Cayin N6 Dap

Cayin N6 DAP

ภาค DAC ใช้ PCM1792A ถึง 2ตัว

Dual PCM1792A DAC

ชิป PCM1792A หรือที่รู้จักกันในชื่อค่าย Burrbrown PCM1792A
ซึ่งถือเป็นชิป DAC ที่ดีที่สุดยอดนิยมตัวนึงในตลาด

While the specification might not be the most superior available, PCM1792A is consider one of the best sounding DAC chipset on market, and most important, in line with the sound signature that Cayin has carried for the past two decades. With a firm determination to offer the best audio performance possible for portable application, Cayin opted to use TWO PCM1792A instead of one. While similar configuration is no stranger on full-size mega dollar digital components, but to have two PCM1792A is an ambitious attempt that audiophiles should be looking forward to.

Extreme Low Jitter (3xTCXO)

Cayin wants their DAP to be musical and free from digital artifact as much as possible, and one of their primary design objective were to achieve a design with lowest possible jitter. For that, Cayin used THREE high precision Temperature compensate X’tal Oscillators (TCXO) from Japan (NDK/KDS), one for 44.1kHz based PCM signal (44.1kHz, 88.2kHz, 176.4kHz), one for 48kHz based PCM signal (48kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz), and the last one dedicated to DSD signal (2.8224 MHz, 5.6448 MHz). Cayin even developed their own coding and employed a high performance PLD (Programmable Logic Device), SA2000, to clean up all digital signal prior entering the DAC circuit and control signal routing base on the source file sampling rate, including the native DSD signal to DAC directly. This design certainly increased the cost and complication significantly, but to ensure N6 will set off from a clean ground for its first step of digital audio processing, Cayin will not compromise for less than the best.

Classical BTL Amplification Design

The power of dual DAC chipset will not be fully explored without an appropriate analogue circuit, and this happened to be the area that Cayin is excelled in. The analogue audio part of N6 is a classical Bridge-Tied Loads (BTL) Amplification Circuit, (aka. Bridged-Mono). This has been the choice of Cayin since Day 1 of N6 development, a choice that leads to multiple problems in subsequent product development. With literally two identical amplifiers inside a portable device, Cayin need to fight with issues such as power drainage, heat dispersion and much higher circuit complexity and components counts. The good news is N6 will offer the best possible channel separation with minimum crosstalk, doubled voltage swing at the same load, and extremely linear over the complete audio bandwidth.

Uncompromised Implementation

A good design will only be meaningful with a good execution and Cayin has been extremely thorough in doing this. N6 starts with 4 layer Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold (ENIG) PCB in order to achieve excellent surface planarity and oxidation resistance. A total of 13 pieces of high quality Op Amp were used in the analogue circuit of N6, more then what you can find in desktop audio components. The Line Out of N6 is a copycat of Cayin’s latest eye-catching CD player CDT-17A MK2 (RMB 8,800 or US$1,500). In other word, Cayin is putting the N6 in par with their mega dollar desktop HiFi products when come to product design and audio standard.
http://cn.cayin.cn/HTML/PRO/YYXL/218.HTML

Take Volume Control as example, typical DAP design will either use ALPS or digital volume control inside DAC or MCU chipset. ALPS while is cost effective, will introduce channel imbalance at low volume. Digital volume in DAP typically will be achieved by lowering the bit depth at DAC or MCU and this will certainly compromise on resolution. Cayin won’t accept compromise as such so they decided to put in a “proper” volume control here, and they finally picked the PGA2311 from Texas Instrument, a programmable, digitally-controlled analog volume control that offers +31.5dB to -95.5dB with 0.5dB steps, -130 db Interchannel crosstalk (@ 1 kHz) and upto 0.05db channel accuracy. With this, volume control will no longer be a bottleneck any more.

Cayin understand piling up large number of expensive components does not always result in good audio performance, but high quality components are indeed the foundation of good sound, and Cayin has certainly put in their best shot into N6, it might not be price-no-objective, but putting sound before cost consideration is something that has been gun-holding throughout the N6 design implementation.

Comprehensive audio format

On top of common PCM based lossless format, N6 can hardware decode DSD64 and DSD128, and it will read SACD ISO directly and extracted into individual track internally. While there are several portable devices offered hardware decode DSD64, N6 is the first ever DAP that can hardware decode DSD128 and SACD ISO in one package.

Control and interface

Cayin has put in a lot of attention to the control and interface design of N6 because they valued pleasant and effective user experience. The followings are some highlights of N6 design.

Screen: Sharp 2.4” TFT 400×360 IPS screen, which is almost doubled the pixels of typical 320×240 2.4” screen, this will not only improved the album art resolution, but also enhance the clarity of all text instruction, and allow smaller fonts to be used and yet highly readable.

CPU: Dual Core 600MHz Ingenic Xburst JZ4760, a mid-class mobile phone processor. The processor offers hefty power for a small screen device like N6 and is the base of a smooth and swiftly operation. The processor supports DSP instructions, built-in SPDIF capability, and provides 24bit/192kHz digital audio output. In addition, the JZ4760 is a low-power processor that won’t disperse a lot of heat even when operate at full speed, this is important to N6 because low background noise and interference of all kinds are always appreciated.

