[Impression] Cube C30 - Page 5

Thanks ClieOS. I knew I could count on you to know stuff like that! :)

the player DOES sound shrill & spitty in the treble as mentioned when you first break it out, but it warms up nicely after a dozen or so hours of break in with very nice & effortless detail.

 

i'm not a fan of the lack of an english owner's manual. the player drove me nuts for the better part of an hour trying to figure out the navigation or even find the "hidden" on/off & scroll "buttons" that are actually the edges of the faceplate. i couldn't find ANY tutorials for it or the gumstick etc. but eventually figured that part out. it was a little stressful too when i accidentally switched the language to chinese, but eventually found english again by systematically scrolling through settings. it would have been VERY hard to fix if it happened when i was still trying to learn the menus.

 

the headphones that i got were busted. one ear loop is longer than the other and one of the channels was dead. that isn't really an issue for me though as i only use over the ear cans and can't stand in the ear phones.

 

my biggest problem though is glitching. when i first started using it, it would stutter at the beginning of every song. that stopped after it seized up and i had to reset it, but now it will blast the first second of every song when playing at lower volumes and even at full volume, will do the same thing after an hour or two of playing when the volume drops. i just tried looking into rock boxing it to cure this unforgivable glitching or find a firmware update that fixes it. it happens on EVERY mp3 and is very distracting. i make my own mp3s from vinyl etc. and trim off all silence at the beginning & end of each song. unless i find a way to fix this, i'll have to just go back and re-do ALL of my mp3s (320k) and add however many fractions of a second needed to start songs after the glitching.

 

aside from that impossible to fix glitching, i really do like the SQ. it has nice bass extension and a clear extended treble that reveals even more details with mp3s than my "professional" ART external soundcard playing the original WAVs! part of that could also be the AKG K44s i just bought, but with the player i'm hearing a lot of hi-hats i never heard before in songs i've listened to dozens of times before. i also like the heavy solid feel of the C30. i wish it had more volume. when you boost the bass, the rest of the frequencies quiet like there's a bass limiter on the unit. even with 115dB efficiency, it's hard to get loud bass.

 

does anyone know how to fix the glitching so the volume doesn't drop at the start of every song or the overall volume to drop after just a couple hours use? i'd rather have a player that can just do 8 hours playback than twice that with volume dropoffs. i've turned the BBE off and only use bass boost for whatever that's worth but i don't think i use boost anymore as it cuts overall volume and i use the player on noisy buses. i'm not really a fan of external amps. when you add all the extra cable you need to carry for full sized cans (why don't they make portable versions with 3 foot cords for ANY quality phone?) an extra box in the pocket is too clunky. i can live with slightly lower volumes than i want, but just go nuts over the glitching. part of the volume issue though has to be that i limit the volume on CD tracks to 50% to volume match less compressed vinyl tracks that sound quieter even with 98% volume peaks. that's ironic. CDs have more dynamic range, but they're more compressed than vinyl.

 

despite the tiny screen, i like navigation on the cube WAY MORE than i did the ANNOYING sansa fuze i had to return because that one totally refuses to do folders and demands users make "album tags" for every song making juggling songs & navigation clunky. i expected it to operate more like my cowon i5 that i miss a lot. i do like that the cube does folders even if it takes a few extra clicks to get to them even if it doesn't show lists of 20 or so songs in a folder like i expected the sansa to. i never knew players had such radically different personalities & features.

Edited by zeroemission - 1/30/12 at 3:04am

i'm going to create a new thread about the glitching

 

I experienced that bug as well

 

and another firmware bug on mine is the BBE presets sometimes go missing (only normal equalizer present). well, they're back after some moment, but waiting for it when I'm about to change the presets is kinda frustrating.

 

and about build quality, I don't know whether mine is bad batch or something,, yesterday the round button suddenly went off inside without going back,, and it took around 20 minutes to put it back since this thing doesn't have any screw which would make it easier for me to look inside. it happened 2 times yesterday and once today,,, anyone experienced the same?

 

*I own this for less than 2 months

Edited by ezunyan - 2/20/12 at 12:44am

 

 

I think BBE only works on mp3 files but it wont work on lossless files.

^
yeah, i just realized that ~a month after posted that lol


also it seems the inside part of my button which hold the button to stay at its position is broken,, found a trick to fix it by rotating the button 90 degrees ccw lol.
the only problem about it is when i press "play/pause" button, vol-down is pressed as well.