Astell&Kern A&ultima SP3000

[Piotr Michalak]

I’ve compared SP3000 to my Shanling M9 and decided to stick with it as my main player for now. But I would like to give SP3k a chance when something new comes up. Any plans for a limited edition maybe, or a portable version preferably, similar to SP1000M gold? That’d be awesome…

 

[Luke Skywalker]

You guys probably already know this but just in case… the user manual is in a folder that you can ftp to.

I was at my computer earlier and the SP3000 was way on the other side of the house. I decided to copy some music over thinking it would be slow but I got about 36 MB/sec

 

[damascato]

Hey guys where can I find extra screen protectors? I’ve trashed the 2 included ones

 

[S Crowther]

The SP3K is just excellent, sounds great and have zero issues with it.

The only item on my wishlist is for A&K to work with Roon on making ARC go around down sampling everything to 44.1 kHz.

Not enough internal storage.

 

[NYanakiev]

Not enough internal storage.

While annoying given the steep cost, it is not a real problem, considering how cheap SD cards are now and with 2TB models on the horizon. Your mileage may vary, of course

 

[arftech]

Not enough internal storage.

Is that really an issue tho?

 

[cheznous]

Is there another way to stream music from a network drive in the meantime and maintain full quality? I was using neutron on my iBasso DX320 but I don’t want to load any apps that aren’t on AK’s approved list

This device is magnificent

Just download minimserver free version onto mac or pc. Turn ak connect on on SP3000. Then play from your SP3000.

 

[cheznous]

While annoying given the steep cost, it is not a real problem, considering how cheap SD cards are now and with 2TB models on the horizon. Your mileage may vary, of course

I partly agree with the criticism made in that 1tb sd cards currently take an age to load in folder view. 2tb will only compound this if and when they are available and affordable. It does irk it takes 3x as long to load as SP2000 in folder view if you have 1tb sd card in.

 

[Progisus]

I partly agree with the criticism made in that 1tb sd cards currently take an age to load in folder view. 2tb will only compound this if and when they are available and affordable. It does irk it takes 3x as long to load as SP2000 in folder view if you have 1tb sd card in.

I use 1tb cards exclusively and change them regularly (very large pggb wav files). There is no lag loading folder view. I actually need to play from folder view so tracks load in order. When playing from gui views they play 1, 10, 2. Probably the tagging of wav files which I need to investigate. SP3000 is an audio engineered marvel.

 

[Dionysus]

Let try this again.

 

[William1955]

Time to upgrade my IEM's to get the full potential SP3K. Currently my go to are Rai Penta / Cadmus which were fine with SP1 & 2K. Are there enough Odyssey out there yet for a honest combo opinion? At the moment it is a toss up between Odyssey or VE Phonix which I can pickup £500 cheaper.

cheers

 

[cheznous]

I use 1tb cards exclusively and change them regularly (very large pggb wav files). There is no lag loading folder view. I actually need to play from folder view so tracks load in order. When playing from gui views they play 1, 10, 2. Probably the tagging of wav files which I need to investigate. SP3000 is an audio engineered marvel.

Tried two 1tb cards. Both 90% full, mainly flac files, at the time. Both formatted in the SP3000. Both take 1 min 45 secs to load in folder view as opposed to 45 secs in SP2000. I note others have had problems with SP3000 even reading their cards.

 

[jz520]

Hi.got my SP3K last Wed and for 2 nights in a row my unit has been freezing and screen would be locked in white after 6 hours of continues play.It would need a hard reset to boot.My SP2k never had this issue after 2 years of ownership.Anyone experienced this issue? Thanks

 

[Dionysus]

So, I’ve just spent the last few hour listening to my new SP3000. Quite a revelation, this dap is really digging into the music pulling every bit and bits out of the music. It sounds like such a cliché but coming from previous high summit daps from my past.
This thing is really giving me more of the music and i’m very surprised to catch pieces from within the music I hadn’t heard before And I heard these song hundred if not thousands of time. Also such great tonal quality to the sound, I love the signature and it is so much more laser focus on the imagining, multi layered.
‘I’m very excited, and very much looking forward to spending a ton of time playing music. It’s been a while, I’ve been more focused on other hobbies and have been pretty silent here of late. But when I popped in and saw a new AK high end player being talked about, I got excited sold my SP1000 and here we are.

 

[Torq]

I use 1tb cards exclusively and change them regularly (very large pggb wav files). There is no lag loading folder view.

That's because you've got very few files, relatively speaking, on the cards.

Try it with 10-20,000 files ... browsing is slow and indexing is glacial. And notably so, compared to the SP2000 (which is much less powerful).

With Android based daps (it's not just A&K, just the SP3000 is currently a step backwards in this regard), using multiple, large, microSD cards, with high-file counts, is a very poor experience. I don't want to wait 10-15 minutes upon changing cards to have the player be usable again, much less have to manage multiple cards.

I'm sure the issue is with Android and it's storage card handling ... as I've written code to index music libraries that, running against the same microSD cards mounted on non-Android devices, completes the job in seconds, not 10+ minutes.