Disclaimer: Cayin Japan kindly loaned me the unit in this article. I had hoped to release these results in early November last year, but problems with X11 and OSX Catalina forestalled that. It is now 2020 and this article is late. Apologies, Cayin, and eagle-eyed ohm readers who noticed that the publish date had slipped too far. The N6ii is a high-end DAP with many cores, a modular body, balanced and single ended output, and an I2S interface. Want to know more? Hit up the Cayin N6ii page

NOTE I: balanced measures are coming.



NOTE II: I have decided to reference the N6ii’s output at medium rather than high gain. The reason for this is that in stereo tests, it sheers its peaks in high gain, and overall performs worse in THD and IMD. The differences are small, but I hope forgivable, considering I always try to find the peak performance for any source/player before publishing results.

My first Cayin was the C5 amp. It did its job well, debuting unique branding, and sound. As far as performance goes, it was good, but not great and is a far cry from Cayin’s latest and greatest. The N6ii looks much better than the N6. And, while more difficult to use, its operating system is handsomer to the same degree.

Branding aside, the N6ii sports audiophile street cred in EQ, DAC filters, channel settings, etcetera- plus a powerful amplifier and quality DAC elements.