[Denzelwng4]

   
I email him twice and got no response. Maybe he is busy. I will try the number tomorrow. - Thanks for your help Ted.. appreciate it

in your area astell and kern don't have a local service centre? 

 

[Audiowood]

  in your area astell and kern don't have a local service centre? 

Nope. I live in Silicon Valley.

 

[reeltime]

I just picked one of these up used on eBay for $1500.  I'd heard the V1 AK120 and was really impressed, but I've been anxious to dive into some DSD files and haven't had a source that could handle the files native, until now.  
 
My old digital source (besides an old iPod was a Mac Pro> Fidelio > Wyred4Sound DAC 2 (not upgraded for DSD) > Woo Audio WA5LE > Sennheiser HD800 or HifiMan HE1000.  The HE has been my mainstay headphone since doing a Moon Audio cable upgrade, which eliminated my only complaint against the HE, lack of snare impact.
 
The new player goes direct into the WA5LE via AudioQuest Victoria mini to RCA.  The WA5LE is single ended, so balanced is not an option. 
 
Loading the player, as I've read on here, is an absolute chore.  Originally I was using the MTP streaming app which took forever to transfer a file, even then it place all music in a download folder, but then I came across the Android File Transfer program, which sped things along-- though AFT was crashing quite a bit more than I'd prefer.  
 
I noted immediately WAV files are not liked by the AK240.  They play just fine, but most of the metadata, particularly the artwork, gets lost in translation.  I converted my main WAV files (a bunch of McCartney unlimited files and Harrison's All Things Must Pass) to FLAC, and viola, my tags and artwork appeared.  
 
Launching a DSD copy of Cannonball Adderley - Something Else, I immediately was hearing an overall improvement in soundstage and imaging.  I A/B compared the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed between the Fidelio hires and DSD on the AK240 and there's an obvious sound upgrade coming from DSD files, I'm sold on DSD.  I switched to Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue DSD and it was game over.  It sounds better than the just-released MOFI 45 RPM version on vinyl.  It's the best KOB experience I've ever heard.  Hugh Masekala I again A/B'd from Fidelio hires, and there's just more "there" there in the DSD.  
 
I'm blown away by what this little player can achieve.  I do wonder what's to be had at the AK380 level, but for $1500 bucks, I'm not changing again anytime soon.  Re-discovering my favorite tracks all over again.  This is serious audiophile heaven.

 

[Denzelwng4]

  I just picked one of these up used on eBay for $1500.  I'd heard the V1 AK120 and was really impressed, but I've been anxious to dive into some DSD files and haven't had a source that could handle the files native, until now.  
 
My old digital source (besides an old iPod was a Mac Pro> Fidelio > Wyred4Sound DAC 2 (not upgraded for DSD) > Woo Audio WA5LE > Sennheiser HD800 or HifiMan HE1000.  The HE has been my mainstay headphone since doing a Moon Audio cable upgrade, which eliminated my only complaint against the HE, lack of snare impact.
 
The new player goes direct into the WA5LE via AudioQuest Victoria mini to RCA.  The WA5LE is single ended, so balanced is not an option. 
 
Loading the player, as I've read on here, is an absolute chore.  Originally I was using the MTP streaming app which took forever to transfer a file, even then it place all music in a download folder, but then I came across the Android File Transfer program, which sped things along-- though AFT was crashes quite a bit more than I'd prefer.  
 
I noted immediately WAV files are not liked by the AK240.  They play just fine, but most of the metadata, particularly the artwork, gets lost in translation.  I converted my main WAV files (a bunch of McCartney unlimited files and Harrison's All Things Must Pass) to FLAC, and viola, my tags and artwork appeared.  
 
Launching a DSD copy of Cannonball Adderley - Something Else, I immediately was hearing an overall improvement in soundstage and imaging.  I A/B compared the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed between the Fidelio hires and DSD on the AK240 and there's an obvious sound upgrade coming from DSD files, I'm sold on DSD.  I switched to Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue DSD and it was game over.  It sounds better than the just-released MOFI 45 RPM version on vinyl.  It's the best KOB experience I've ever heard.  Hugh Masekala I again A/B'd from Fidelio hires, and there's just more "there" there in the DSD.  
 
