[Manga]

I have managed to acquire my dream audio player second hand in the form of an Astell & Kern AK380. I’m finding the bass and overall ‘oomph’ in the music played to be missing e.g. Sting, INXS and modern soul and funk.

A friend of mine connected his Chord Mojo to it using a Micro USB to Micro USB (OTG) On the Go cable. The Mojo detects that I am feeding it different file formats because the little ball changes colour from red to white for example when playing DSD files.

My question centers around when I use the parametic EQ function on the AK380 i.e. when I move the sliders (up and down) in differing frequencies they do not have any effect on the overall sound signature emitted by the mojo into my Meze 99 Classic headphones.

Now, when my friend connects his Mojo to his Samsung Galaxy S8 using the Onkyo High Res Audio app and the OTG USB cable I mentioned above ,voila! The bass extention, kick and rhythm is amazing when he moves the sliders in the parametric EQ in the app.

I tried the Mojo on a colleagues Apple iPhone 6S plus with Camera Connection Kit cable and that also rocks.Am I doing something wrong, please help? Or is it that the firmware in my AK380 is too old for the Mojo.(I have downloaded and installed the latest firmware from Astell& Kern’s website (Released Oct 2017)

 

[Dr. Hugo]

My intuition is that when you’re feeding the mojo with an OTG cable from 380, AK380 automatically bypasses the internal digital processing to get the best output quality and the eq is probably part of that processing that was bypassed. If you use a phone for example, the digital processing isn’t bypassed (for example, you should still be able to adjust the volume on your phone), although both output digital signals for the mojo.

 

[Manga]

Thanks Dr. Hugo for your reply. You are spot on as the signal from the AK380 seems to be only ampliefied by the Mojo What I crave is more bass from the '380'!!!

Can anybody out there recommend headphones with an SQ for bass but still have good clarity in the mids and trebles?