Cayin N8ii Flagship DAP with ROHM DAC and Vacuum Tube Launched
Cayin recently announced its latest flagship DAP, or digital audio player, the Cain N8ii. As the name suggests, the N8ii is the successor to the company’s flagship DAP, the N8, released back in 2018. It features ROHM DAC with fully-balanced, fully-discrete vacuum tube amplification. The DAP also runs in a customized Android 9.0 OS and is powered by a Snapdragon 660 SoC. Cayin is also expected to demo the N8ii at CANJAM New York 2022.
Cayin N8ii Master Quality Digital Audio Player To Debut at CanJam New York
After several years, Cayin has finally announced its latest flagship digital audio player. According to Cayin, the new N8ii flagship DAP is a major revamp to deliver best possible high fidelity audio performance to portable users with latest digital and analogue audio technologies. It features two ROHM BD34301EKV DAC chipsets and can native decode up to DSD512 and 32 Bit/768 kHz.
The analog amplification on the N8ii is a state-of-the-art implementation with fully-discrete, fully-balanced vacuum tube amplification through a matched pair of KORG Nutube. It also features two innovative functions: Dual Amplifier Operation (DAO, choice of Class A or Class AB) and Dual Output Mode (DOM, choice of standard P mode and high power P+ mode).
In addition, the Cayin N8ii is preinstalled with Google play and Direct Transport Audio (DTA). The later enables all third party applications to bypass the SRC in Android OS and facilitates bit-perfect playback with all streaming service.
According to Bin Liang, CEO of Zhuhai Spark Electronic Equipment Co., Ltd., the parent company of Cayin Audio:
“On top of designing a high-performance audio circuit, the biggest challenge with N8ii is to fit the two pieces of Nutube into a DAP chassis, properly damped, isolated, and “suspended” to minimize microphonic from movement and EMI interference at various on-the-go scenarios. Since the primary locations are occupied by the screen and battery already, we resort to a unique compartmentalized CNC machined chassis that facilitates two isolated chambers to house the Nutube vacuum tubes separately”.
Cayin is the first audio company to adopt ROHM BD34301EKV in portable personal audio applications. The commodification of a new chipset from scratch is a tedious and resource-consuming process.
Ye Maosheng, Lead R&D Engineer said:
“We spent a lot of resources to learn, experiment, and fine-tune the supporting system for this new ROHM DAC chipset. We have developed 6 rounds of engineering PCB within 4 months to explore the potential and implementation options for BD34301EKV. We grasp massive raw data through I2S and compared it to data from numerous analog output stages we have experimented with and cross-compared it to the ROHM demo board to validate the improvement we have achieved. We see a lot of potential on this chipset because it really excels on both technical measurement and listening impression“.
Cayin N8ii Price and Release Date
The manufacturer’s suggested retail price of the Cayin N8ii is $3,499 USD and it will be available by 4th March 2022.
Cayin will demonstrate N8ii at MusicTeck booth (B3 B5 ), CanJam New York, Marriott Marquis, New York, USA from 26th to 27th February 2022. The showcase will include a comprehensive line of Personal Audio products including the C9 TOTL portable headphone amplifier RU6 R-2R dongle DAC, and CS-55A desktop vacuum tube amplifier with USB DAC from Cayin’s latest lineup.
Cayin N8ii DAP Specifications
