There aren’t a lot of quality single-disc, compact CD players or transports on the market for under $500. Sure, there are plenty of loveseat-wide players and transports available if you’re willing to spend more and have the space to house one of those behemoths. Alternatively, if you’re willing to roll the dice, there are a few more options on the used market, especially if you prefer vintage gear.

I wanted something new, and with limited options, I narrowed it down to the Cayin and two other CD players/transports. One of them, purchased from a different vendor, arrived DOA. I scratched that one off the list permanently. I didn’t get to try the third player because this one arrived, and I decided to keep it since it met most my needs.

The Mini-CD MK2 feels and looks like a quality product. It’s relatively hefty for its size, and the aluminum faceplate looks, more than it feels, rather upscale. Unlike some brands, they made the right call by going with a matching silver metal body. Overall, I really dig the look, and for the price, it pretty much stands alone.

I can’t speak definitively on sound quality since I’ve been using the Mini-CD primarily as a transport, feeding it directly into my DAC. I have listened using the internal DAC and honestly have no complaints. It sounds pretty good, though not as good as when routed through my DAC. Beats and vocals are tight and punchy where it matters most. If I didn’t already own a DAC, I’d be totally satisfied with the sound quality.

Now, on to the quirks. Thankfully *knock on wood* I haven’t had any issues with the Cayin reading CDs. It doesn’t skip a lot, but a bit more than the cheaper CD player I was using before. It’s basically one or two skips per album every two or three albums played. So, it’s not skipping on every CD, which is acceptable to me.

I do wish music started playing automatically after a CD is inserted. It takes a moment to read and load the tracks, which is fine, but then it just sits there. It’s not the end of the world; you can hit play on the unit or remote, but it’s still a tad annoying.

The biggest issue I’ve run into is when using the number pad to jump between tracks (e.g., from 12 to 3 to 6 to 10). Maybe I was selecting tracks too quickly, but this sent the player into haywire mode. It stopped reading the disc and wouldn’t eject. I was able to retrieve the CD by powering it off and on. I’ve never had that issue when skipping forward or back between tracks or within a track, so I guess it’s best to pause a moment when switching songs using the number pad.

If you’re willing to live with those quirks, I think you’ll really dig the Mini-CD, whether you use it as a CD player or transport.

I bought the Cayin Mini CD-Player MK2 from Bloom Audio and although it generally played well, it failed to play various tracks on certain commercially bought CDs that had never given me any difficulties before. To make sure that the problem wasn't with the CDs (although I already knew that because I had been playing them without any difficulty for the last 15 years on my TEAC CD player), I tried to play the CDs on my cheap Sony DVD player, and the CDs played perfectly. I returned the Cayin to Bloom, which replaced it with the same model --- and the problem occurred again on the same discs! I returned the Cayin CD player to Bloom for a refund. I have since bought a Cambridge Audio CD player and have had no problem whatsoever in playing those discs.

It is clear that this Cayin CD Player has a problem playing certain CDs or CD tracks. It might be hypersensitive to the way certain tracks are burned onto the CD, or perhaps its electronics get confused by certain combinations of audio tones. In any event, this is clearly a defect. It's too bad, because I really wanted a small sized, reasonably priced CD player. And on the CDs and CD tracks that it did play, it sounded great.

Another observation is the foolish design choice to make the two screws on each side of the case protrude from the case. By the time I noticed this, I had two scratches on the wood paneling of my cabinet. I've never seen another audio product use protruding screws. Even cheap aluminum enclosures that you can buy on AliExpress use flat-headed screws that cleanly fit into the aluminum body.

Another weird feature is that while you're playing a track, if you press the left-arrow button in order to put yourself back at the beginning of the track, the Cayin instead starts playing from the beginning of the PREVIOUS track. I've never seen any CD or DVD player function that way because this is inconvenient and makes absolutely no sense.

While Bloom was a great vendor and tried its best, I wasted a lot of time learning the above. I'm surprised that a vendor of such other extremely high quality devices would sell something junky like this Cayin CD player. Hopefully you won't have to waste your time like I did.

Unit is slightly weighty for its size and seems very well built. This unit is finicky about accepting CDs, however, I discovered that if I push the CD until my thumb hits the face it will usually load, but not always. I then clean the disc with dawn and dry with a microfibre cloth, then it accepts the disc just fine. Why do I put up with the quirks you might ask. The sound is amazing. Much better than all the CD players I have owned in the past, and I have owned SACD players in the $1000+ range. Must be technology I guess. One more thing, if you set up your Itunes preference to format your playlist in WAV, it reads and plays your rewrite just fine. Very satisfied with this purchase, especially at such a reasonable price.

Perfect for my system, definitely has me back into cd’s again! CD prices are great, you can rebuild a library pretty quickly these days🙏 If you have a nice dac that you’d like to get even more use from, talk about giving your cd’s new life, they’ll sound better than ever! And the team at Bloom is incredibly helpful. They normally answer any questions faster than any company I’ve ever dealt with. Even on a holiday! I didn’t expect an answer until at least the next day. The shipping was fast just like Amazon, but the customer service isn’t even comparable, if Bloom has what you need, I’d suggest giving them your business. They back up what they claim to be about and treat you like you matter, they put in the actual work to EARN your business. It’s nice to feel valued when you’re spending the kind of money this hobby demands, you don’t have to be an influencer to get good service. When it’s time to get my Chord TT2, it’s going to be from Bloom!