[kennybobenny]

I have been using my iPhone to get Tidal albums offline. I then use a camera kit (and a series of cables) and attach it to my AK100. The volume control is bypassed on he phone. It sounds good to me. I use tidal only to find new music.

 

[s0ny]

I've found a bug in the playlist. Yesterday, I added songs to my playlist. Today, my playlist shows 0 songs. The songs are still listed in the queue of "NOW PLAYING" though, since the last song I played was one of the playlist songs. I suspect that I will lose this queue if I play a song that is not in the playlist. It took half an hour to choose and set the songs of my playlist.
 
Is this a known issue?

 

[Serenitty]

  Sounds like you might need to use a music library program to set tags.  It's common to name files to start with the two-digit track number, eg. "01 Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.flac".  Then set the "name" tag to the song name, and "track" to track number, so they will sort, display, and play back in the correct order within albums.

Thanks,
 
I used MP3Tag (I think) to re title the file name on all my songs with an 01, 02, ... at the beginning of the file name.   I had tried that before I posted with the title of the song and it didn't work.   I also was able to download album art for all my ripped CD's.
 
Sadly all of this only took about 6 hours for about 100gb of music.
 
Thanks for the help.

 

[Serenitty]

So after 1 week with my AK120II I have to say I'm very happy.  The UI is seamless enough that I can't find anything to complain about.  Now that I have my songs retagged the album art and song orders are correct.  And overall this is one solid little piece of gear.
 
The sound is a noticeable improvement over my iPhone for my 1964ears V6 ciem's, and also for the computer/Fiio E17 combo I was using as a source for my Bottlehead Crack/T1 combo.  I was hoping the V6's would sound so amazing that I could pare down my system to just a portable setup, but alas the T1's out of the Bottlehead is just such a step up that I don't think I'll be letting go of my desktop system just yet.  Maybe Ted's balanced cable for the V6's will step them up closer to the T1's, but I don't think it's quite going to bridge the gap. 
 
I haven't tried driving the T1's with just the Ak120II, and I'm not sure I'll bother.  The T1's are not exactly a portable headphone and I just don't see the point.

 

[Sorensiim]

I'm a big fan of the AK120II user experience as well, but I still have a few suggestions/comments I'd like to share with A&K - but how? Can't seem to find a general customer service/support point of contact on their website and emailing support.inc@iriver.com results in... nothing, actually. No reply.
 
My niggles/suggestions are these:
 

• In the status bar at the top of the screen is a pie chart of the battery charge level right next to a numerical representation of the exact same data. Swapping the pie chart to, say, the current volume level would be a whole lot more useful, I think. 
• You can change tracks by swiping up or down on the "now playing" screen. Up means next track, down means previous. This is exactly the opposite of the buttons on the side of the unit and the opposite of what would be the logical direction (like if you were skipping through a list of tracks - you'd swipe down to go to the next item)
• Auto power off would be great. Coming from a row of Ibasso players, the AK has them beat on pretty much everything, but I miss one tiny feature: Auto power off. If the player sat unused for 30 minutes (the user could define how long to wait), it would turn off. (not sure if it's there and I've just missed it so far)
• On the home screen, adding the option to show a list by the Album Artist tag instead of just the "Artist" tag would be hugely useful. 

 

[Dopaminer]

  I'm a big fan of the AK120II user experience as well, but I still have a few suggestions/comments I'd like to share with A&K - but how? Can't seem to find a general customer service/support point of contact on their website and emailing support.inc@iriver.com results in... nothing, actually. No reply.
 
My niggles/suggestions are these:
 

• In the status bar at the top of the screen is a pie chart of the battery charge level right next to a numerical representation of the exact same data. Swapping the pie chart to, say, the current volume level would be a whole lot more useful, I think. 
• You can change tracks by swiping up or down on the "now playing" screen. Up means next track, down means previous. This is exactly the opposite of the buttons on the side of the unit and the opposite of what would be the logical direction (like if you were skipping through a list of tracks - you'd swipe down to go to the next item)
• Auto power off would be great. Coming from a row of Ibasso players, the AK has them beat on pretty much everything, but I miss one tiny feature: Auto power off. If the player sat unused for 30 minutes (the user could define how long to wait), it would turn off. (not sure if it's there and I've just missed it so far)
• On the home screen, adding the option to show a list by the Album Artist tag instead of just the "Artist" tag would be hugely useful. 

 
 

 
What I want is an automatic volume limiter : to drop the volume after it`s been in lineout mode.  I got a 2.5 TRRS to 3pinXLR adapter, to run it through my speaker amp so i`m using it in line out mode a lot, and dreading the eventual head-blasting when I forget and plug in headphones.  

