[mthaynes]

Currently supported apps can be found on the Astell&Kern US website, along with instructions - https://us.astellnkern.com/blogs/news/open-app-service-instructions

thank you sir

 

[arftech]

@JasonNYC what is the update with Roon for the SP2000? Still waiting.

 

[MRT-Man]

So I hadn't realized, AK is owned by a public company (Dreamus). AK/MP3 revenue seems like it was US$22 million in 2018.

If we just arbitrarily assume that half the revenue came from the SP1000 (which is probably way too high, but just for fun) and then make a guess on wholesale vs. retail pricing, that would imply that they sold like 3,500 units globally that year...

 

[jscmd2000]

The new firmware surely fixed the track skipping problem.... sweeeet!
I never really liked Chris Botti's to love again album, but it sounds absolutely great on sp2000.

 

[JasonNYC]

@JasonNYC what is the update with Roon for the SP2000? Still waiting.

Unfortunately no update at the moment.

 

[Omashhour]

Any sound changes with the new update?

 

[csglinux]

Cause the sp2000l acks depth and a DD iem will add more of it.

What device are you listening to that gives better soundstage depth? Can you share a list of the test tracks used?

I'm not sure why dynamic drivers would help with soundstage depth. As @ChrisIsAwesome points out, dynamic drivers are usually a lot slower than electrostatic or even balanced-armature drivers, so I would have expected the opposite. What am I overlooking?

 

[fzman]

What device are you listening to that gives better soundstage depth?

I'm not sure why dynamic drivers would help with soundstage depth. As @ChrisIsAwesome points out, dynamic drivers are usually a lot slower than electrostatic or even balanced-armature drivers, so I would have expected the opposite. What am I overlooking?

Much of the room-feel comes from the ambient informtion/cues in the bass and sub-bass region. That's why good subwoofers properly positioned make staging and ambient info better
Perhaps dynamic drivers and their platonic motion is more likely to trigger the correct sensory response of depth and space.

Or maybe it's just space booms (with all due respect to Vonnegut)

 

[emrelights1973]

Please add Primephonic!!

 

[noplsestar]

What device are you listening to that gives better soundstage depth? Can you share a list of the test tracks used?

I'm not sure why dynamic drivers would help with soundstage depth. As @ChrisIsAwesome points out, dynamic drivers are usually a lot slower than electrostatic or even balanced-armature drivers, so I would have expected the opposite. What am I overlooking?

I don’t know if today it’s that easy anymore. Look at Focal Utopia and Stellia, they have dynamic drivers but are (thanks to beryllium) super fast. Though I don’t know if there are different rules for IEMs.

 

[wulkan]

Any sound changes with the new update?

Hello, I'm from Poland and it's my first post here
In my opinion the sound (SP2000SS + Layla II) is worst in version 1.18 compared to 1.16 version. The stage is more stifling and less expansive (a little like my previous DAP SONY NW-WM1Z). Do you have similarly impressions?

 

[csglinux]

I don’t know if today it’s that easy anymore. Look at Focal Utopia and Stellia, they have dynamic drivers but are (thanks to beryllium) super fast. Though I don’t know if there are different rules for IEMs.

I no longer own Utopias, so I can't say for sure, but even though Utopia's drivers are pretty light, they're way larger than a tiny balanced armature driver. I suspect their rise/fall/settle on impulse would still be larger than that of a BA IEM. (Distortion is a separation issue.) @fzman might be on target with his comments about the lower frequencies. I've talked to Rob Watts about his listening tests for depth and he uses one particular track, Gnomus, (and one specific recording, arr. J.V.A. Guillou) from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that has a low-frequency pipe organ. Maybe dynamic drivers are still fast enough to pick up the necessary timing differences?

@JasonNYC, that bug I reported about AK Connect doesn't seem to have been addressed at all in any of the recent updates. Track numbers are still stripped off by AK Connect and any downloaded folders then have all the tracks out of sequence. They all end up in alphabetical order, which makes it basically useless for copying over albums: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/ast...-a-ultima-sp2000.906255/page-77#post-15212104

You told me 6 months ago that you'd been able to reproduce this bug yourselves. It doesn't seem like fixing this would be all that difficult. Is fixing it on a to-do list somewhere? Or should I just forget about it and stop bugging you?

 

[JasonNYC]

I no longer own Utopias, so I can't say for sure, but even though Utopia's drivers are pretty light, they're way larger than a tiny balanced armature driver. I suspect their rise/fall/settle on impulse would still be larger than that of a BA IEM. (Distortion is a separation issue.) @fzman might be on target with his comments about the lower frequencies. I've talked to Rob Watts about his listening tests for depth and he uses one particular track, Gnomus, (and one specific recording, arr. J.V.A. Guillou) from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that has a low-frequency pipe organ. Maybe dynamic drivers are still fast enough to pick up the necessary timing differences?

@JasonNYC, that bug I reported about AK Connect doesn't seem to have been addressed at all in any of the recent updates. Track numbers are still stripped off by AK Connect and any downloaded folders then have all the tracks out of sequence. They all end up in alphabetical order, which makes it basically useless for copying over albums: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/ast...-a-ultima-sp2000.906255/page-77#post-15212104

You told me 6 months ago that you'd been able to reproduce this bug yourselves. It doesn't seem like fixing this would be all that difficult. Is fixing it on a to-do list somewhere? Or should I just forget about it and stop bugging you?

Let me follow up with the dev team again about the AK Connect issue. I know when the issue was first reported about the physical buttons skipping multiple tracks, fixing that got bumped to top priority and they put off other issues they were working on.

