-def sound performance. I never really listened to DSD audio files until I got N6 where it plays these without skipping a beat with a sound quality that took my breath away. I no longer need an external amp to improve my soundstage presentation or to add that extra juice to make my bass sizzle with layers of texture – N6 internal DAC/amp is top class! I no longer have to reach out for a dedicated USB DAC to enjoy listening to hi-def audio from my laptop – flexibility of N6 design covers that. There are too many benefits to list and I can go on, but the bottom line is that Cayin delivered a remarkable hi-def audio player and set a new price bar which is quite affordable considering spending the same amount of money on mid-fi DAPs, LO cables, and external amps without even reaching 100% level of N6. Very impressive considering this is Cayin’s very first portable DAP release! Can’t wait to see what they’re going to come up with next!