Astell&Kern AK500N Music Server

Astell&Kern calls their new server an "MQS Network Audio Player", where MQS stands for "Master Quality Sound". WIth all the talk at the show about Meridian's new MQA technology, at first I confused it for "Master Quality Authenticated" and did a double take. Nonetheless, A&K's new product is quite a stunner as presented both on a stand with amplifier and as shown here, on a table top by itself.

There is a CD slot on the front, for ripping discs and grabbing meta data à la Sooloos, and a slick touchscreen on top for controlling the various processes (in addition to an app that runs on Android pads). One unique feature that caught my eye was the use of a built-in battery that the company claims is for noise reduction. In other words, it plays off the charged battery and not the AC. I was told it could play 6-7 hours with a charge and automatically starts recharging when capacity drops below 4%.

Inside, the AK500N converts all PCM to DSD64 (24/352 PCM gets directly converted to DSD64 with no down-sampling). There is a 1TB SSD in the $12k base product, expandable up to 4TB and using RAID 5 for data safety (meaning you'll have 3TB available for music). Connections on back are complete with both balanced and unbalanced outputs, and there's a headphone jack and nice big volume knob on the right side of the box.

The AK500N will be available at the end of January, and based on looks and build quality alone, should find a ready market.

COMMENTS
James.Seeds's picture

Like many who appreciate music I've digitized my whole collection and play it through components through either Bluetooth or Wifi for convenience, it's not audiophile quality but sounds good enough to me. I can't recall but this topic may have been brought up a few years back, looking at the price tag on some of these music servers it beckons me to ask the why, why wouldn't I put together a computer with a i7 chipset, a hefty sound card and solid state memory for a fraction of the price, granted it may look out of place on the rack

ednazarko's picture

I built a music server a couple years ago with the best low noise and low interference components available at the time and slugged in a massive amount of RAM so that my music server software (JRiver) could slug large files into memory for play. In my main listening area, the server sends hardwired to my DAC and downstream system; in the rest of the house, I've got a mix of a couple of really small client PCs, Logitech Transporters and Touches. 24/96 streaming is plenty good (I have no DSD and very little at higher resolutions than 24/96). I can control the entire set of systems from my phones and tablets.

BTW, the PC doesn't have to look out of place on the rack. My next-generation build will be in a very small form factor and will sit on my AV rack. Didn't do that first time around because the tablet based wireless control wasn't really good, and I wanted to be able to rip on the main system box. Now I'm planning to rip on one of the many computers in my house and wirelessly load the files to the rack based system.

Jay Connor's picture

@James Seeds:

Well, system noise is much higher with a basic i7 computer. And music servers are almost always optimized for moving music data to a DAC.

Have you checked the prices for Baetis Windows based audio/video servers? They start at around $5000, and the new one is $14000.

I guess there's promising stuff being sold under the CocktailAudio name--but even those machines can cost $3000.

Resonsence labs has a $5000 DAC which has an OS and can act as bit of music server.

The point is that $12000 is not out of this wordl for this A&K device, assuming it performs well and is easy to use.

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