[nickosiris]

...neither does it play 24-96 FLAC, the main reason I'm not giving it a try.
 
Difficult to talk about something I've never heard, but Buckie's report puts me off too. Sounds likely that I'd end up preferring my HM-801 anyway, and that does play 24-96 FLAC. Very well.

 

[lwd]

I haven't tried 24-96 FLAC, but I know it doesn't do 24-192. Not really a big problem for me though as I only own a few records in that format and I just convert them to WAV. It does play WAV at 24-192 and that sounds fantastic. Does any portable player play 24-192 in FLAC? Not sure.
 
Tried it last night plugged in my Stax gear. Amazing clarity, and wasn't bright at all in that context. Maybe some people would find the detail tiring, but personally I like it. Anyway I will definitely keep mine but will happily try out the 801 and the new iBasso when I get a chance.

 

[Buckie]

I have now paired it with the AKG K3003 and those do take some edge off it, surprisingly, given that the AKGs are themselves on the brighter side.
Higher resolution FLACs indeed don't play. No wait - they do play - harsh NOISE!
A funny thing - the LCD screen interferes with the audio. Somehow they forgot to isolate the wires. So whenever the screen is on you hear annoying digital chirping. It's not related to the main signal path however because the volume control doesn't change the noise's volume in any way. Anybody else hears this or is it my unit? Just pull the slider all the way down... Also it easily catches interference from any mobile phones that happen to be nearby.
The battery life is atrocious. Guess even if there's nothing being played the battery is still drained unless you turn it off with the red button. I normally get about two hours of play out of it. Maybe there's some trick to charging?
 
Still, the sound is disappointedly thin so if you're into lush sound don't even consider it. One would think that something made out of wood would sound warm but it's quite the contrary.

 

[lwd]

If you're only getting two hours battery life then there is something wrong with your unit. I get about 9 - 10 hours which is what it says in the specs.
 
Like I said, it's not perfect, it's a bit of a rough diamond in my opinion. But for me the sound is just neutral and clear, so I think you're being more than a little harsh.

 

[Buckie]

 
Quote:

Does any portable player play 24-192 in FLAC? Not sure.

You may be surprised, but Nokia N9 plays those just fine. Any FLAC from 44.1 all the way up to 192. The only thing it doesn't get quite right is 5.1 channel FLACs which play in mono.
What you get on the headphone output is up to debate of course, but at least the audio chip inside of it is capable of true 192 kHz output according to its spec sheet.
 
192 kHz audio is mostly useless anyway, more so in a portable player! 96 kHz is more than enough for all your audio needs.
 
As for being a "rough diamond", well, in my view you don't go to a jewelry boutique to pay full price for rough work. If it's rough, it should be priced accordingly.
 
Anyhow, my friend loves it... for now.
 

 

[Buckie]

And FLAC is not the only format that Colorfly chokes on. It doesn't read AIFF, last night I tried converting all those to WAVs in Max and those do play, however at the very end of the track there's 1 second of ear raping noise. Perhaps I didn't choose the right WAV format? Should it be Microsoft's WAV maybe? It's all somewhat frustrating.

 

[lwd]

I've been using the default WAV format on Max with no problems. edit: Actually... now I see I was using WAV (Microsoft)
 
I haven't tried converting any AIFFs though. Sounds like the problem could be in the conversion process.

 

[voon]

Weird thing. Looking up the listed "super components" on mouser.com .. I get maybe around 50$ with everything. How's this any better than a good Cowon player?

 

[Buckie]

Originally Posted by voon /img/forum/go_quote.gif

Weird thing. Looking up the listed "super components" on mouser.com .. I get maybe around 50$ with everything. How's this any better than a good Cowon player?

It's nothing surprising really, there's just not that much that anyone could put inside a portable player. Apple for example has a $461 margin on iPhone 4S according to iFixit and they sell LOADS of those. Colorfly has therefore about EUR 650 margin. The problem is while the iPhone is a superbly polished and cohesive device, Colorfly feels like something quickly slapped together. It's probably still better, but not 15 times better.

 

[lwd]

Quote:

Weird thing. Looking up the listed "super components" on mouser.com .. I get maybe around 50$ with everything. How's this any better than a good Cowon player?

As Buckie has pointed out, you can say that about just about anything. The cost of the components is only a small picture of the puzzle. You've got the inital cost of designing the unit, the cost of putting it together, marketing, distribution etc... plus the dealers want a cut and they want to make money themselves. That said at RRP of $800 they will probably make good money if it takes off and they sell alot of units (that's what being in business is about). But if it doesn't they will probably lose money. It aint that simple!

 

[voon]

Quote:

As Buckie has pointed out, you can say that about just about anything. The cost of the components is only a small picture of the puzzle. You've got the inital cost of designing the unit, the cost of putting it together, marketing, distribution etc... plus the dealers want a cut and they want to make money themselves. That said at RRP of $800 they will probably make good money if it takes off and they sell alot of units (that's what being in business is about). But if it doesn't they will probably lose money. It aint that simple!

Yes, but if the hardware can be had for real cheap, Id' only be willing to pay the extra for complex and well designed software behind it. But on a player? Where perfect quality Equalizers, Codecs and everything can just be taken and glued together? I really don't know why anyone would pay the extra here, what's this companys great achievement over others?
 
