[emrelights1973]

We will never get offline tidal with AK

 

[bidn]

solution: a 2 Tb Samsung SSD + a short USB-c cable.

Thank you for showing your setup.

Are they connected through a USB hub (charging them both?) or are they directly connected to each other?

 

[kubig123]

solution: a 2 Tb Samsung SSD + a short USB-c cable.

Nice,
How does it affect the battery?

I’m sure it’s going to drain quite some power.

 

[bmichels]

Nice,
How does it affect the battery?

I’m sure it’s going to drain quite some power.

Well curent drain is not so dramatic as I expected: I tested the battery life when playing from my external USB SSD Samsung T3 - 500Gb compared to playing from internal memory :

With the exact same PCM play list, I got 6h45 playing from the USB SSD instead of 10h playing from internal memory (with no USB SSD storage attached)

I do not know if the 2 Tb version of the Samsung T3 SSD will have a different curent drain than my 500 Gb...

 

[wldcohso]

Well curent drain is not so dramatic as I expected: I tested the battery life when playing from my external USB SSD Samsung T3 - 500Gb compared to playing from internal memory :

With the exact same PCM play list, I got 6h45 playing from the USB SSD instead of 10h playing from internal memory (with no USB SSD storage attached)

I do not know if the 2 Tb version of the Samsung T3 SSD will have a different curent drain than my 500 Gb...

Nice rig.. i assume you’re accustomed to stacking your components. Why go this route as oppose to a 400GB card and your internal storage? seems like unnecessary bulk.

 

[bmichels]

Nice rig.. i assume you’re accustomed to stacking your components. Why go this route as oppose to a 400GB card and your internal storage? seems like unnecessary bulk.

You are correct, I do not often use this setup, I connect the SSD only when I want to transfert or listen to a file that is not in my usual library.

99% of the time I am happy with my internal + 400 Gb MicroSD. Indeed, 600 Gb is OK for my usual listening.

 

[Schmeisser]

I have at least 200 albums on my internal drive 256GB and surely I will add 400GB with a microSD which is going to store roughly 400 additional albums. That will make the total of about 600 albums on my player. Even if I listen two albums per day, that would take nearly one year to listen to them only once each. Why in the world would I need more albums on the go?

 

[wldcohso]

I have at least 200 albums on my internal drive 256GB and surely I will add 400GB with a microSD which is going to store roughly 400 additional albums. That will make the total of about 600 albums on my player. Even if I listen two albums per day, that would take nearly one year to listen to them only once each. Why in the world would I need more albums on the go?

Agreed, someone will say “playlist” is there reason...

 

[wldcohso]

Ok ok ok Black Friday coming fast... things I want in next couple weeks.. case, new cables for balanced output, who has a good sale for cables? Any suggestions. Looks like plussound is having 20% discount Nov 23-25. I’m not a believer in cables but I want something more aesthetically pleasing.

 

[olddude]

Some folks want to place every song on every album they have in a single player. This was the same discussion on the Fiio X7 thread (before it was released for sale) that went on for scores/hundreds of pages as to how much memory was "enough." In the end Fiio included one micro memory slot.

No matter how much memory a manufacturer enables the user to have, there will always be someone who wants more. It's a no-win for the manufacturer, who can't please everyone, and could drive up device size and selling price which will displease other consumers if they do.

So, don't hold you breath that there will be a 2TB or 4TB SP1000. Get a 400gb card (I'm using a 200gb card) and enjoy the music you can fit on it. Or, as above, get a HD and stack. Because no matter how much space is available, someone will want more and around and around we will go again.

 

[kubig123]

Well curent drain is not so dramatic as I expected: I tested the battery life when playing from my external USB SSD Samsung T3 - 500Gb compared to playing from internal memory :

With the exact same PCM play list, I got 6h45 playing from the USB SSD instead of 10h playing from internal memory (with no USB SSD storage attached)

I do not know if the 2 Tb version of the Samsung T3 SSD will have a different curent drain than my 500 Gb...

thanks,
I'll give it a try, I have an older 1tb Samsung SSD that I can play with.

