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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
We will come back to that later in the review. LINN produces perfect output:
Even though Cayin had higher distortion, it bests the LINN in noise department:
I also measured both players using white noise:
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:
For digital output, the analyzer extracts the clock jitter and performs the FFT spectrum analysis:
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:
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:
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:
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.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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:
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:
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:
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:
We will come back to that later in the review. LINN produces perfect output:
Even though Cayin had higher distortion, it bests the LINN in noise department:
I also measured both players using white noise:
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:
For digital output, the analyzer extracts the clock jitter and performs the FFT spectrum analysis:
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:
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:
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:
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.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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