Cayin Mini-CD MKII CD Player Review

[Roland301]

$35 bought me a minidisc-era Discman with an optical out which works great as a small desktop transport

 

[JaccoW]

Cool little piece of kit. I wonder how it compares to the Shanling CD80 or it's amplifier brother the Shanling CA80.

 

[Kimbrough Xu]

To who?

Anyone who wants a relatively good CD player.

Or how much do you think it is worth?

 

[antcollinet]

Anyone who wants a relatively good CD player.

Or how much do you think it is worth?

Well I got a very good CD player for £20 from a charity shop. Admittedly nearly 40 years old - but also apparently unused, or almost unused.

 

[Chrispy]

Anyone who wants a relatively good CD player.

Or how much do you think it is worth?

$279 for a mere cd player? You can get many optical disc players for less....personally haven't bought a cd-only player in many years.

 

[JaccoW]

$279 for a mere cd player? You can get many optical disc players for less....personally haven't bought a cd-only player in many years.

Yet the €400 Audiolab 6000CDT is a very popular CD transport. And all of their new lines have had matching CD transports as well.

• 7000CDT
• 8300CDT
• 9000 CDT

Though you are right, the technology is fairly played out. So it's easy for manufacturers to add some extra value by adding a CD player. Or at the very least it fills in the front of the huge streaming boxes.

Models like the Technics SL-G700m2 or the Marantz CD 50n are streaming boxes with CD players. And those are well over €1800.

 

[Chrispy]

Yet the €400 Audiolab 6000CDT is a very popular CD transport. And all of their new lines have had matching CD transports as well.

• 7000CDT
• 8300CDT
• 9000 CDT

Though you are right, the technology is fairly played out. So it's easy for manufacturers to add some extra value by adding a CD player. Or at the very least it fills in the front of the huge streaming boxes.

Models like the Technics SL-G700m2 or the Marantz CD 50n are streaming boxes with CD players. And those are well over €1800.

I see less value in those units....

 

[Palladium]

I see less value in those units....

Pretty amazing how much bang for your buck is by "get and use a PC".

 

[JaccoW]

I see less value in those units....

Then what do you value? You keep evading the question.

Technically you can get a USB disc drive for $20-30 and be prefectly capable to play most CDs (besides copy-protected discs).
But there is something to be said for the ease of use of a separate device. It does however cost money.

Vintage models can be as cheap as $5 but competing with the used market is never a fair comparison and heavily dependant on local markets.

 

[pseudoid]

...But there is something to be said for the ease of use of a separate device.

With our connected homes in the 21st Century, 'ease of use' no longer only applies to 'a separate device'.
Why would a separate CD-player make it easier than transcoding that content to a NAS/cloud storage; in an effort to make it more accessible and for ease of use?

[I practice what I just preached above and pitched the CD-player from the system... along with all those d*mn jewel cases.]

 

[Mart68]

With our connected homes in the 21st Century, 'ease of use' no longer only applies to 'a separate device'.

In my house it's still 1983.

 

[lewdish]

A few other companies in the chifi space have started working on CD players. Fosi is in concept dev phase right now working on one if folks here want to give input in their FB group.

 

[EJ3]

In my house it's still 1983.

And just how I want it.

 

[antcollinet]

Why would a separate CD-player make it easier

Because:

transcoding that content to a NAS/cloud storage

I've got a stack of my most recent CD purchases/gifts here waiting to be ripped. Some have been waiting for over a year. They've become another annoying item on my list of things I need to do. Once I've done it I need to make sure album art comes into the correct location and often it doesn't resulting in a manual process. I have to maintain the file store in the correct location, and set up devices to have network access to be able to use it. When I change storage systems or location, it has to be set up again. I have to worry about backups and making sure I don't lose files over time. etc etc. Sometimes album art goes missing for no apparent reason and I have to sort that out again.

Then when all that is fine, when I want to play music I have to go searching for my phone to control whatever streamer I'm using - which inevitably I've left in a stupid place. I find it after pressing a button on my watch to make it ring. If I can find my watch


Meanwhile I can drop any of those CD's into my £20 Marantz, any time I like, and just listen.

 

[Mart68]

I got my CDs sorted by genre and alphabetically, doesn't take any longer to find something than on a screen.

If I don't know specifically what I want to listen to I prefer to browse the physical collection.

Also I'm too idle to be copying them all, doing back-ups, and sorting out I.T problems when it decides not to work, even though it was fine last time.

 

[pacman]

CD -> Sony BDP-S380 -> coaxial -> FiiO K7 -> headphones or speakers.

That's my current setup for listening my CD collection

 

[French Meloman]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Cayin Mini-CD MKII CD transport and stereo player. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $279.
View attachment 303504
The unit comes with a good looking and feeling metal case. I like the large display but controls didn't seem very responsive. Below it is my circa 1998 LINN MIMIK cd player. It cost US $1,595 then which would be almost $3,000 today! I thought it would be nice to compare the performance of one against the other.

