[Terry Newton]

I just converted all my FLAC files to mp3 in order to free up space on my KANN.I charged the KANN yesterday to 100% and today after only 1 hour of playing it's down to 63%.When playing FLAC it would only use about 20% in an hour.

Does it take more battery power to play mp3 as opposed to playing FLAC?

Or is that an indication that the battery is failing?

 

[snafu1]

Hard to say. There shouldn't be that much of a difference between flac and MP3 (You didn't mention what compression level you used for the MP3 files). The only time I've noticed a larger drain on the battery is when playing DSD files.

Maybe experiment by having it play another hours worth of flac files and see what happens? Did the Kann feel warmer than usual? As an example, when I play DSD files the case gets much warmer than when playing flacs. I sure hope you're not seeing another one of the infamous battery failures with the Kann.

 

[Terry Newton]

Hard to say. There shouldn't be that much of a difference between flac and MP3 (You didn't mention what compression level you used for the MP3 files). The only time I've noticed a larger drain on the battery is when playing DSD files.

Maybe experiment by having it play another hours worth of flac files and see what happens? Did the Kann feel warmer than usual? As an example, when I play DSD files the case gets much warmer than when playing flacs. I sure hope you're not seeing another one of the infamous battery failures with the Kann.

No hotter than usual.
I used dbpoweramp,
Quality - V0,
240kbps "extreme",
MP3 Lame,
variable bit rate (VBR).

Think I may try just the standard setting.

 

[Luvdac]

I just converted all my FLAC files to mp3 in order to free up space on my KANN.I charged the KANN yesterday to 100% and today after only 1 hour of playing it's down to 63%.When playing FLAC it would only use about 20% in an hour.

Does it take more battery power to play mp3 as opposed to playing FLAC?

Or is that an indication that the battery is failing?

I'm amused. You actually are using the KANN to listen to mp3 files?????? You do realise that the KANN can take almost a terabyte worth of cards.
Going from lossless to lossy adds jitter, time smearing and God knows what else to the resultant file. Not to speak of the total loss of transients. Just listen to a good recording of piano in lossless or hi res and then listen to a mp3 rip of the same. I don't mean to belittle or be derisive but you are wasting the Kanns talents on mp3.
On your query on battery life, mp3 should actually give more as there is less processing involved for smaller files.

 

[Terry Newton]

I'm amused. You actually are using the KANN to listen to mp3 files?????? You do realise that the KANN can take almost a terabyte worth of cards.
Going from lossless to lossy adds jitter, time smearing and God knows what else to the resultant file. Not to speak of the total loss of transients. Just listen to a good recording of piano in lossless or hi res and then listen to a mp3 rip of the same. I don't mean to belittle or be derisive but you are wasting the Kanns talents on mp3.
On your query on battery life, mp3 should actually give more as there is less processing involved for smaller files.

My 400GB micro card was full,my 512 sd card was full,my internal music folder was full,of FLAC.So I did a comparison of a mp3 and a FLAC file of the same tune and I could not hear any difference.But today I did notice a big difference in some tunes.I just need more space and going mp3 achieved that.But I'm not satisfied so I have to find a different solution.I had removed the FLAC files and did a conversion to mp3.I always said I would never listen to mp3 when I had FLAC but now I'm not so sure.I had to stop buying new cds because I couldn't put them on the KANN as FLAC.Now I can at least buy a load of new music and add it as mp3.Just have to put some FLAC files back on it.

A work in progress.

Mp3,I'm sorry

 

[Luvdac]

My 400GB micro card was full,my 512 sd card was full,my internal music folder was full,of FLAC.So I did a comparison of a mp3 and a FLAC file of the same tune and I could not hear any difference.But today I did notice a big difference in some tunes.I just need more space and going mp3 achieved that.But I'm not satisfied so I have to find a different solution.I had removed the FLAC files and did a conversion to mp3.I always said I would never listen to mp3 when I had FLAC but now I'm not so sure.I had to stop buying new cds because I couldn't put them on the KANN as FLAC.Now I can at least buy a load of new music and add it as mp3.Just have to put some FLAC files back on it.

A work in progress.

Mp3,I'm sorry

Hey, I can dig your predicament. Having all this music and not being able to fit it all in the palm of one's hand. What you need is a large external hard drive for storage and then transfer the music you really love onto the KANN. I know, it's hard to pick and choose. I have 4tb's of flac and dsd and sometimes I can't figure out what's in there. I find it best to browse my library on the laptop with roon. Roon is great as it gives suggestions of similar albums I may have in my library but could have overlooked. This way I get to pick my way through 4000 albums and rediscover my music. I suppose you could use jriver or mediamonkey as well but they are clunkers in comparison to roon.
As for mp3, you are going to be unhappy with them in time. I know, I tried the same game with my first ak300 with files ripped to 512 kbps aac. It took me a week to go back to lossless.

