Colorfly Pocket Hi-fi C4

BTW I'm from Scotland so I paid £555.00 for mine, not $555.00 THXU

1st off lets get this out the way then eh ;

Baterry life isn't great & TBH with you it was never ever going to be great unless they made it bigger by giving it a higher capacity battery making it bigger, so you kind of know this from day 1 that loud amazing sound comes at the cost of battery drain

Now where to begin hmmzzz...

FLAC/ WAV Playback is just outstanding with your chosen cans, I'm not going into sound descriptions as each to their own as each have their fav cans, lets just say this then =

This thing has sounded amazing with any Cans I've tried it with & I have tried several to try & find a weakness, but there is none soundwise it's faultless indeed via headphone usage.

Add in the fact it's a DAC in it's own right via an in & out spdif or use the spdif in & headphone out to phono even = the thing still sounds amazing.

I bought mine from Superfi about 6months maybe more ago now & TBH I just still cannot stop listening to it.

I'm so so so glad I bought it & ignored the heavy price tag, because once you listen to it I'm sure like me you'll agree that the quality it kicks out makes that price tag seem low IMHO.

Whoever that obsessed chinese guy who demanded it to be built to such a high standard as it was = I salute you sir as by god it still brings a smile to my face getting on to maybe nearly a yr l8rs hehehe

In closing = Don't let the high price tag put you off people, hell we all pay high prices for hi-fi stuff anyway, think of it as an extension of your expensive Hi-Fi & you'll understand then why it's worth every penny

A MUST HAVE PLAYER IMHO !!!

P.S. Make a 64gb MicroSD card bootable formatted in fat32 = it'll work in it too, so mine has 96gb (after the usual loss 89gb or so of space hehehe) EXCELLENT & what's up with some 1 who just joined a Forum posting a review on a Product they think others would like 2 hear about ?
A Nice welcome friendly reply... Sorry I meant a 12yr old school playground sarcastic reply... That's the thing with all Forums U have good guys & gals & then U have well this user with their comments here under my review post made for god only knows why... I feel sorry for your negative outlook on life there but I think the C4 Pro's too good a product to let your wee comment dent it eh ?

First of all I just want to put a caveat on the User Interface notion. At the end of the day, we are striving for sound and we all do crazy things to get the best, gripes about it are meaningless and in reality just spoils any review and we have all been spoiled by the iPod's UI, but an iPod sounds like a lump of clay, so with that done.

This is mind blowing, I have no idea why this product is not more widely known about and that sales are not massive.

It could very well be the final word, and it has been kicking around for a while, it needs some more attention as I recently discovered. Like an ancient text, its truths can not be denied.

I am tempted to start to describe sound quality, but I listen through many different headphones so I would only start describing what I am hearing now through a pair of Denon AH D7100's using the 6.7mm cables.

This isn't a headphone review.

Thinking about what this product is actually capable of for a minute one soon comes to the conclusion that the design and execution is just as clever as Apple have ever done. People say it Looks "Steam Punk" or some such nonsense. No, this is a player for life, that is why it has been designed like that, not for shiny aesthetics, but so that as it ages it just gets better and more personalised and so that it will last.

The build quality is superb. It feels gorgeous to touch, aesthetically it sits in a class of its own in any environment.

There has been more thought put into this device than I think colorfly is credited for to be honest.

It will fit in your pocket in its case, it will fill it but it will fit there, as another review I have read alluded to, forget it if you are wearing skinny jeans.

What does it output?

Close to perfection. I can't see it being beaten at this size, ever. Something else that was very revealing was running it through my NAIM Headline. I am almost hesitant to say this, but with cans that need driving, I am not sure whether I could tell the difference between it going through my Headline and direct from the Colorfly. That is saying something.

Whatever phones you go for or prefer, make sure they are comfortable, as I promise you one thing, you will once again listen to your entire music collection again, repeatedly, you will wake up in the morning and get out of bed and think about putting it on, you will walk round anywhere you want as if you are in a reference studio with the world playing a film going by. You will stop being able to hear people and you will not do much talking either.

I do not think that it is overpriced at all, it is ten times the quality of an iPod and not ten times the price.

And it has a soul.

The EQ settings do work very well indeed, again more thought by clever people.

For the peripatetic audiophile, there is no other unit.

One very very happy customer, it isn't often you get more than you hoped for these days. Colorfly give you it.