 

[Sorensiim]

   
 
 

Spoiler: Proof that I can't find my way around a simple DAP interface

 
 
What I want is an automatic volume limiter : to drop the volume after it`s been in lineout mode.  I got a 2.5 TRRS to 3pinXLR adapter, to run it through my speaker amp so i`m using it in line out mode a lot, and dreading the eventual head-blasting when I forget and plug in headphones.  

I still vote for replacing the redundant battery info in the status bar with some form of volume indicator.

 

[Dopaminer]

  I still vote for replacing the redundant battery info in the status bar with some form of volume indicator.

I`m with you on that, and the other points you mentioned.  I was too busy being a smart-ass with that pic, I forgot to mention I agreed with your other points!
 
d

 

[Serenitty]

   
What I want is an automatic volume limiter : to drop the volume after it`s been in lineout mode.  I got a 2.5 TRRS to 3pinXLR adapter, to run it through my speaker amp so i`m using it in line out mode a lot, and dreading the eventual head-blasting when I forget and plug in headphones.  

 
Every time I turn mine off or pull the 1/8" jack for my desktop and put the 1/8" jack for my headphones it asks me if I want line out, and I have to touch OK to get it.  So I haven't had any issues with the volume blowing my ears out.  Does it not do this for the 2.5mm?

 

[Dopaminer]

Well, I just tested my 120ii, based on Serenitty`s question, and in fact the AK already does what I said I wished it would do: resets the volume after using it in Line out mode.  
 
I tried the following steps with both headphone outputs:  Run the AK at headphone listening levels - pause music - activate Lineout - shut down - restart - push play: Volume from both outputs is 22.5. 
 
So there: I guess my AK really is perfect.

1.  
2. Back to listening...... 

 

[threephi]

  I'm a big fan of the AK120II user experience as well, but I still have a few suggestions/comments I'd like to share with A&K - but how? Can't seem to find a general customer service/support point of contact on their website and emailing support.inc@iriver.com results in... nothing, actually. No reply.
 
My niggles/suggestions are these:
 

• In the status bar at the top of the screen is a pie chart of the battery charge level right next to a numerical representation of the exact same data. Swapping the pie chart to, say, the current volume level would be a whole lot more useful, I think. 
• You can change tracks by swiping up or down on the "now playing" screen. Up means next track, down means previous. This is exactly the opposite of the buttons on the side of the unit and the opposite of what would be the logical direction (like if you were skipping through a list of tracks - you'd swipe down to go to the next item)
• Auto power off would be great. Coming from a row of Ibasso players, the AK has them beat on pretty much everything, but I miss one tiny feature: Auto power off. If the player sat unused for 30 minutes (the user could define how long to wait), it would turn off. (not sure if it's there and I've just missed it so far)
• On the home screen, adding the option to show a list by the Album Artist tag instead of just the "Artist" tag would be hugely useful. 

Try sending to support@iriver.com (without the .inc).  That's where I sent my suggestions last month, and I received a response within two days that my message was being forwarded blah blah blah.  The return address for that response message was support.inc@iriver.com FWIW, so it's probably an internal non-replyable mailbox.

I completely agree with your suggestions, and sorting by album artist was high on my list too.  Even better would be allowing the user to choose which tags the home screen buttons use by expanding the available choices to include common ones like composer, year, etc.  I hadn't noticed the redundancy in having two different battery readouts, good spot.  There is a small difference however--the pie changes to a charging symbol when the device is plugged in, leaving the numeric readout the only indicator of level.  That's minor however and I agree an always-visible volume level would be nice.  If it were necessary to sacrifice one or the other, IMO it would be better to change the numerical battery percent to numeric volume, not only because the charging icon is useful, but volume is on a 0-75 (dB?) scale and not 0-100.

I've also encountered a buffering problem with playback and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen it?  My experience has been that when starting playback, sometimes the player misses the first tenth of a second or so.  Most tracks have enough black at the start so it isn't a problem, but it's noticeable on tracks with a very short lead in.  I have a 100II not the 120II for the record.

 

[jaxtherogue]

Is there anywhere one can buy the alternative color leather cases for the ak120ii in the US? They show them as accessories on the US AK website but I can't find them for sale in the US.  I did find them for sale on a few Japanese websites, but without an english version of those sites I am lost.

 

[pitouthestar]

  Is there anywhere one can buy the alternative color leather cases for the ak120ii in the US? They show them as accessories on the US AK website but I can't find them for sale in the US.  I did find them for sale on a few Japanese websites, but without an english version of those sites I am lost.

Based in the UK but they ship worldwide:
http://www.soundfidelity.co.uk/products/astellkern/ak120-ii-case/

 

[jaxtherogue]

  Based in the UK but they ship worldwide:
http://www.soundfidelity.co.uk/products/astellkern/ak120-ii-case/

Excellent. Thanks so much!

 

[pitouthestar]

 
Excellent. Thanks so much!

Thanks to Dopaminer, he is the one (I think) who found the website first