Back side shows the usual connections:
View attachment 303505
The external adapter is a bit of a buzzkill. They should have charged $299 and put the darn power supply inside.

Here are its specs:

Output Level:	2.0V
Frequency Response:	20Hz~20kHz (+0.5dB)
Distortion and Noise:	0.007% (1kHz)
S/N Ratio:	90dB (20-20KHz, A-weighted)
Dynamic Range:	90dB (20-20KHz, A-weighted)
Crosstalk:	77 dB
Digital output:	S/PDIF (RCA) & I2S (HDMI)
Output Impedance SPDIF:	75ohm
Dimensions:	240mmx213mmx58mm (WxDxH)
Net Weight:	~2.0kg
Maximum Power Consumption:	12W
Disc Support:	12cm CD-Audio Disc

Edit: earlier version of this review used a CD which was burned incorrectly. Much thanks to member @Rja4000 for finding the issue with this. The review is now updated.

Cayin MINI-CD MKII Player vs LINN MIMIK Measurements
By definition, I can only run static files burned onto a CD and not sweeps. So we can't run many tests but what is there, should give us a good idea. Let's start with the dashboard using analog out from the Cayin:
View attachment 304406

Nice to see the full 2 volt output but sad to see that we can't come close to resolving 16 bits with a SINAD of just 83 dB. Third harmonic dominates SINAD. Fortunately it meets spec. The LINN does better but still fails to reach 16 bit fidelity:
View attachment 304407
Distortion is now at -96 dB so it is noise that is holding back the LINN.

Switching to S/PDIF on Cayin we come close to the SINAD of dithered 1 kHz tone (around 93 dB) but there is spurious odd set of harmonics:
View attachment 304408

We will come back to that later in the review. LINN produces perfect output:
View attachment 304409

Even though Cayin had higher distortion, it bests the LINN in noise department:
View attachment 304410

I also measured both players using white noise:
View attachment 304422

The Cayin is doing a much better job of filtering out of band noise.

I measured jitter two ways, analog and digital. Let's start with analog output:
View attachment 304413

For digital output, the analyzer extracts the clock jitter and performs the FFT spectrum analysis:
View attachment 304414

We see that generally Cayin is better in correlated jitter but has one constant, non-correlated component around 16.5 kHz. That might be the microprocessor or display frequency. We actually see it even after we feed the output to Topping D70s and measure its analog output:
View attachment 304415

That aside, note the much lower noise floor of D70s compared to the two DACs. BTW, those spikes at 250 Hz are part of the signal and need to be there.

One strange thing is why the level is slightly higher when Linn drives the D70s vs Cayin. The explanation may be in the following test where I fed both DACs to Topping D70s over S/PDIF and captured out usual dashboard. First is LINN MIMIK:
View attachment 304416
Naturally D70s produces exceptionally clean output with essentially no distortion. SINAD is limited by the maximum possible with a dithered 16 bit test tone's noise floor.

Cayin though, acts different:
View attachment 304418

We see the same series of spikes. Looking at the spectrum, it is odd harmonics which tells me a bit is being toggled. From this, I am pretty sure the Cayin's digital output is NOT bit exact!!! It is literally producing different digital samples and hence the reason those spikes are burned in and come out of the D70s DAC.

Conclusions
The Cayin looks like a nice CD player despite its low cost. Alas, its built-in DAC has too much distortion. And if my guess is right that it is corrupting the low order bit of the digital stream over S/PDIF, using an external DAC won't help you either! Company needs to investigate this and find out what is going on.

Given the newly found issue with the bitstream coming out of the Cayin and high distortion of its own DAC, I can't recommend it.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.

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Thank you for this objective test.
For your information, the French magazine DIAPASON praises this reader in its March 2024 issue, praising its transparency while its SINAD does not quite reach 14 bits. However, it seems acceptable (analog output) to me for the asking price.
Personally, I don't like the way the CD is loaded which can sometimes damage the CDs.
The crippling flaw of the device is its faulty digital output. The manufacturer should have seen the problem in its quality process and fixed it before it was put on the market. So I voted "not terrible"

 

[tades]

Ok as long as you tell about CD player...
But look it as a drive (I2S or Coax to your lovely DAC) and you get a winner...

 

[Mulder]

Ok as long as you tell about CD player...
But look it as a drive (I2S or Coax to your lovely DAC) and you get a winner...

I would not say you get a winner. For someone looking for a CD player as a transport only, for the feeding of a separate external DAC, I would avoid this particular CD player. Notice what @amirm wrote in the review: "I am pretty sure the Cayin's digital output is NOT bit exact!!! It is literally producing different digital samples and hence the reason those spikes are burned in and come out of the D70s DAC."

No point buying a CD-player for the purpose of using it as a transport if it do not manage to feed the DAC with bit-perfect bits.