Media Server Reviews

People often ask me how I listen to music when I travel. I play MP3s on my iPhone.

That answer always surprises, and sometimes disappoints: "You listen to MP3s?"

The response is moderately tempered when I add that I use good in-ear monitors (IEMs)—either Westone ES50s (ca $995) or Jerry Harvey Audio Laylas (ca $2725), both with eartips made from molds of my ear canals.

Those multiple-balanced-armature IEMs perform incredibly well, and the custom eartips make seals that are measurably better at rejecting noise than the noise-canceling, over-ear phones worn by Bose-fanboy peacocks who show them off as they strut up and down airplane aisles.

Music's the main thing, not sound, especially in the air, and since just about every new LP I buy these days includes a card for an MP3 download, I put those files on the phone and I'm good to go.

But lately I've been thinking about better-sounding portable music than my phone can give me. For one thing, I find using iTunes unpleasant (and with each update, Apple makes it worse), and even my phone's 64GB of storage doesn't give me enough room for all the music and pictures I'd like to have on hand.

Before my last long plane trip—last June, from New York to LA, for the first Los Angeles Audio Show—I hurriedly added some new files to the phone and removed others. I could swear I hit Sync but there was some kind of glitch: I took my seat on the plane, opened iTunes, and my phone's record shelves were empty.

I was at LAAS to cover analog, but I also made sure to attend, with John Atkinson and Jana Dagdagan, Astell&Kern's press conference. The company's president, Owen Kwon, was there for the US debut of A&K's new flagship portable player, the A&ultima SP1000 ($3499). But better sound on the road must have been on my mind even before LA—last May, at High End in Munich, where the SP1000 made its world debut, I'd stopped by A&K's floor display and listened to it for longer than I could spare.

I'd heard an older A&K player through Stax electrostatic headphones a few years before, at a friend's, and hadn't been bowled over. Through the A&K, my friend's high-resolution files sounded distinctly better than the MP3s I'd been listening to through my phone, but a particular sonic character was audible with every file. Once I'd heard it, I couldn't not hear it, and I didn't like it.

In Munich, I listened to snatches of a dozen or so files through the A&ultima SP1000 and heard none of that character. I was primed. After learning more about the new player at LAAS, I was ready for a home listen. Kwon obliged.

Do I need a 32-bit-capable player with no recordings available at that bit depth. Can any portable audio player be worth $3499?

Exactly Who Are Astell&Kern?
Astell&Kern is a creation of the Korean company IRiver, Ltd., founded in 1999 by seven former Samsung employees who hoped to capitalize on the future of portable digital audio at the dawn of the MP3 devolution. Steve Jobs captured that market for Apple by integrating the iPod MP3 player with a virtual online music store, iTunes, leaving IRiver in the same lurch that makers of point-and-shoot cameras found themselves in when Jobs included a point-and-shoot in his Apple iPhone. Just as camera makers, to survive, were then forced to reinvent themselves as purveyors of high-quality, high-tech, high-resolution single-lens reflex cameras equipped with high-performance lenses and push quality on an "on the cheap" audience, IRiver has, with Astell&Kern, gone way upscale in build quality and performance, sonic and otherwise.

Simplicity Without, Riches Within
You'd expect a $3499 portable player to come in a deluxe package, and the A&ultima's SP1000's wooden box did not disappoint. More important, the SP1000 itself, available machined in stainless steel or copper, is a luxury item that seems to be finished to the highest jewelry standard. A battery charger isn't included, but you can use your computer, or the 5V charger that comes with an iPhone.

Weighing nearly a pound (13⁵/₈oz) and measuring about 5¼" long by 3" wide by ⁵/₈" deep, the SP1000 is at the upper limit of what I consider "portable" in a player—but even in its leather case (included), it fits neatly in my shirt pocket. Most of the front panel is taken up by a 5", high-resolution (1280x760), LCD touchscreen. The SP1000 is turned on and off by pushing the generously sized, knurled knob that occupies a wedge-shaped gap machined out of the right edge of the thick metal case. This knob also turns the LED screen off and on, and spinning it adjusts the volume level, which can also be set by sliding a finger across the screen. The player booted up in less than a minute; its auto-shutdown feature can be set to turn it off after period of inactivity whose length is defined by the user, to save the battery charge.

Three small, circular buttons flush with the left edge control the Previous/Rewind, Next/Fast Forward, and Replay/Pause functions. On the bottom edge is a USB 3.0 Type C input for fast data transfer and charging, and a port for external devices; on the top edge are two minijacks (3.5mm headphone/optical and 2.5mm balanced out), and a slot for a microSD card of up to 256GB capacity; the SP1000 also has 256GB of built-in memory.

The SP1000's outward simplicity belies the versatility packed inside. The player supports playback of the AAC, AIFF, ALAC, APE, DFF, DSF, FLAC, MP3, OOG, WAV, WMA formats—and, for all I know, E-I-E-I-O. PCM sample rates range from 8 to 384kHz at 8, 16, 24, or 32 bit depth. DSD is supported up to 11.2MHz (DSD256).

Also included are 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (2.4GHz), v.4.1 Bluetooth (A2DP, AVRCP, aptX HD), multiband parametric equalization, over-the-air firmware upgradability, and integrated Tidal and Groovers+ streaming. Tidal and Groovers+ are the only stores currently supported, though in the future others may be. I'm not sure Groovers+ is available in the US, and I didn't try to use it. I think it came with the demo unit.

The AK Connect feature allows the SP1000, via Wi-Fi, to access and stream and/or download music files stored on computers on the same network, and play them back through speakers, A/V receivers, and/or other network-connected devices. This requires downloading to your computer from A&K's website the MQS Streaming Server software (not to be confused with MQA).

Another built-in feature (USB DAC) allows the SP1000 to be recognized as a soundcard by a Windows or Mac computer. Music stored on the computer can then be played through the SP1000's headphone jack. The USB function also allows the SP1000 to be connected to a portable USB DAC with a special USB-C cable (not included).

In theory, CDs can be ripped directly to the SP1000 using an optional A&K CD ripper, but at the time of writing this was described on the A&K website as "sold out," with no price listed. I never got to try one.

Packed inside the A&ultima SP1000 are an Octa-core CPU, an AKM AK4497EQ dual DAC, and a VCXO Reference clock. A&K's specifications include: a signal/noise ratio of 120dB at 1kHz (unbalanced) and 122dB at 1kHz (balanced); THD+noise of 0.0005% at 1kHz (unbalanced) and 0.0008% at 1kHz (balanced); and clock jitter of 30 picoseconds (typical) or 200 femtoseconds (VCXO Reference clock).