But yes, we're in the hifi world, where people WANT to pay 40000 USD for an amp glued together with a few 5 Dollar magical capacitors on an already existing and known design....
 

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Yes, but if the hardware can be had for real cheap, Id' only be willing to pay the extra for complex and well designed software behind it. But on a player? Where perfect quality Equalizers, Codecs and everything can just be taken and glued together? I really don't know why anyone would pay the extra here, what's this companys great achievement over others?
 
But yes, we're in the hifi world, where people WANT to pay 40000 USD for an amp glued together with a few 5 Dollar magical capacitors on an already existing and known design....
 

Pssst, have you heard the Teclast T51 ? Its crap on virtually every criteria bar the sound quality, which is very, very good. And it costs peanuts.
 
That said, anyone who has ever coded anything beyond 'Hello World' knows that good software hides a mountain of work under the hood, and thats what iOS does, for mine. Compare the UI on the T51 to the iTouch/iPhone, and its pretty clear that Teclast didn't spend too much on R&D - Apple would have spent millions upon millions getting iOS to its current state. None of that helps Colorfly - they've managed to bring out an expensive player with a crap UI (fwir) and sound quality which seems to polarise many who have heard it. Lets hope iBasso can learn from the players that have gone before the DX100 and get it right straight out of the box.
 

 

[dkash]

Hi,
 
Does anyone who actually owns the C4 know how to bloody update the firmware??
 
I put the .iso file in the music folder and it doesn't recognize the file. It does even display it. 
 
There is no support website for it either. 
 
Any help is greatly appreciated. 
 
Thanks,
 
Danny

 

[Darnor]

Hi,

Does anyone who actually owns the C4 know how to bloody update the firmware??

I put the .iso file in the music folder and it doesn't recognize the file. It does even display it. 

There is no support website for it either. 

Any help is greatly appreciated. 

Thanks,

Danny

Hi Danny,

You probably figured it out yourself. But I'll post the link anyway: http://www.colorfly.eu/download.html

Spoiler: Instructions (direct copy of the website)

Firmware Upgrade Instruction

To make a backup of the files in the internal storage. In the process of upgrade exist the risk of being damaged, please make a backup of the important files

The upgrade process needs adequate power to support. If the power supply failed in the process of upgrade, there will lead to a failure, and unexpected result. Maybe you should send it to manufacturer for repairing. Player firmware upgrade will take about 2-3 minutes. The methods of ensuring adequate power show as follows:
(1) the player is full of power.
(2 )using the USB cable to charge the player in the process of upgrade. * when you upgrade in the state of power shortage, make sure the performance of the USB cable is reliable

Pull out the micro SD/TF card. prepare the upgrade firmware what the update needs. The name of the firmware is CFFWPKG.ISO, Colorful Firmware Package Image. The RAR or ZIP file format should be decompressed first.

Start upgrade operation Connect the player to PC and copy the colorfly Firmware Package Image (CFFWPKG.ISO) to the floppy disk root directory of the internal storage. Pull out the USB cable and power off the player. Restart the player. The player will detect the new firmware. If the version of the new firmware conforms to the upgrade request, an interface which shows the relevant information of the new firmware will appear. At the moment, you can select Yes to upgrade.

When the interface shows 100%, it means the upgrade is complete. And the player will restart when the interface displays Restart System. If the player could not restart automatically when the Restart System had appeared for a minute, you can press the Reset button to restart the device by yourself. Generally, upgrade will not damage the original contents. If the file is damaged, you can restore them from the backup file. * You can format the disk and restore the files from the backup files to avoid the damaged files.

Spoiler: Short version

So all I did was:
- Downloading the latest firmware from the site. (which is actually 1.0.1.9)
- Pulled out the SD card
- Connected it to my PC. (Windows 7)
- Copied the CFFWPKG.ISO file onto the colorfly. (Into the root directory, not a sub-folder)
- Disconnected it from my PC
- Restarted it (it then should detect the update by itself)
- After choosing yes it started to update

- After finishing the update it hung on "Restart System" so I had to restart it manually using the reset button.

Hope that helps.

As for the device:
I just received it today and really enjoy listening to it with my Beyerdynamic T5p. Well to be honest all I had before was my HTC Desire which just can't compare to the Colorfly or any source gear designed to just play music.

I really like the look of it and it feels really good and the sound is great. The UI response is kinda slow but that isn't that much of a downside at least for me. Also the volume slider really needs a little bit of force for it to move so moving around with it in my jacket works just fine. What didn't quite work in consolidation with my T5p was the 1/8 inch connector but that's probably an error with the T5p cause it works just fine with my DTX300. 1/4 inch connector works fine.

Please excuse grammar and spelling errors as english is not my native language.

Kind regards,
- Darnor

 

[Wizzard2007]

 
Quote:

Hi, Does anyone who actually owns the C4 know how to bloody update the firmware?? I put the .iso file in the music folder and it doesn't recognize the file. It does even display it. There is no support website for it either. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Danny

 
 
I have the same problem Firmware 1.00.01.08, can't upgrade it. Does anyone know the solution?