Astell&Kern launches stylish CA1000 headphone amp/player

In 2021 Astell & Kern launched a flurry or products, and information technology'southward started the new year's day equally it means to go on, with the declaration of the ACRO CA1000 headphone amplifier.

In true A&1000 form, there's more to the ACRO CA1000 than meets the eye, functioning equally a compact desktop amplifier with digital sound player capabilities. The pattern is typical A&K, angular in shape with an aluminium body and tactile volume cycle.

You can plug in a variety of headphones through its iii.5mm, half-dozen.35mm unbalanced, and ii.5mm four.4mm balanced headphone outputs. The amp also supports an array of counterpart and digital connections with Optical, Coaxial, USB-C and RCA input/outputs.

The digital sound player aspect manifests itself through the tilting 4.one-inch touchscreen. The screen can tilt upwardly to 60-degrees, with Astell & Kern saying it offers easy operation of the player and amp settings with its Android Bone interface. While not as portable as an bodily player, information technology'southward modest and just virtually calorie-free enough (919g) to be able to take with you.

With a big 8400mAh battery, the ACRO CA1000 tin can final for x.5 hours and supports fast charging if information technology needs a boost: an 60 minutes for fifty% battery, and 2.5 hours for a full charge.

Storage is a significant 256GB, only if that'southward not enough, information technology can exist expanded up to 1TB via a microSD. Replay Gain functionality automatically and uniformly adjusts volume playback upwards to 24-bit/192 kHz, so you won't need to bear upon that dial when listening to music.

At the heart of the ACRO CA1000 is a Quad ES9068AS DAC that A&G claims "delivers a clear, detailed and balanced sound without distortion." High-resolution sound playback upwards to native DSD512 and 32bit/384 kHz is supported, with the visitor'due south Teraton Alpha technology enabling a sonic performance close to the original audio through a combination of "effective power dissonance removal, efficient power management and amplification with minimal distortion."

The Crossfeed part aims to reduce ear fatigue when listening to music over long periods past blending the left and right channels similar to how a stereo speaker operates. Shelf Cutoff, Shelf Gain, and Mixer Levels are adjustable to customise the sound how you like.

The CA1000'southward BT Sink function allows for information technology to be connected to an external device over Bluetooth to play back music on the headphone amplifier, with Bluetooth v.0 also supported to heed to music with a pair of headphones. 24-flake aptX Hd and LDAC codecs mean yous can listen to higher quality audio over Bluetooth, while the AK File Drib allows for wireless transmission of files to other devices on the same network to make music management more convenient.

The price, however, won't be user-friendly to virtually. Set at £i,999 / $2,100 / €ii,299, the Astell & Kern ACRO CA1000 goes on sale February 2022.