Hope your battery woes get sorted out.

 

[Terry Newton]

Hey, I can dig your predicament. Having all this music and not being able to fit it all in the palm of one's hand. What you need is a large external hard drive for storage and then transfer the music you really love onto the KANN. I know, it's hard to pick and choose. I have 4tb's of flac and dsd and sometimes I can't figure out what's in there. I find it best to browse my library on the laptop with roon. Roon is great as it gives suggestions of similar albums I may have in my library but could have overlooked. This way I get to pick my way through 4000 albums and rediscover my music. I suppose you could use jriver or mediamonkey as well but they are clunkers in comparison to roon.
As for mp3, you are going to be unhappy with them in time. I know, I tried the same game with my first ak300 with files ripped to 512 kbps aac. It took me a week to go back to lossless.

Hope your battery woes get sorted out.

All my tunes are my choices and are my favorites and there is no way I can remove the amount I will be adding in the future,next week.Been down that road before I finally decided to give the mp3 a listen just to be sure.Like I said,I couldn't tell the difference in sound quality but that was just the one track on one disc.Now after doing more listening the sound volume is all over the place.

I have JRiver and dBpoweramp.

I've already started working on a solution that I can live with.

Did a battery time test,1 hour,and it looks like all is well.

At least this little glitch gives me something to work on,move this here and put that there,convert this but not that.

 

[iridium7777]

so i got the kann as a fathers day gift and have two observations, non relating to sound:

1) i took the 2 microsd cards from my onkyo that i was using and put them into kann and almost immediately they got corrupted and needed to be reformatted. i've used them for months on the onkyo with no issue. it's beyond annoying, but i'm hoping now that they've been formatted through the kann it won't complain anymore in the future

2) was playing some dsf files and the unit got extremely hot, i mean not just warm but really hot, to the point that if i was to hold it in my hand it would not be comfortable.

3) any artist that has "the" in the name is filed under T, instead of the actual name, such as being filed under B for The Beatles. this is actually a major annoyance for me, a sloppy design. i'm not sure if there's a setting somewhere that i could just turn on to account to that or if this genera AK's philosophy?


i think 1&2 have been discussed here and unfortunately are considered 'normal' behavior. i still did not get much chances for testing the sound, but i'm hoping the sound makes up for the other issues.

 

[snafu1]

All my tunes are my choices and are my favorites and there is no way I can remove the amount I will be adding in the future,next week.Been down that road before I finally decided to give the mp3 a listen just to be sure.Like I said,I couldn't tell the difference in sound quality but that was just the one track on one disc.Now after doing more listening the sound volume is all over the place.

I have JRiver and dBpoweramp.

I've already started working on a solution that I can live with.

Did a battery time test,1 hour,and it looks like all is well.

At least this little glitch gives me something to work on,move this here and put that there,convert this but not that.

What about using "AK Connect"? You didn't mention where you use the player most. But if you're home, AK Connect will let you browse your collection from a network share. I keep just my favorites on the Kann and use AK Connect to access my "less listened to" music.

Regarding the volume level of the MP3 files - I use MP3Gain to adjust the volume level of MP3 files. It works very well.

 

[Terry Newton]

What about using "AK Connect"? You didn't mention where you use the player most. But if you're home, AK Connect will let you browse your collection from a network share. I keep just my favorites on the Kann and use AK Connect to access my "less listened to" music.

Regarding the volume level of the MP3 files - I use MP3Gain to adjust the volume level of MP3 files. It works very well.

I only listen to my KANN about an hour to an hour and a half a day at a restaurant while eating breakfast.

I don't listen to tunes at home anymore.

I have a pretty decent surround system but my listening habits have changed.

Just received about 12 new cds this morning,couple of box sets.

I also used replay gain.

Looks like a lot of shuffling of tunes in my future

 

[Terry Newton]

My audio setup which is used on rare occasions just to play tunes,I only use my Senn HD800 on my KANN.My breakfast hour is a big deal to me since it gives me a chance to hear tunes again.Computer speakers are Audioengine A2+ Mini Bookshelf Powered Speaker, White.
Sometimes I will use my main speaker system to listen to a track or 2.