I'm blown away by what this little player can achieve.  I do wonder what's to be had at the AK380 level, but for $1500 bucks, I'm not changing again anytime soon.  Re-discovering my favorite tracks all over again.  This is serious audiophile heaven.

enjoy your new toy...glad you like it...

 

[chawya22]

   
Loading the player, as I've read on here, is an absolute chore.  Originally I was using the MTP streaming app which took forever to transfer a file, even then it place all music in a download folder, but then I came across the Android File Transfer program, which sped things along-- though AFT was crashing quite a bit more than I'd prefer.  
 
I noted immediately WAV files are not liked by the AK240.  They play just fine, but most of the metadata, particularly the artwork, gets lost in translation.  I converted my main WAV files (a bunch of McCartney unlimited files and Harrison's All Things Must Pass) to FLAC, and viola, my tags and artwork appeared.  
 
 

AFT can be mercurial, sometime it's effortless, most times not.
 
As for WAV metadata, the AK240 is the only player that I own that reads WAV files perfectly. All my other players have no problems with WAV artwork but totally screw up Artist, Track Name, Album, etc. As long as your tags are correct, it's been my experience, that your 240 should read them fine. 

 

[reeltime]

   
As for WAV metadata, the AK240 is the only player that I own that reads WAV files perfectly. All my other players have no problems with WAV artwork but totally screw up Artist, Track Name, Album, etc. As long as your tags are correct, it's been my experience, that your 240 should read them fine. 

 
Interesting.  My WAV files for McCartney and Harrison albums wouldn't bring along the artwork, and would put them in an unknown artist tree structure, even though the tags were there to put them in the main list.  
 
AFT works more reliably, but it seems a LOT slower than the Android transfer program.  Plus, you have to keep pulling up the settings menu to see how far along the transfer is running.  There's no update within the app on the host computer.  

 

[chawya22]

   
Interesting.  My WAV files for McCartney and Harrison albums wouldn't bring along the artwork, and would put them in an unknown artist tree structure, even though the tags were there to put them in the main list.  
 
AFT works more reliably, but it seems a LOT slower than the Android transfer program.  Plus, you have to keep pulling up the settings menu to see how far along the transfer is running.  There's no update within the app on the host computer.  

I always embed Artwork in the file. There are free metadata editors for the Mac, I happen to use a paid app called Yate.
 
AFT and Android File Transfer are the same program. Is there another MTP app you meant? I used to use SyncMate Pro which was very Mac "Finder" like but stopped working as of Yosemite. The developer hasn't responded when it might be fixed. 

 

[reeltime]

 
I always embed Artwork in the file. There are free metadata editors for the Mac, I happen to use a paid app called Yate.
 
AFT and Android File Transfer are the same program. Is there another MTP app you meant? I used to use SyncMate Pro which was very Mac "Finder" like but stopped working as of Yosemite. The developer hasn't responded when it might be fixed. 

Yes, I was using Tag on Mac OS to enter missing data and artwork.  Works great on FLAC and MP3, but for some reason WAV files didn't carry the jpg album cover onto the AK240, even though I could check metadata and every WAV file had artwork attached.  
 
I could use MTP, which is a separate Mac app, find the music files on my Mac from the AK240, select them and load them into memory.  Or I could load AFT which was run from the computer and allowed me to transfer files both ways.  AFT was a lot less stable than MPT.  It's prone to crash.  But MTP was a lot slower transferring files.  
 
Neither is a great user experience.  

 

[chawya22]

 
Yes, I was using Tag on Mac OS to enter missing data and artwork.  Works great on FLAC and MP3, but for some reason WAV files didn't carry the jpg album cover onto the AK240, even though I could check metadata and every WAV file had artwork attached.  
 
I could use MTP, which is a separate Mac app, find the music files on my Mac from the AK240, select them and load them into memory.  Or I could load AFT which was run from the computer and allowed me to transfer files both ways.  AFT was a lot less stable than MPT.  It's prone to crash.  But MTP was a lot slower transferring files.  
 
Neither is a great user experience.  

