A&K AK500N + Devialet

[GuillaumeB]

Great post Confused.

Guillaume

[bmichels]

Thank you very very much Confused. You succeded in your mission....

I will look at the Aria Mini

[amabrok]

Anyway, I am off to the Bristol Sound and Vision show today, A&K are on the exhibitor's list with the AK500, I will certainly take a look.  Thanks for starting the thread, I may have missed this one at the show otherwise!

yes please share your thought on the Sound Quality of the AK500n.  

 And please can you try the headphone out: I will be interested to know if it is better/more powerful than the one of the AK240.   Re SQ, may be, with an headphone, you can compare AK240 & AK500 on the same music track ? this will be ideal to understand if the x4 price is justified and if the AK500 is really at "desktop" level in term of SQ..

Also, please can you ask the A&K team when it will be possible to stream QOBUZ on the AK500 like it is possible now on the AK240 ? and if we will be able to purchase/download music files from Qobuz with the AK500 (without the help of a PC/mac, the purchased music file going directly into the internal SSD)

thanks a lot, we are all waiting patiently for you to achieve your "mission" :-)

Thanks to the power of my iPhone 6 plus I did manage to pick up details of my "mission" whilst having a quick coffee in the bar at lunchtime.  The Astell & Kern display area was in a large open area of the show together with many other exhibitors.  This was quite a noisy area and they were running the AK500 through some teeny tiny desktop speakers, although you could hear it, it was absolutely impossible to make any judgment of sound quality.  However, they also had a large display of their portable players, with a large range of Audeze headphones.  Now I am not a headphone expert, but coincidentally I was visiting the show with someone who is looking to upgrade headphones and was keen to try more or less everything that was available for a listen at the show.  I joined in and listened to a lot of headphones yesterday!  I think the best I listened to for the money was the Audeze EL-8, which was being demoed with the SK-240, a superb combination.  Now the AK500 does have headphone sockets for the traditional 1/4" Jack the smaller 3.5mm jack sizes.  Does it sound different to the AK240, well not really.  Maybe if you had a long time to do very careful listening in a quieter environment you might be able to discern something.  However, the sales guy did inform me that the AK500 and AK240 share identical output circuitry, which is perhaps a little disappointing.  Although as I said, the AK240 with the Audeze was one of best portable / headphone combination I heard in the day.  Miles better than say the Acoustic Research / Sennheiser combo, but is this down to the cans or the player? 

The UK price for the AK500 is £9000.  Now the ultimate test as to whether or not it is worth the cash would be how it compares when  linked to a Devialet to say the Totaldac D1 or similar.  One point to note, you are paying for a Dac, a volume control dial on the side and other stuff that you don't really need.  For example, when I saw the pictures of the thing, I did like the nice built in touch screen display and thought it looked rather cool.  However, seeing the AK500 in the flesh I got a rather different impression.  The look and feel of the screen is not as good a say an iPhone or a decent tablet, to me it was maybe similar to an upmarket / aftermarket satnav unit, and do you really want a screen anyway? An iPad on your sofa works well for most folk.  In fact the whole device was like this, the look and feel of the plastic case and the big volume dial on the side was more like you would expect from a budget bedroom system, or maybe a games console, to me it looked more like a £500 product rather than a £9000 device.  Frankly, in my opinion it would need to smash rivals into submission with respect to sound quality to justify it's price.  Maybe it will, but until it can prove this aspect of it's performance, I just don't get it.  I did ask if it was likely that a cheaper DACless version planned, the answer was that they were looking to bring out related products at a lower price point but these would also be all in one solutions complete with DAC and so on.

So unless it ultimately proves itself to be king of sound quality, I just don't get the thing.  Maybe as an all in one desktop solution for the very wealthy?  Even then, won't this desk most likely have a computer or laptop on it?  So why do you need a box with a touchscreen on it?

Now I have written all this without having any idea of it's ultimate sound quality potential.  It is available now in the UK and home demo's are offered.  Just get in touch with your local dealer of the portable players and apparently, they will facilitate setting up a home demo.  Maybe it is the king of SQ?  Time will tell, but until then, my £9k is staying invested.

