Colorfly C4

What is it?

A portable hi-fi - and I say "portable hi-fi" rather than "portable music player" as it's the first portable player to play 24-bit/192kHz files.

It isn't cheap, but possibly the best sounding portable player and can also drive 300ohm headphones properly without the need for a portable headphone amp (some use it with Grado GS1000i for example). Also features a 1/4" jack socket which is very cool.

The whole player is designed for the best sound right down to the DAC used and circuit layout (Colorfly showed the latter on their website with the following illustration):

Anyone on these forums used or heard one yet?

Held one of those today at 32Ohm, but didn't listen to it as it's not on my wish list - still, with ALPS potentiometer and other quality parts it's certainly interesting, and with the steampunk look even lindsay t might like it

Want one.

Presumably you have, as you are selling them?

Is it right that it has no internal memory?

I'm more interested in the HiFiMan-601  and 801  models, not so tacky looking -N-

Great for Linn music fans then

Yes I've had one for a week now. It sounds very good indeed. Goes great with the sennheiser hd800, but also with the shure se530s. The balance is a bit bright but very smooth. Bass is very good and tight. Big step up from an iphone although not as user friendly of course. Quite sensitive to the quality of the recording. It will play high res up to 24/192. It has spdiff coaxial digital input as well as output (but only usb for file management/charging). I sometimes use it with a hiface usb converter to play games/films/music on my pc/laptop, which is even slightly better sounding I think.

Yeah, the Colorfly is very very good if you can get over the look. Marmite Audio for sure! Have you heard it yet AudioAffair?

We tried driving a set of HiFiMan HE-4's and it played them very well, the best part of the unit is the upsampling......what's your prefered upsampling rate peteAllen?

No it's not correct, it has an internal 32gig memory as standard.

Phil

I have a couple of these DAPs the first one since January. Have learnt a lot about them now and yes, without doubt, superb. Personally I find upsampling is not normally necessary providing good quality WAV files are used, 16/44 is perfectly good enough when extracted from my CDs. You can tell on this DAP that WAV is far better than FLAC.  I got both of my machines from Amazon U.K. and have to say, the level of support I've received reminds me of what was the norm back in the late 70s and 80s.

I havn't yet tried the S/PDIF in but have used it into a separate DAC and then into my valve pre/power amp - stunning!

Man, that's fugly.

Hi there people,

JSL Funk have been distributors for the C4 since January 2011 in the U.K. They are now also official distributors for Ireland and Poland and can ship worldwide. JSL Funk have listings for the Colorfly C4 on both eBay and Amazon where you can read some interesting reviews.