There are a million ways to take audio on the go these days. However, that inferior sound quality may keep you tethered to the house. Astell&Kern wants you to see the light of day on occasion, so they’ve released the AK100 II.
The AK100 II is a second-gen high-resolution audio player that can deliver every type of digital music file format available, but without distortion and degraded sound quality. That means you can listen to all sorts of high-resolution audio formats, including DSD, FLAC, WAV and DXD files, Apple Loseless and other lossy file formats—and have it all actually sound great. That’s because this tiny player packs in a Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC and a dedicated amp, which can give all of that music a massive boost above the typical on-the-go audio experience.
There’s also a 10-band EQ setting, so you can tweak the music. However, you won’t have to worry about anyone messing with your settings (even if that anyone is you); the AK100 II can support multiple EQs for multiple users—or genres.
This new model also has WiFi, which allows you to stream music to the player from a NAS or network-connected computer, so you don’t need to actually download any music. (Of course, you could also download that music, all via WiFi.) That WiFi also means you can add purchases directly to the player and/or snag over-the-air (OTA) software updates, without a computer.
Astell&Kern has given the AK100 II a 3.31-inch high-res AMOLED screen, which is nice for peeking at the Album View screen. This presents six albums on one screen compared to the previous AK100’s four, and includes a new search functionality.
Other features include a machined aluminum body that can take a beating, both playback and volume controls, 64GB of internal flash storage, and a microSD card slot (that fits the included 128GB microSD card). It can even be connected to a computer to be used as a USB DAC, so you can enhance the music on your Mac or PC.
Astell&Kern is selling the AK100 II high-resolution audio player now, priced at $899.
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