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As I guessed in an earlier thread, the C30 apparently uses the Sigmatel 3770 combined with a high-powered amp. This is the same philosophy behind the Amp3, the clunky player causing so much hot & heavy breathing over on Head Fi. Unlike the Amp3, the C30 also tosses in BBE sound enhancement, the much-loved technology in most of Cowon's players. Done right, this could be a very nice sounding player and, even better, Cube seems to have given up on the 32GB and brought pricing down to a more palatable. 4GB/299, 8GB/399, 16GB/599. Obviously, 8GB is the sweet spot there.

Notice the last photo in the ZOL link; not sure what's up with that, but "Designed in Korea" is something you never see on the back of a Chinese player.

C30 on PCOnline

C30 on ZOL

imp3 BBS post purportedly showing a BBE engineer working on the C30

A couple of Cube players say 'designed in korea' not sure how true that is, but Cube do have a few models that are more unique than the standard that we see from other makers.

I have a sample coming soon, will see how nice the sound is on this.

Is that a microsd slot or is it just some reflection?

looks like it

i really doubt sigmatel will surpass wolfson, no matter how many software enhancements you through at it... besides, wolfson players hardly have any enhancements except for playFX which is a joke, i wonder if that's because of the chipset's limitation or firmware limitation, i'd love to see the T51 in sony's or cowon's engineers hands to see what they can come up with

Well not really, it depends on the amp that they have used, that can factor a lot into the sound, this player probably won't trump the t51/s:flo2 just due to the hefty amount of hardware the t51/sflo2 has, but it would still probably sound much nicer than most other players.

Yes, that's a card slot. The first product announcement back in the beginning of December mentioned it, but seems to have been off the (spec) radar since then.

If you believe the hyperbole on Head Fi, the SigmaTel SoC is capable of stellar sound given the right design. No telling how the Cube is going to stack up, but the key here is BBE, which is in a completely different league from PlayFX.

By the way, I believe PlayFX is part of the Rockchip package, not Wolfson. With their latest codecs, Wolfson offers something they call ReTune, a full parametric equalizer function. Too bad Chinese companies are stuck in the rut of the WM8987 and 8988; Wolfson has much more interesting ultra low-power codecs on offer these days.

It's true, though, that the amp is going to be the make or break factor. It's a cheap part, so hopefully it'll just boost the signal to absurd levels (130mW???) and not color the sound too much. That way BBE can do its stuff with the generally good SigmaTel sound signature.

I really hope this Cube turns out well. I like the extreme pocket sizing and simple, music-focused design without all the bells & whistles. Hopefully they've done a bit more with the UI; the C30 looks like it carries a small OLED screen, which could mean something rudimentary like the Teclast X19 (and that Amp3) both of which use the bare minimum UI that SigmaTel provides out of the box.

I am guessing the UI will be very similar to the N1, what i do not like about the player is the reflective tint that will be ontop of the screen, i do not understand why players are made this way, the tint just acts as an obstruction.

FYI,
Rocoo , the new mp3 player from HisoundAudio (A company that created amp3), use the same housing with cube C30 , but i don`t know if it is rebranded or OEM

Interesting info. Hope to have a review when Raz gets his hands on the sample !

More pics here (http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... 5TdgDK2xig), some where you can see the micro SD slot more clearly. I'll be waiting for Raz's review as well:D

Really, Hisound has been in touch with me about their rocoo and the rendering they sent me didn't look anything like the C30, it looks more like the amp3, but smaller.

Well i just got some pictures of the new Rocoo and it does look exactly like the C30, not sure who is buying of who. I have a feeling that the two maybe working jointly, Hisound for the actual hardware design and Cube for the nice casing design and possible mass manufacturing.

maybe it is Hisound Studio I, an amp with dap function, some said the size is similar with amp3 but thinner?

Well on their Rocco series they say they will have 3 variation all increasing with price and sq, so maybe there will be some design variations between the different rocco models.

Raz, has your sample arrived? Are you planning to sell the c30?

Can you confirm about the UI? The N1 UI was bad, doesn't support playing by folder, which makes it totally useless to me. If this one is the same, I'll skip.