 

[arstango]

Hi there, I discovered a strange sonic issue in the SP2000 which affects all devices. @JasonNYC you'd be interested in.

Some time ago I asked if someone had had experience with parasite clicks or so on in soft piano passages. Initially, I thought it was connected with MQA codec, but I've downloaded the same albums in FLAC and the result was the same. After a week spent with this issue, I realized that this bug is in all music with piano insertion (the most noticeable) stored in my collection. After all, I went to a retail store with confidence in changing my SP2000 Copper and for more sureness had tried SP2000 SS demo unit... the result was the same! I asked for an SP1000 and goddamn clean sound with a black background. I tried with my Hugo2 connected to SP2000 via USB — no issues! The Cayin N8 — no issues. I tried the third one SP2000 SS of my friend — exactly the same result as with mine or demo unit in the retail store.

IEM: Sony IER-Z1R with Brise Audio Yatono cable, also this problem appeared on Dita XLS with its stock (Oslo) cable. That is strange cause IER-Z1R never minded like sensitive phones.
Tried balanced and unbalanced outputs. The unbalanced is better in terms of this issue: clicks are less tangible. After this point, I took QDC Anole VX (stock cable with 3.5mm jack) and also no success fighting this bug.

BT, Wi-Fi are in OFF. Smartphones were switched off during tests to eliminate field shielding issues.

4 people tried different recordings and have confirmed these sonic problems. Same pattern in all cases: parasitic clics, soft muffled crackling sound addition to the music played. Like very soft vinyl pops and clicks.

Hi-Res albums have a more prominent issue compared with Redbook analogs. But also still noticeable.
With Sony IER-Z1R I use volume range 95-115.

Audible on 1.10, 1.16, 1.18 firmware. Clicks were fixed on 1.19 but with significant sound degradation for unknown reasons. AK still claims "We don't change the sound via firmwares" but that is another story.

Tidal users could try:
Shai Maestro — The Dream Thief (#2 track, The Forgotten Village, from 00:00 to 00:35),
Lang Lang — Liszt - My Piano Hero (#2 track, La Campanella, from 00:00 to 01:30),
Philip Glass — Solo Piano (#1 track, Metamorphosis: One, from 00:10 to 00:30),
Or any other. I have tons of examples.

Some other opinions:

I've borrowed SP2000 just 2 days ago to make a review and I've noticed this too. For example on Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack, track number 08 called Mesa.

clicking noises are audible in:

00:07 seconds
00:15 seconds
00:30 seconds
00:37 and so on.

Both balanced and unbalanced, on my private FLAC and also on Tidal.

It's audible on: Shozy&Neo BG, Sony EX800ST, Ibasso IT01s and AM05, Oriolus Percivali

It's NOT audible on: Shure KSE1200 (have their own amplifier) and Etymotic ER4s (are high impedence at 100 ohms)

For me when i noticed it, it happened sporadically, at different spots each time. I cant remember if i heard it with Xelentos, but definitely with Andromeda at higher volume.

If you're really curious, try the blade runner 2049 album suggestion, for me it was much more apparent than with dream theif.

But Ignorance is bliss.

As to the clicking issue on certain tracks, it seems they just don't show up in any of our test vectors. I don't know why. We see these effects on some players (like the iPhone SE), but not the SP2000. I can confirm the clicking is a real thing though. I can hear it. But it's very odd as it only happens on certain tracks. Could those tracks themselves be defective? Possibly, but IMHO unlikely, because I hear the clicking slightly shifted (by a second or two) each time I play back the same track. If there were an error in the track encoding, I'd expect it to be deterministic. (I've been using the Blade Runner 2049 track 08 - Mesa - that @siruspan suggested.) This one seems to affect all firmware versions and is still a bit of a puzzle.

 

[JasonNYC]

Hi there, I discovered a strange sonic issue in the SP2000 which affects all devices. @JasonNYC you'd be interested in.

Some time ago I asked if someone had had experience with parasite clicks or so on in soft piano passages. Initially, I thought it was connected with MQA codec, but I've downloaded the same albums in FLAC and the result was the same. After a week spent with this issue, I realized that this bug is in all music with piano insertion (the most noticeable) stored in my collection. After all, I went to a retail store with confidence in changing my SP2000 Copper and for more sureness had tried SP2000 SS demo unit... the result was the same! I asked for an SP1000 and goddamn clean sound with a black background. I tried with my Hugo2 connected to SP2000 via USB — no issues! The Cayin N8 — no issues. I tried the third one SP2000 SS of my friend — exactly the same result as with mine or demo unit in the retail store.

IEM: Sony IER-Z1R with Brise Audio Yatono cable, also this problem appeared on Dita Oslo XLS with its stock (Oslo) cable. That is strange cause IER-Z1R never minded like sensitive phones.
Tried balanced and unbalanced outputs. The unbalanced is better in terms of this issue: clicks are less tangible. After this point, I took QDC Anole VX (stock cable with 3.5mm jack) and also no success fighting this bug.

BT, Wi-Fi are in OFF. Smartphones were switched off during tests to eliminate field shielding issues.

4 people tried different recordings and have confirmed these sonic problems. Same pattern in all cases: parasitic clics, soft muffled crackling sound addition to the music played.

Hi-Res albums have a more prominent issue compared with Redbook analogs. But also still noticeable.

Tried with 1.16 and 1.18 (the latest) firmware.

Tidal users could try Shai Maestro — The Dream Thief or Lang Lang — Liszt - My Piano Hero for instance. Or any other. I have tons of examples.

I will pass this onto our team to look into.