 

[jlbrach]

I have at least 200 albums on my internal drive 256GB and surely I will add 400GB with a microSD which is going to store roughly 400 additional albums. That will make the total of about 600 albums on my player. Even if I listen two albums per day, that would take nearly one year to listen to them only once each. Why in the world would I need more albums on the go?

I have 5000 plus CD's which obviously I couldnt not listen to at any one time but it gives me access to all of my favorite music to be able to pick and choose whatever music i wish to listen to at any particular time...I like to have as much of music portable to me as possible....using your logic why have more space than necessary to keep perhaps 4 or 5 albums on your player since you will not listen to more than that in any one sitting?

 

[olddude]

I'd like an A&U SP5000 that is the size of my watch and holds 20TB, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. Technology limits what we can have, and will until someone figures out how to make a smaller bigger drive that needs less power to run. In the meantime, if 400-600 albums in lossless is what we can fit without adding an external HD, then there we are. I don't think Schmeisser is suggesting we just need to have a few albums on our devices for daily listening. Choice is good. It's just that there are currently limits to how much space we can have on a portable device. And to my point that there will always be someone who wants more storage space, exactly how much space would your 5000+ CD's in lossless need?

 

[Gavin C4]

We all know it is impossible to meet the requirements of all consumer. However, there are more and more DAPs on the market that offers 2 microSD card slots. I guess AK is not as stubborn as Apple in which they decided to not add any microSD card expansion slot to the iPhone despite most Android phone has one. AK got to include 2 microSD card slot in the TOTL DAP someday, even their Kann DAP got 2 slot.

 

[bidn]

without adding an external HD

Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) require much more power than Solid State Drives (SSDs), maye four times more, so a HD would draw too much power from your AK, so we are not considering HDs and only considering solid state (SSDs and small microsdxc SD cards).

exactly how much space would your 5000+ CD's in lossless need?

It is good you are only considering lossless coding (for me it would not make sense to use a TOTL AK DAP to listen to mp3's).

First we should keep in mind that albums often have more than one disk (e.g. in addition to the studio recording also a bonus disk with a live performance; or a bonus disk with instrumental audio tracks without singing).
So you may have to reckon 10% of albums with two CDs instead of one, which could give 500 more CDs.
But let's keep it to 5000 CDs.

The space depends on the encoding file format.

If you ripped your CDs a long time ago, they would be in the WAV format which has no compression,
i.e. in average about 600 GB/CD
so you would need 5000 x 600 MB = 3 TB (no current external USB SSD would be large enough, you would need a SATA internal 4TB SSD).

If you ripped all your CDs recently, then you would have used a format with compression, the now established standard being FLAC (or before APE for Windows users of ALAC for Apple users),
i.e. in average 300 MB/CD,
so you would need 1,5 TB.

In real life many have a mixture of different formats, some being ripped and some purchased on the internet:
- a majority of FLAC files with some APE or ALAC files
- maybe 10 % of WAV files requiring twice the size the size of the corresponding FLAC file
- HD, master files (e.g. can be purchased at Qobuz) 24 bit, 88kHz, e..g requiring about 1 GB, four times the size of the 44kHz-16bits FLAC file
- DSD files, e.g. requiring about 4 GB = 13 x times the size of the 44-16 FLAC file
then you would easily arrive to more than 2 TB.

For people listening to only one or few kinds of genres, storage capacity may not be an issue,
but for others it is an issue (I listen to many different genres, starting with ancient Gregorian, polyphony, medieval and renaissance secular to -> ... ->... -> to many different genres of metal...).

Astell & Kern has so often surprised with incredible and expensive things other companies thought nobody would buy,
I keep dreaming that next time they will break though with a TOTL DAP allowing to attach a SATA SSD....