Best Portable Audio Player In The World

For a while we have had the likes of FiiO, Cowon, Colorfly et al all offering high end portable players that aim to give you the best possible sound from your music and headphones respectively. All of this from a small device that can fit easily into your pocket and isn’t much bigger than you can come to expect from your mobile smartphone.  The new kid on the block is the Acoustic Research M2 offering a super fast

Acoustic Research M2 Hi-Res Portable Music Player

processor, 64GB internal storage and expandable Micro SD slots to enable you to listen to a larger collection of music. All of this from a gorgeous user interface that makes accessing your music a pleasure. The M2 will cost you £899 and in my opinion offers absolutely exceptional value for money. It can drive pretty much any pair of headphones you wish to throw at it, with the exception of some of the HiFiMan range of planar headphones, these seem to be complete pains to drive properly from many of the portable players at the moment. From inception of their brand in the UK, I have always had a soft spot for a certain Korean brand of portable audio player. This brand have offered a great sound, simple to use user interface and exceptional amounts of pride of ownership with all of their products. Their range has always been slightly more expensive than the competitors with similar hardware specifications which can put people off who hadn’t held the units in the palm of their hands. Once the product had been physically picked up and played with and you could smell the wonderful aroma of the real leather cases they provided, it was clear that the player was very luxurious, offering the best pride of ownership of all of the players I am able to provide my clients. This very often swayed clients away from the other brands and the sonic signature often made the decision a pretty easy one to make. The brand I am talking about is Astell&Kern, a division of iRiver – Korea. Up until very recently they produced portable audio players over £500 which had made the brand inaccessible for many. That was until the Astell&Kern AK Jr was launched…..Priced at only £399 this caused a big stir. Dropping some of the feature set that the bigger brothers had the Jr still maintained the excellent high quality sound and pride of ownership synonymous with Astell&Kern.

Just 1 month after the release of the Jr, Astell&Kern have released another product. This one is priced at £3000 and has been named the Astell&Kern AK380. This portable player is the first from Astell&Kern that will join the ecosystem that they are developing, enabling all of their devices to interconnect and be controlled via a smartphone remote app. The AK Connect app will enable you to stream music from the AK380 to your local device or stream music from the AK500n direct to the AK380 and all be controlled via a smartphone. This helps when you wish to use the AK380 as a source in your hifi and control the music without physically having the player near you. It also means that there is an element of multiroom capability that is slowly being integrated into their entire range.

The AK380 certainly keeps up with Astell&Kern’s consistent ability to make everyone very proud they purchased one of their products. From the moment you buy the large box and slide it from it’s outer sleeve you are greeted with a stunningly presented solid duralumin player, with angles and lines that I can only compare to a Lamborghini Aventador. The unit is truly stunning to look at

Astell&Kern AK380 Leather Case

and feels weighty and very solid in the hand. Delving deeper into the packaging I unpack the wrapped up genuine leather case and see the beautiful leather stitching. The leather on this case is FAR better than any of the other leather cases provided from Astell&Kern for their AK100 II up to their AK240. The sound from this portable player is exceedingly involving and warmer sounding than its sister the AK240. In comparison the AK240 appears faster and more up front than the AK380 and I much prefer the sonic signature of the AK380. I keep finding with digital audio products that in the last few years there has been a giant leap in DAC conversion technology. It has developed so far that the detail retrieval has crossed the line where I now find the music reproduction too analytical and often lacks musicality. However, very recently this has changed with the introduction of the Chord Hugo. The Hugo was the first product in my mind that gave clients all the detail and resolution possible but didn’t lack any musicality what so ever. This is where I now see the AK380. The AK380 has detail in abundance but remains truly musical irrespective of what headphones I use. In-ears from the likes of ACS, over ears such as Momentum’s, Audeze EL8‘s and LCD-3‘s or even relatively inexpensive bluetooth headphones like Parrot Zik’s or Momentum M2 Wireless. All the headphones that I use with this player sound incredible and the detail is exceptional. The built in 256GB storage offers plenty of space for an accumulation of your favourite albums and the access to Qobuz’s online store lets you download purchased HiDef content directly to the player. If your portable music collection spans more than the 256GB then there is a MicroSD card slot capable of adding up to an extra 128GB of storage to the device.

AK380 Portable Player

I tried a variety of headphones that I have access too and it played everything bar the HiFiMan HE560 with ease. The benefit of choosing the AK380 is that it also has an external amplifier that it can connect to for harder to drive headphones. This will be available soon and corrects directly to the player via a docking system rather than using any cables to connect them both together.

Looking at the entire package I personally believe that the AK380 is currently the best portable player in the world. This is a big conclusion I know, however, listening to the device against a few others and with its complete feature set I would not hesitate to recommend this to a client wanting nothing but the best. For those clients of mine who have purchased the AK240 and a Chord Hugo for the best possible sound I can now say…..purchase just an AK380. The AK380 will give you the ultimate solution from the single device.

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