TV:
>Panasonic TCP65VT50

Blu-ray Player:
>Panasonic DMPBDT500

Receiver:
>Pioneer CS-57

Front Speakers:
>Paradigm Studio 20

Rear:
>Paradigm Millenia ADP

Sub:
>Paradigm Monitor Sub 10

Center:
>Paradigm CC300

 

[snafu1]

so i got the kann as a fathers day gift and have two observations, non relating to sound:

1) i took the 2 microsd cards from my onkyo that i was using and put them into kann and almost immediately they got corrupted and needed to be reformatted. i've used them for months on the onkyo with no issue. it's beyond annoying, but i'm hoping now that they've been formatted through the kann it won't complain anymore in the future

2) was playing some dsf files and the unit got extremely hot, i mean not just warm but really hot, to the point that if i was to hold it in my hand it would not be comfortable.

3) any artist that has "the" in the name is filed under T, instead of the actual name, such as being filed under B for The Beatles. this is actually a major annoyance for me, a sloppy design. i'm not sure if there's a setting somewhere that i could just turn on to account to that or if this genera AK's philosophy?


i think 1&2 have been discussed here and unfortunately are considered 'normal' behavior. i still did not get much chances for testing the sound, but i'm hoping the sound makes up for the other issues.

Congrats on the nice father's day gift!
I agree with you on the way A&K handles "The". I've had other players that had an option to enable it to ignore it. A&K should have this also. I had to go back and edit all of the tags for bands that were "The Bandname" to "Bandname, The".

I normally always get a protective case for my players. But, this player can get so warm when playing DSF files, that for the first time I decided to not get a case as I fear it would overheat.

You mentioned you used the 2 SD cards from your Onkyo - was that the DP-X1?
That's what I upgraded from - to the Kann. When using the SE output I found the SQ between the two, very close. It was when I compared the balanced outputs between the two that the Kann had a very noticeable improvement (using Focal Clear's) over the Onkyo.

 

[iridium7777]

i had(still have) the smaller version, DP-S1, great little player and that's where my sd cards came from. i'd say right now for both balanced (also bought a pair of ibasso t1 on a whim to futz around) and unbalanced (using ie800) the kann delives much power power, i haven't cracked the volume past 100 on normal gain while i would always run the onkyo in high gain and pretty high in volume.

one thing i immediately noticed that the balanced plug on kann is as solid as anything else, on the onkyo i could wiggle the thing around and it would indent/move. granted the onkyo cost almost 1/5 of the kann.

Congrats on the nice father's day gift!
I agree with you on the way A&K handles "The". I've had other players that had an option to enable it to ignore it. A&K should have this also. I had to go back and edit all of the tags for bands that were "The Bandname" to "Bandname, The".

I normally always get a protective case for my players. But, this player can get so warm when playing DSF files, that for the first time I decided to not get a case as I fear it would overheat.

You mentioned you used the 2 SD cards from your Onkyo - was that the DP-X1?
That's what I upgraded from - to the Kann. When using the SE output I found the SQ between the two, very close. It was when I compared the balanced outputs between the two that the Kann had a very noticeable improvement (using Focal Clear's) over the Onkyo.

 

[iridium7777]

my annoyance with the kann continues (not a good first impression at all):

-does anyone know how to clear the cache out of the player? in specific, i load up the memory cards and it takes some minutes to scan them up, but it still retains artists (in the artist search) that show album covers but are not on the memory card. what happens is that i go into the artist and then it has a spinning wheel next to the songs and tells me that "format is not supported" when the song is not there.

is there a way to completely delete everything out of the player and rescan? is that actually something that AK expects me to do periodically because the scanning feature is broken?

 

[JasonNYC]

my annoyance with the kann continues (not a good first impression at all):

-does anyone know how to clear the cache out of the player? in specific, i load up the memory cards and it takes some minutes to scan them up, but it still retains artists (in the artist search) that show album covers but are not on the memory card. what happens is that i go into the artist and then it has a spinning wheel next to the songs and tells me that "format is not supported" when the song is not there.

is there a way to completely delete everything out of the player and rescan? is that actually something that AK expects me to do periodically because the scanning feature is broken?

KANN will scan periodically and every time you insert a new card for the first few boots after inserting the new card. I recommend doing a full manual scan whenever you put a new card in . It will do a full database rebuild and will prevent the KANN from needing to do multiple media scans. A full manual scan will take a few minutes up to about 15 minutes depending on how many files you have in internal memory and on cards. To do a manual scan - settings, default settings, initialize media scan. If you have playlists set up, you may want to uncheck clear playlists or else you will need to rebuild them.