Carefully planned button: N6 is non-touched-screen, button-based control. There is lots of button and some of them might be overlapped, but they server different people and different occasion. The buttons are organized into 3 groups:

• Front plate: Large Up/Down and Left/Right button for general manipulations
• Left side: Jog dial, very effective single-button control that covers 90% of the function with simple rotate and click action.
• Right Sid

e: Two buttons dedicated for Vol+/Next and Vol-/Pre, perfect for blind operation.
Take Track selection as example, you can use the Up/Down button to go through the title list in a folder, or use the Jog dial on the Left to scroll through a track list quickly. If you were to wear the N6 waist bag, you only need to access the Right side panel and you can control volume and skip/repeat a track already.

Effective interface Design: Appropriate graphical means have been used to at different level of interface. The opening and closing screen are animated GIF, the Home screen are icon based and the detail instructions and settings are organized into 5 menus. Based on the user experience from Beta test, the DAP is very user friendly, new users can move around without a manual within 10 minutes, and most functions are sell explained when they go through the menu.

Impeccable workmanship

There is no reason to settle for less on the final appeal and finishing after what Cayin have done to package all the goodies into a portable package. The main chassis is CNC out of a single piece of aerospace aluminum alloy and it takes 3 hours 24 minutes to complete one unit. On top of looks nice and feel good, the aluminum chassis is a very good heat dispenser, the machine will feel warm but this will keep the machine operate healthy. The rear panel is make out of a carbon fiber and flush fit to the back of the DAP. The final product will looks like a single solid piece without showing any assembly part or screws

N6 Specification

As Cayin N6 is still under development, the specification of N6 measurement is based on the Beta test unit and is subject to revise. Cayin reserved the right to change the specification without prior notice.

Technical
DAC	Dual PCM1792A
MCU	Dual Core 600MHz Ingenic Xburst JZ4760
PLD	SA2000
Volume	PGA2311
Features
Headphone	180mW+180mW @ 32 ohm (to be revised)
USB-DAC	Asynchronous USB up to 24bit/192kHz
Volume Control	0-99
Gain Selection	High/Low (+6dB)
Channel Balance	-10~+10; +/- 10dB
Equalization	10 bands, +/- 10dB
Power Saving	Auto Power Off, Backlight time off, Breakpoint Resume
Interface and Storage
Display	2.4” TFT 400×360 IPS screen
Analog Output	1x 3.5 mm (headphone) 1x 3.5 mm (line)
Digital Output	1x 3.5 mm S/PDIF (coaxial)
Physical Control	1x Multipurpose Jog Dial 4x General Navigation Button Volume +/Next Volume -/Pre
Language	English, Chinese (Traditional, Simplified)
Storage	1x micro-SD card (up to 128G)
Audio Format
DSD	DSD64 (DSF, DFF), DSD128 (DSF, DFF), SACD ISO
WAV	Up to 24bit/192kHz
FLAC	Up to 24bit/192kHz
ALAC	Up to 24bit/192kHz
APE	Up to 24bit/192kHz
WMA	Up to 24bit/96kHz
AAC	Supported
OGG	Supported
MPEG	MP2; MP3
Battery
Battery Capacity	5600 mAH
Charger	1.2A (to be revised)
Power LED	Green: Standby, Flashing: Charging
Battery Life	6 ~ 8 hours (to be revised)
Charging Time	2.5 hours ~ 4.5 hours (to be revised)
Physical
Dimension	(L) 68mm~72mm (H) 126mm (W) 17.6mm~19.7mm
Weight	230g

Cayin N6 Dual Decode DSD lossless Portable Music Player

Description

• N6 is the only portable music player which adopted 13 op amp this crazy architecture by far.
• Dual DAC decoding chip: PCM1792
• Top level volume control chip:PGA2311
• 3 pieces of TCXO
• 4-layer FR-4 Immersion Gold PCB
• Sampling frequency: 44.1/48kHz @ 16bit
• Analog audio input ≤ 1000mV
• Excellent craftsmanship
• Aircraft-grade aluminum alloy shell
• Equipped with better heat dissipation
• Humane wheel design
• The back use carbon fiber material, which is more luxurious

Description

Headphone output ：

• Maximum output power: 220mW +220 mW (32Ω load)
• Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz (± 0.2dB)
•                   5Hz-50kHz (± 1dB)
• Total harmonic distortion: ≤ 0.005%
• SNR: ≥ 109dB (A-weighted)
• Dynamic Range :110dB
• Output Impedance :0.26Ω

Line out :

• Rated output power: 1.7V(10KΩ load)
• Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz (± 0.2dB)

5Hz-50kHz (± 1dB)

• Total harmonic distortion: ≤ 0.004%
• SNR: ≥ 109dB (A-weighted)
• Dynamic Range :110dB

Coaxial out:

• Rated output power : 0.5V (75Ω load )

1.0V ( No load )

• Output Impedance :75Ω
• Display screen : 2.4-inch 400 * 360
• Communication Interface : USB2.0
• Output Interface : 3.5mm stereo headphone jack output

3.5mm Stereo line output

3.5mm Coaxial digital audio output

• Support Format :
• MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV (24Bit 192kHz), FLAC (24Bit 192kHz),
• CUE( Need to combine WAV, FLAC and APE whole track files)
• APE (24Bit 192kHz support Fast and Normal lossless compression format)
• Support Micro SD-TF (Max 128G)
• Firmware upgrade :via TF card
• Lithium battery capacity: 5600mAh 3.7V Lithium-ion polymer battery
• Charging time: about 4 hours (2A charger)
• Life time: about 7 hours
• Net Weight: 225g
• Size: 72 x 19.7 x 126 (mm) (W x H x L)

Package

• Cayin N6
• Card Reader
• USB cable
• 3.5mm coaxial cable