Can you give me the name of the alternative to Android File Transfer for the Mac. I did a search and the only apps found were the already mentioned Android File Transfer (AFT) and SyncMate. I did see an app, in the App Store, called Windows Phone by Microsoft but didn't claim to work with MTP devices like the AK240. I would gladly be willing to try anything that is even slightly more stable than AFT. 

 

[reeltime]

 
Can you give me the name of the alternative to Android File Transfer for the Mac. I did a search and the only apps found were the already mentioned Android File Transfer (AFT) and SyncMate. I did see an app, in the App Store, called Windows Phone by Microsoft but didn't claim to work with MTP devices like the AK240. I would gladly be willing to try anything that is even slightly more stable than AFT. 

 
It's just MQS Streamer, an iRiver app.  

With MQS Music Streamer running on a Mac, and your AK240 connected, you can access, view, stream or download any file your computer can access to the AK240 through AK Connect.  But downloading this way (though more stable) is way way slower than the buggy Android File Transfer.  Also, using MQS drops anything you download into a Downloads folder on the AK240, instead of an artist folder in the root directory.  It's messy.  Another disadvantage is you can only 'pull' files from your Mac, you can't send files to your Mac using MQS.  

 

[chawya22]

   
It's just MQS Streamer, an iRiver app.  

With MQS Music Streamer running on a Mac, and your AK240 connected, you can access, view, stream or download any file your computer can access to the AK240 through AK Connect.  But downloading this way (though more stable) is way way slower than the buggy Android File Transfer.  Also, using MQS drops anything you download into a Downloads folder on the AK240, instead of an artist folder in the root directory.  It's messy.  Another disadvantage is you can only 'pull' files from your Mac, you can't send files to your Mac using MQS.  

Thanks for the explanation. I guess, at this point, AFT is about as good as it gets. I may have mentioned this before, in the 240 thread, but I don't understand how iRiver can ask multiple thousands of dollars for their devices but can't write an elegant transfer method instead of the POS AFT. Sorry for the mini rant.

 

[rbalcom]

 
AFT and Android File Transfer are the same program. Is there another MTP app you meant? I used to use SyncMate Pro which was very Mac "Finder" like but stopped working as of Yosemite. The developer hasn't responded when it might be fixed. 

 
I use SyncMate Pro to transfer files to my AK240 and AK100 II on my iMac running the latest version of OS X Yosemite (10.10.5). The version of SyncMate is 5.1.9. It works fine even though it is very slow. I have almost 12,000 tracks on them. Initial loading took about 10 hours or so, but I just let it copy them through the night.

 

[Saraugie]

If the files you want to update are on a SD card, if inserting it in a MAC, does that give more options to update rather than putting the info on while the card in in the AK?

 

[rbalcom]

If the files you want to update are on a SD card, if inserting it in a MAC, does that give more options to update rather than putting the info on while the card in in the AK?

 
Not so much more options, but another one. it still takes a long time to transfer the files, but it does get past the Android File Transfer issues. While that works for the SD Card, you still have to deal with the AK's internal memory which requires some kind of Android Transfer mechanism.

 

[ozzymo]

When I first received my AK240; I spent about a week filling up the internal 256 GB.  Yes, it was a HUGE pain doing it on my MacMini with the absolute worthless Android File Transfer program.  When I finally, finally got everything transferred over; I don't ever touch the internal memory or the AFT program ever again.  I bought a 200GB MicroSD card and shuffle music around on that.  Adding and deleting albums as needed.  I put my favorite artists and albums on the internal memory so I shouldn't ever need to touch it again.  If I had to constantly update the music on the player itself; I would probably end up throwing the AK240 out the window and smashing my Mac.  It is THAT frustrating with the constant freezing, crashing, and stupid error messages about the device being locked when the screen is on during transfer.  I pop out the MicroSD card whenever I need to add any new music.  Works perfect. No more headaches.  Just suffer through the initial music transfer to internal memory and then quickly buy a large MicroSD card and save yourself all the hassle.  I tried at least two dozen USB cables, including the iRiver one.  I tried plugging it straight into the Mac, using numerous hubs (powered and not) and nothing, I mean NOTHING makes a difference.  It is the AFT program plain and simple.