Astell & Kern's New Deluxe Hi-Res Music Player Packs A Mighty Musical Punch
First of all thanks to Mark Sparrow for this article.
How much do you enjoy music? Is it something that you have on in the background when working or is it something you simply can't live without and that you listen to incessantly? If you’re anything like me you’ll fall into the latter group. I’m infatuated with music and my collection of CDs ranges from early medieval polyphony all the way up to new music from around the world. Sometimes I’ll listen to music in the background when I’m working but for at least part of the day I will select an album or a playlist and settle down with a pair of headphones, shut my eyes and let the music carry me away. It’s better than meditation.
For those of us who are fanatical about our music, sound quality and clarity really matter. While I can listen to music on my iPhone, I really enjoy it best when I’m listening on my home audio system. So what can I do if I’m away from home or not in my music room and I really want to listen – rather than hear – to some music?
Well, for the past few weeks I’ve been treated to a music player that offers the same kind of performance as my main audio system but in a much smaller and more portable format. The Astell & Kern KANN is a new HI-Res music player from the geniuses at Korean company IRIVER. I looked at the AK70 and the AK Jr a while back, but this time I’m trying out the slightly more expensive and far more capable KANN to see what extra it offers for the money.
The KANN is a chunky piece of kit. This is no iPod Nano. It’s a trapezoidal shaped device that’s quite angular and no lightweight at nearly 10oz or 280g. The weight is mainly due to a huge 6200mAh battery that provides up to 15 hours of playback. This is definitely a music player for long-haul flights.
Finished in a unique ribbed aluminium, the KANN is available in a grey or blue finish. The first thing you notice about the design is the exquisite knurled volume control that sits like a cut-out cylinder in the right hand side of the player. It’s so tactile that you feel the urge just to turn it, just to feel its satisfying click. The screen is a 4-inch WVGA (480 x 800) touchscreen. It’s fairly responsive to touch but not the most detailed screen, but as it’s only displaying low-res album names and artwork, it’s absolutely fine. These devices aren’t mass-produced so it’s unlikely that Astell & Kern is going to be able to use something like Apple’s Retina screens.
Astell & Kern
The top and bottom plates of the Astell & Kern Kann are made from a Neoprene type material that’s smooth to the touch and which doesn’t show up fingerprints or scratches from trying to locate the headphone jack. It’s a thoughtful touch that keeps the player looking really nice. On the top plate there is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a 2.5mm jack for using a pair of balanced headphones. Bext to those two there’s another identical set of jack sockets that are for taking a line out, both normal and balanced, so you can hook up the KANN to an external amplifier. Finally, there’s a small power button for tuning the device on and off.
At the other end of the KANN, on the base plate, there are slots for Micro SD and SD cards. You can choose either format and they’re good for sizes up to 256GB in Micro SD and 512GB in SD, which should be enough for most people’s music collections, even in Hi-Res formats. There’s also 64GB of onboard storage, giving a total capacity at any one time of up to 832GB.
Also on the baseplate is a USB-C port for charging up the KANN and a Micro USB port that you can use to feed the digital signal into an external DAC or to use the KANN as an external DAC itself, taking the signal from another device. This is a very flexible device that can functions as a music player, a transport player or an external DAC. The possibilities are endless. It’s certainly a really good way of keeping your digital music collection on one device that you can either listen to portably or as the main transport centrepiece to your audio system, much as a CD player would have served 10 years ago.
Physical controls on the Astell & Kern KANN are quite minimal because most of the controls are on the device’s touch screen. Just under the screen there are some discreet buttons for stopping, playing, pausing, as well as Skip and Reverse buttons for navigating through your tracks.
At the heart of this gorgeous player sits a single AKM AK4490 DAC that can handle native DSD playback up to DSD256 (11.2mHz) as well as PCM audio playback up to 32bit/382kHz. Many other Hi-Res players will downsample files to 24-bit, but the KANN can handle these in native format.
The DAC feeds the signal through to a specially designed headphone amplifier that has normal and high gain settings. The KANN will drive headphones with very low impedance so there’s virtually no pair of headphones it can’t drive.
Astell & Kern
The fabulous design and amazing specifications are one thing, but can you really hear a difference listening to the KANN? Well, yes you KANN. I set up some blind testing as I’m very much aware that there can be a placebo effect when listening to audio. It’s all too easy to get carried away with the marketing hype and believe that expensive always means better.
