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The Astell & Kern AK120
Sep 3, 2013 at 5:21 PM Post #3,796 of 7,071
townes said:
  No success... I tried on a Lenovo laptop T500. Same issues. The chipset drivers on the desktop were the latest version for this board. I get the best result by using Direct Sound (DS: iriver USB DAC) which still stutters (about every 5 seconds) and is unlistenable. Not what I hoped for: but the longer the more the AK120 itself seems to be the problem... I will test an older firmware (1.2x)
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Don't bother, you need to exchange for a new one.
 
Sep 3, 2013 at 9:00 PM Post #3,797 of 7,071
drsheep said:
Don't bother, you need to exchange for a new one.
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Not really. Stuttering had been an issue for some time for a number of users and iriver support reply to me saying they are looking at the firmware to fix this and ask me to be patient.

It isn't as bad as every 5 second for me. Maybe more like every 30. Since I don't need it as usb dac (I have optical out from my PCs if I want to use the ak120 as dac, ) it doesn't bother me much. Still hope they will fix it soon as the usb dac is useless for now.
 
Sep 3, 2013 at 9:06 PM Post #3,798 of 7,071
Hmm I did notice some stuttering at times during playback. It wasn't very often though but it was annoying when it happened. Didn't really care to say much about it because I honestly don't use the DAC function at all....
 
Sep 4, 2013 at 12:34 AM Post #3,799 of 7,071
kkcc said:
   
OTOH I will stay away from any further AK purchases until they improves on their AMP section.....  the AK's appeal to me was largely predicated on the one-box slick and pretty angle.  While AK120 fare better I still find it lacking power to drive my IEMs with authority.  
 
Hope they'd make great improvement on the amp part in their next flagship but from that is being told it doesn't seems to be their priority.  
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The problem is that if you look at the only DAPS that can drive anything with authority, i.e. to my knowledge DX100 and 901, they are quite large (not to use the B word). So I am guessing that to have a trully powerful amp section and the battery that can power it, you need space. The 901 battery is just huge !
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 9:26 AM Post #3,800 of 7,071
Does anyone have an alternative link to download Firmware v. 1.33? The file I get from the official link won´t unzip without errors.
 
Thanks alot!
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 9:28 AM Post #3,801 of 7,071
Sep 5, 2013 at 9:36 AM Post #3,802 of 7,071
Sep 5, 2013 at 10:42 AM Post #3,803 of 7,071
I have downgraded back to 1.32 as I found that with 1.33 things began to sound a bit sibilant and I was starting to get a headache when listening to it for extended periods of time.
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 10:50 AM Post #3,804 of 7,071
Just upgraded JRiver til version 19 (something) and AK120 firmware to 1.33, and discovered that it's possible to sync AK120 with playlists and everything using JRiver. Dont know if this is common knowledge around here but decided to tell you all anyways.

Started the sync 10 minutes ago and seems to be working fine but will see when it finishes in an hour or so. If this works out nicely, then no more iriver software for me....
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 10:59 AM Post #3,805 of 7,071
stimulatedboy said:
Just upgraded JRiver til version 19 (something) and AK120 firmware to 1.33, and discovered that it's possible to sync AK120 with playlists and everything using JRiver. Dont know if this is common knowledge around here but decided to tell you all anyways.

Started the sync 10 minutes ago and seems to be working fine but will see when it finishes in an hour or so. If this works out nicely, then no more iriver software for me....
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The AK120, like many USB based DAPs, will sync with most software, including Windows Media Player or even the Sony Media Go.
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 12:55 PM Post #3,806 of 7,071
drsheep said:
The AK120, like many USB based DAPs, will sync with most software, including Windows Media Player or even the Sony Media Go.
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Thank you! My technical competencies needs some serious update... :)


Syncing JRiver software and AK120 proved to be a piece of cake. Just erase everything on the AK120 before syncing to avoid having 2 files of everything... *sigh*

P.s. Playlists not showing up as expected...
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 1:00 PM Post #3,807 of 7,071
stimulatedboy said:
Thank you! My technical competencies needs some serious update... :)


Syncing JRiver software and AK120 proved to be a piece of cake. Just erase everything on the AK120 before syncing to avoid having 2 files of everything... *sigh*
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Yep, I am too lazy to use it since I have dBpoweramp and just drag and drop.  However, JRiver is the one to keep, specially with BBE+ plug-in if you haven't tried that.  NVM, I remember it wrong, as BBE is from JetAudio and not JRiver, still worth a try.
 
Sep 5, 2013 at 5:59 PM Post #3,808 of 7,071
stimulatedboy said:
Thank you! My technical competencies needs some serious update... :)


Syncing JRiver software and AK120 proved to be a piece of cake. Just erase everything on the AK120 before syncing to avoid having 2 files of everything... *sigh*

P.s. Playlists not showing up as expected...
Click to expand...

 
At first you had me excited. But go figure playlist support still doesn't work :frowning2:.
 
Sep 6, 2013 at 9:22 AM Post #3,810 of 7,071
I'd also like to know this :)
 
In fact I'm about to order an AK120, so any other great portable amp options would be much appreciated.
 
I have an ALO Audio 'The National' I currently use with my iPod 5.5G, but don't know whether this would be the best amp to pair with the AK120.
 
Budget not an issue.
 
Thanks guys!
 
Walshy
 
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