Astell&Kern AK380

[Sound Eq]

who cares if its stainless steel or not, its about the specs and capabilities and not honestly to the housing

 

[Uncle E1]

will have proprietary DAC chipsets like the Hugo

 

[AnakChan]

Thread merged to @Dopaminer's. 

 

[derGabe]

I will be at the High End in Munich on Friday and hopefully have a look at the AK 380.

 

[Uncle E1]

pictures please

 

[hke3g2006]

I will be at the High End in Munich on Friday and hopefully have a look at the AK 380.

Why are you so certain there will be an "AK380" ??

 

 

[jk47]

  who cares if its stainless steel or not, its about the specs and capabilities and not honestly to the housing

the stainless steel housing of the ak240ss supposedly affects the sound.

 

[bmichels]

AK380 is mentioned on the screen shot of AKConnect on Google Play !! 
 

 
 
I will be at the High-End show next Thursday and will rush to the A&K booth to see this AK380.
I will kept you posted.

 

 

[warrior1975]

http://headphone-plus-earphone.com/ak380-pre/

 

[Edric Li]

  AK380 is mentioned on the screen shot of AKConnect on Google Play !! 
 

 
 
I will be at the High-End show next Thursday and will rush to the A&K booth to see this AK380.
I will kept you posted.

 

 
Now this, as well as the price drop of AK240, are some persuasive evidence. 

 

[threephi]

Well if it's shown in an official app screenshot, there must indeed be some product named "AK380", but I call shenanigans on the photo.  It very much looks to me like that image was photoshopped.  I'm not convinced the AK380 is going to be a DAP either, it could be a network server like the AK500.

For the photo, the biggest tell for me is the SD slot--look at it carefully, it's tilted in relation to the plane of the screen.  That would require needlessly complicated internal wiring.  The slot appears tilted because the lines of perspective between the right-hand side bevels and the screen are off.  A simpler explanation is that this is actually (at least) two images taken with slightly different camera angles that were clumsily stitched together.  Next, why would they reposition the scroll wheel lower on the device, into a more awkward placement that would cause your thumb to cramp? 

The mentions on other sites _all_ point back to this thread on head-fi, or the one that was merged into it.  The weibo post is interesting and bears examination, but that could be someone quoting an official AK post--a translation would be useful.

 

[threephi]

I've just spent the last few minutes trying to set up a weibo account, and failing.  I don't particularly want to install an app for it so admittedly I'm not trying very hard... but does anyone here have a weibo account, who could check that A&K post that was quoted here on twitter: https://twitter.com/JapanChiba/status/597249702246031360/photo/1

 

[Edric Li]

  I've just spent the last few minutes trying to set up a weibo account, and failing.  I don't particularly want to install an app for it so admittedly I'm not trying very hard... but does anyone here have a weibo account, who could check that A&K post that was quoted here on twitter: https://twitter.com/JapanChiba/status/597249702246031360/photo/1

 
I am a Chinese and I can help you with this
 
The guy who made the original post is known to be associated with AK. He is involved heavily in the promotion of AK Jr in China. 
However he deleted the post about AK380, which was reposted by AK's official Weibo account. He also seemed to require posts deletion on other Chinese headphile forums related to AK380. 
 
I asked him directly in a thread in one of the forums, but the thread was deleted very soon. 
 
 
Edit: I sent him a PM via Weibo. Let's see if he will reply me 

 

[threephi]

Thanks for that quick sleuthing Edric!  The mystery continues it seems... but the more I look at that photo the more bogus it looks.

 

[warrior1975]

Someone here contacted AK recently, AK said there was no new top of the line dap coming...