To start with, the KANN has a very low floor level in its amplifier circuitry. There’s little or no noise in the background that you can hear on cheaper devices. If you want you can even use a pair of Astell & Kern’s balanced 4-pole headphones that will squeeze out any last vestiges of noise and has the strength to increase output with its double transmitting signals.
The sound quality from the KANN is going to be very much reliant on the source files. Of course it does a marvellous job playing Hi-Res formats like DSD and FLAC, if you have them, but it’s on the regular MP3 or AAC files that it really can show it’s pedigree. We all know there’s a trade off when we rip CDs to iTunes. A lot of detail gets thrown away but that’s the price we pay for carrying hundreds or even thousands of songs around in our pocket. But even with the lossy files, a great player like the KANN can breathe new life into your music collection.
The quality of the KANN's amplifier really drives a good pair of headphones and injects an incredible sense of musicality. I was listening to António Zambujo’s excellent ‘Até Pensei Que Fosse Minha’ album, ripped at Apple’s AAC setting, and the warmth and detail available, especially in the low acoustic bass notes was incredibly revealing. This is a player that can wring every last ounce of detail from any digital file and serve it up in a musical style that really draws you into the music. Normally, when I’m reviewing devices like this, I end up listening to the audio rather than the music; with the KANN I found myself listening to the music and forgetting the audio. I try to make mental notes as I’m listening, especially on how the music is being presented, but I found it very hard with the KANN as I kept drifting off into the music, forgetting that I was supposed to be producing a forensic and subjective review of how the player sounded.
Astell & Kern
In use the Astell & Kern KANN is a gorgeous piece of kit. Everything about it exudes high quality. Yes it’s on the chunky side but, frankly, I love music and I want long battery life and the best performance possible. I’d be happy to take the hit and put up with an extra 10oz of hardware in my work bag in order to be able to enjoy music reproduced as well as my main home hi-fi system does. And, on the plus side, it means I could move my music from my iPhone to a dedicated player and free up that incredibly expensive Apple RAM for other things like photos or apps.
As well as playing stored music, the KANN has dual band Wi-Fi built in so you can connect to a music streaming service like Tidal and Spotify via your internet connection. I particularly enjoyed listening to Hi-Res tracks from Tidal without having to rip music to my computer first. Streaming services can be quite a high monthly outlay but if you enjoy music as much as I do, it’s so convenient to be able to stream CD-quality tracks from almost any album ever recorded.
The Wi-Fi capability also enables you to access any DLNA/NAS servers on your home network really easily. Astell & Kern has also developed its AK Connect app which means you can access and stream the music already held on your smartphone. It’s a great idea and it works really well. As you’d expect, the KANN also includes Bluetooth capability so you can connect to wireless headphones using the apt-X and apt-X HD codecs.
Verdict: Astell & Kern have really pulled a chunky rabbit out of the hat with the release of the KANN. Yes it is quite large at nearly an inch thick and 10oz in weight, but if you really love your music you’re going to fall in love with the KANN. Its long battery life, superb build quality, exceptional musicality and masses of dual-media storage means it ticks every box you could ever want ticked. It’s fair to say that $999 is quite a bit to shell out on a digital music player, but for those of us who live to listen to music, this is a way of having the best digital music on the move or at home. It's the ultimate player and external DAC.
Prices: $999 / £899 / €1,099
More info: https://us.astellnkern.com
Specifications
- DAC: Single AKM AK4490 DAC
- Native DSD playback up to DSD256 (11.2mHz)
- PCM audio playback up to 32bit/382kHz
- Built-in amp with normal/high gain switch:.
- Output impedance: Single-ended 3.5mm: 0.65Ω / Balanced out 2.5mm: 1.3Ω
- Interfaces: USB Type-C support (charging & data transfer) and Micro USB for USB audio out and USB DAC
- Dedicated Line Out (2.5mm balanced & 3.5mm single-ended)
- 64GB internal flash memory
- Micro SD card support up to 256GB
- Full-size SD card support up to 512GB
- apt-X HD Bluetooth codec support
- 4" WVGA 800 x 480 LCD touch screen
- Battery: 6,200mAh 3.7V Li-Polymer battery (up to 15 hours)
Astell & Kern
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