On a related topic, I did also see the Aria music streamer range at the Show.  This was more interesting to me.  They has a full size Aria steamer with 2TB storage and built in CD ripping for £3799.  (DAC free)  Plus an Aria mini, which looks like a classy iPad stand, which was £2295 with 2TB or £2795 with 1TB SSD.  These did at least look like they were worth somewhere near there asking price!  Plus the iPad control app looked good and appeared to work well. (looks very similar to Apple remote)  In fact both the Aria streamers looked like they would make good companions with a Devialet.  Obviously this leads to the question of how they compare to the Aurender and other obvious rivals, this one for  new thread I think!  (Although the Aria sales guy said the Aria is better, surprise surprise)

On looks / product form alone, I would have taken the full sized Aria home, rather than the AK500.

Thanks Confused for sharing

It is kind of surprising to know that built quality is not to notch. A&K had excellently built portable players and I was not existing anything less for the 500N.

To your point,this has to deliver absolutely superb sound quality to earn a place in a hifi system


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Confused]

Yes, I was a little surprised by the thing considering it was a £9k product. For example, the volume control dial on the side felt very cheap. Compare this with the Devialet remote! It was almost like it was from a different company when you consider the portable products.

[bmichels]

Yes, I was a little surprised by the thing considering it was a £9k product.  For example, the volume control dial on the side felt very cheap.  Compare this with the Devialet remote!  It was almost like it was from a different company when you consider the portable products.

I believe it was a prototype ? Indeed, the AK500 is supposed to be made out of a big Aluminium block, and weight 11 kg !! This one was may be a plastic pre-version ?!

see here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u5q2wsmxt8

"A large block of aluminum undergoes a variety of manufacturing steps."

"A 5-axis machining process is used to create the unique front fascia of the AK500N. The AK500N's fascia simply cannot be created with an ordinary machining process. The aluminum block is rotated at different angles and carefully milled to create a complex design in a truly unique process."

[Confused]

Yes, I was a little surprised by the thing considering it was a £9k product.  For example, the volume control dial on the side felt very cheap.  Compare this with the Devialet remote!  It was almost like it was from a different company when you consider the portable products.

I believe it was a prototype ?  Indeed, the AK500 is supposed to be made out of a big Aluminium block !!!

see here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u5q2wsmxt8

"A large block of aluminum undergoes a variety of manufacturing steps."

"A 5-axis machining process is used to create the unique front fascia of the AK500N. The AK500N's fascia simply cannot be created with an ordinary machining process. The aluminum block is rotated at different angles and carefully milled to create a complex design in a truly unique process."

That would explain a lot!  Strange the sales guy at the show didn't mention this.  Perhaps I looked so wise and sounded so knowledgeable he assumed I knew this already!

[bmichels]

Yes, I was a little surprised by the thing considering it was a £9k product.  For example, the volume control dial on the side felt very cheap.  Compare this with the Devialet remote!  It was almost like it was from a different company when you consider the portable products.

I believe it was a prototype ?  Indeed, the AK500 is supposed to be made out of a big Aluminium block !!!

see here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u5q2wsmxt8

"A large block of aluminum undergoes a variety of manufacturing steps."

"A 5-axis machining process is used to create the unique front fascia of the AK500N. The AK500N's fascia simply cannot be created with an ordinary machining process. The aluminum block is rotated at different angles and carefully milled to create a complex design in a truly unique process."

That would explain a lot!  Strange the sales guy at the show didn't mention this.  Perhaps I looked so wise and sounded so knowledgeable he assumed I knew this already!

Is it the same very knowledgeable sales guy who told you that " ...the AK500 and AK240 share identical output circuitry," ?

[Confused]

It was the same guy, yes!

[bmichels]

It was the same guy, yes!

so there is hopes ...

Indeed, this review from an Australian Blog seems to like it VERY much !

[Confused]

One thing I forgot to mention - Qubuz integration is already in place.