Day 2 with my SP3K but had the unit since Tuesday…scheduling prevented me from opening so I lived vicariously through you guys that already had it and was taking the player through its paces.
My thoughts. A definite and hearable improvement over the SP2K and this is in my opinion A&K’s best offering yet and through a company’s evolution it should be.
However, one criticism is the storage! As you know it’s been reduced by half and what a shame! Come on A&K! It is what it is but damn. So, I went and bought a 1 terabyte card from Sandisk which turned out to be a mini disaster. There were simply too many write errors and it kept bombing off even while using Commander One. However, there were no issues using Commander and just writing to the player‘s internal drive. Fast and quick but I’ll need to get the memory card to work in the very near future. Damnit you A&K!
How does it sound? Fantastic! There’s an effortless to the music as it has the perfect blend of sonic pleasures. The blackness in background is a real thing because that allows you to hear those quiet passages. It seems as though the music is on a well organized painter’s palate. It’s there for you to paint the perfect picture. There is no harshness to the treble. The midrange is damn near perfect and the bass is not bloated. It’s there if it’s in the recording. The cohesion of it all is simply outstanding!
Roon Arc was a good selling point for me and getting that to work is the icing on the cake and as I type this Arc is being used now…listening to Sohn’s new release. It sounds sublime and is the perfect example of the black background on the SP3K. It’s an excellent relaxing recording that allows you to hear and visualize the details.
If you have the wherewithal I can recommend this class leading DAP. Yes, it’s a closed system as far as Android is concerned but that’s a selling point for me personally. I just want to hear the music as A&K intended. Great job Astell and Kern.
I didn’t check for spelling or grammatical errors and this is what it is.