Happy to answer any questions, I have haunted this place for years and years, I have never signed up, just taken, not contributed. I simply had no choice but to speak up about this amazing piece of kit.

Having had a chance to play around with the Colorfly C4 for a little over a week now, I have to say I am quite impressed.  I also own the Hifiman801 unit so I've been doing some comparing of these two as well.

Let me just say, up front, my biases are towards sound quality over user interface and drag-and-drop file ease over being tethered to any software requirements.   Really, for me, if the sound quality is spectacular I can almost live with a command line prompt for a user interface and I've already spend about half of my adult life waiting for software interfaces to load songs (incorrectly, often), so I'll add them myself, thank you very much.

Furthermore, am I an audiophile?  Can't say, I guess - but I do highly value well reproduced music and get tremendous satisfaction discovering previously 'hidden' musical nuances in songs.    In this quest I have tried the ipod (briefly), the Zune (even more briefly, after experiencing their user 'interface'), a Sansa,the Ibiza (I know, seriously?),  several Cowon products, as well as the more recent HiSound Studio and the HiFiman.

I currently use Sennheiser HD800s for home listening and JA-16 IEMs for moving about.

So.....

I have to say I am very impressed with the Colorfly unit; both in terms of sound quality and build quality.  Compared to the HifiMan801, I feel the low end is more pronounced on the Colorfly (but not unnaturally so, just better), and the output power is certainly greater - able to easily drive the HD800s to an enjoyable level.   I am not a huge fan of heavy bass (I don't have a trunk full of sub-woofers in my car, for example), but I do want it to be on equal par with the high and mid end of the spectrum and I think the Colorfly accomplishes this balance well.     I have also made some 'new' musical discoveries on some of my favorite 'test' songs that I had not noticed when playing them on the HM801.

In addition, I've had some 'freezing' issues with the HM801 with songs that should play fine, requiring a hard restart to bring back to life; but I have yet to have one 'freeze' with the Colorfly unit.  The user interface, though not spectacular, is certainly usable and on par with that of the HM801.  I actually kind of like the unique interface design Colorfly has gone with; its fun to watch, and fits very well with the overall style of the unit.

As others have said, there is no gapless play, it won't do FLAC at 24/192 (but does WAV at this level) and there are a few 'clicks and pops' sometimes switching from one song to the next and/or upon unit on/off; but during song play it is perfectly quiet except for the tunes themselves and the 'clicks and pops' are not loud by any means, it's just that there isn't always complete silence between songs.  Also the 'built in' EQ settings probably won't be used much, but the upscaling really does work well, particularly when I want to quickly load a batch of MP3 rather than going back and ripping them to FLAC or WAV.

Anyway, for me, this has quickly become me 'go to' unit for portable, quality musical enjoyment without additional amplification, etc.  Its a great unit.

When I first got this huge wooden-copper box, I was shocked by its classical appearance, and more by its wide sound field and clear details (my headphone is AKG K514). As a hifi player designed purely for music, its sound surely worths the high price. Below are my experiences of listening to various music with it.

First is about my favourite album, Sam Lavine's Hifi Sax (WAV). When starting to play the " I Will Always Love You", the opening background can be told to be far away from the piano and sound crispy. Unlike IPC, C4 tears the last barrier between the music and my ears; the sound came out was not at all limited or sticky. Then the saxophone starts to play; it was not too amazing at first, I had to admit, but as the music goes on, the sound became a stream really smooth and poisonous and came very close and seperated with all other instruments. Moreover, when the music came to its high-frequency part, it's still nicely controlled and didn't felt too thin or light. Brightness was also expressed just-fine.

Then I tried C4 with Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of Heart. When the music started with piano, I could tell the places of each key, each note. Though C4 is accused for its shortage of expressing human voises (true that it's a bit far), but the details-the wind flow from the "over boost" singing and some like crying came very real. Then when in the middle the bass suddenly started, it was so close-like just in front of you. And the following mix sound of sea and wind was like from really far away, and was so not too strong till the end.

These are only my personal feeling about C4, and I'm just a student beginner in China, si don't take my words too much into consideration. But do note that C4's battery is really bad, and that it can't play 192kHz/24Bit Flac and Ape (will display "Play Error"). When first use it before it " burn in", there's some sudden current noise, just don't care too much-they just go away a few days after.