Impressions? You should go visit an audiologist to get impressions! ;)

...Nor does it need to be synonymous with your personal vendetta against the AK240, for that matter.   Anally,     Lorias

The DAC driver is here. http://www.iriverinc.com/lounge/loungeView.asp?sno=1093 You need to switch the AK240 to MTP mode if you want to copy, move, rename or delete files/folders because in DAC mode it can only be used as a USB DAC. Sometimes, it may be necessary to unplug/re-plug the USB cable...

A more open soundstage.

  Los Angeles, AES 2014 (Day 2) convention paper 9174 —"The Audibility of Typical Digital Audio Filters in a High-Fidelity Playback System".   This paper describes listening tests investigating the audibility of various filters applied in high-resolution wideband digital playback systems...

   

  Can it play native DSD, though?

I paid 2499 EURO for it. That is still way more than $3k, and I accept it because I have listened to an incredible LED TV and a used car, but neither one of those sounded better than my AK240, so...

1. No, it won't be for free, but I recharge it only a few times per week on average so I am not too worried 2. No, it is actually more than worth the price IMO 3. Absolutely yes 4. Don't care

Mine are from AudioNova, one of Europe's leading hearing aid providers and official distributor of Variphone hearing protection. (Variphone is an official distributor of Westone).   The price I paid for them was 1175 €. The first thing I noticed with them is the impeccable musical clarity...

Inappropriate or not inappropriate, I am grateful to those who have commented on differences between AK240 and Hugo as they have helped me decide between the two units, and I haven't regretted my decision.   AK240 should be compared with anything that can sound great, and if it's DAP & DAC...

If you can't hear the difference then there is no point in buying 24-bit music or 24-bit capable audio gear. Personally, I, can hear it very clearly on good recordings, i.e. 24-bit in comparison to 24-bit that has been dithered down to 16-bit in iZotope RX 4 Advanced, but HDTracks and similar...

Quote: It is still slow I think, but I don't see that as a real problem anyway because I can only listen to so many albums per day, and 256GB is more than sufficient for me to not easily get bored with having only a limited choice of music to play each time when I am away from home.

I have tested it with foobar2000 using "UPnP/DLNA Renderer, Media Server, Control Point" component (foo_upnp) on my laptop. It works, and I am able to stream my files from my foobar2000 playlists and music library via Wi-Fi, but the playback isn't gapless, and native DSD playback is not...

Words aren't needed to figure out the ES60 is simply the best.

Sorry for my late reply. I got so caught up listening to my AK240 + ES60 that I missed your post.

No, I didn't say it was easy to hear north of 22 kHz, but an anti aliasing filter causes ringing artifacts that will occur not only above, but also in the audible band, i.e. far south of 20 kHz. Steeper the cut-off slope of the filter, more severe these artifacts. It is possible to reduce these...

I have already read this white paper a very long time ago. You are obviously not the only one who has completely misinterpreted it. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/lavry-engineering-paper-hi-res-10776/index2.html#post133063   The optimum sampling frequency, as has been...

1. Study psychoacoustics, so that you might learn all listening is subjective, i.e., a listening test can never be completely flawless and unbiased. 2. Study psychoacoustics some more, so that you might also learn double blind listening tests are extremely difficult to correctly design and...

The Nyquist theorem doesn't say a signal can be perfectly reconstructed if it (the signal) has a finite duration. What it does say, however, is that this signal has to be perfectly bandlimited below the sampling frequency divided by two. An analog sourced signal that has a finite duration cannot...

Quote: Been there, done that.. Passing such a test was so easy for me in fact, it didn't even make any sense to me to do a blind test anyway in the first place, and, consequently, I have uninstalled the ABX comparator component from my foobar2000. I think it's a pure waste of time because...

Yeah.. audiophiles are annoying people, aren't they?

Westone ES60 Astell&Kern AK240  

Replace the Fiio X5 with an Astell&Kern AK240, and replace the 16/44.1 files with some well recorded, well mastered, non-fake 24/192 ones. Then we will be able to talk. 

There have been some reports of people liking the AK120 better than the AK120 II. On top of that, if you wait for the step-up model then it will be too expensive at first, so then you will only end up waiting till the price has come down, only to find out later that they will be releasing a...