The New iRiver/Astell & Kern AK100: A High-End DAP
Feb 22, 2013 at 6:26 AM Post #2,776 of 9,165
For Headfiers in the UK I notice the AK100 is being shown at the Sound and Vision Show in Bristol (22nd-24th Feb).
 
The link is http://www.bristolshow.co.uk/news_detail.lasso?newsid=4314
 
It may be a rare opportunity to see and play with it.
 
Feb 22, 2013 at 7:00 AM Post #2,778 of 9,165
I think it works great as a digital source. So far it has been plug-and-play with every toslink device I have paired it with, including the Audison Bit One Car DSP. I think this will be my biggest use for it: a flac player for my car: The cars head unit is one of those very closed PCM3-units and the only way to get signal out is signal summing the speaker-level line-outs before DSP and amping, so being able to feed the DSP 24 bit FLAC streams digitally makes a big difference soundwise!
 
Feb 22, 2013 at 9:52 AM Post #2,780 of 9,165
Quote:
I think it works great as a digital source. So far it has been plug-and-play with every toslink device I have paired it with, including the Audison Bit One Car DSP. I think this will be my biggest use for it: a flac player for my car: The cars head unit is one of those very closed PCM3-units and the only way to get signal out is signal summing the speaker-level line-outs before DSP and amping, so being able to feed the DSP 24 bit FLAC streams digitally makes a big difference soundwise!

 

Yea the optical input/output feature is extremely handy. During an entire month when on holiday I was using Mac Book Pro -> AK100 -> O2 -> DT48s as my portable setup very satisfied with the performance. Attended some headphone meets/events, see a DAC I would like to try with my own music oh no problem pulls out AK100.
 
Slight downside is with the battery time running as a DAC from optical input at full volume (line out) only lasts 4hours~ then again anything that has optical output probably will have a usb charging port too.
 
Regarding impedance, I was a firm believer of the 1/8 rule till AK100. I used voldemort's cheap test a FiiO E5 and found little to no difference at all with both JH16s and DT48e. However when I used RSA P51-Mustang there is a day and night difference.
 
Feb 22, 2013 at 2:32 PM Post #2,781 of 9,165
Quote:
I used voldemort's cheap test.

Does Harry have a more expensive, good-guy test? 
wink_face.gif

 
Feb 23, 2013 at 2:04 AM Post #2,783 of 9,165
Regards the scanning issue.
Perhaps it's just the way I listen to music but I turned the auto scan off.
I load the sd cards externally from the unit and as I only listen to albums I never actually scan.
I just search cards 1 or 2 or internal and find folder, open and play.
Copying to the cards via the AK100 is pitifully slow.
 
Feb 23, 2013 at 3:49 AM Post #2,784 of 9,165
My songs are only shown in folders
How can i make it be shown under all songs so i can play it in shuffle mode with all my songs in there
 
Feb 23, 2013 at 4:57 AM Post #2,785 of 9,165
Have been using ak100 for several months and always update myself any news about it.

It seems Iriver mentioned shuffle mode won't work out of or cross folders. It only works if all songs you wanna shuffle are in a single folde.
Perhaps we should let the cs of Iriver to know about our wishes. As the Iriver software is based on Linux, they should be able to do it easily.

Suggest that we make a list of what we want the software to be and request Iriver to do so accordingly.

By the way, very seldomly songs on my cards disappear but they show up again after restart the device. My cards are Sandisk class 10 64gb and all songs are loaded from external card readers.

Recently, I purchased earsonics sm64 95ohm updated version iem, perhaps coz of the impedance issue, this iem sound much normal than other 10-20ohm iem I had. Soundstage 80% close to amped, performance is quite well.

Besides, Vinnie of RWA mentioned ak100 max vol is the same as line out.
I tried it with my ibasso t5 amp comparing output 50/75 and 75/75 vol to amp.
Sound quality becomes clearer and open up when vol max to amp.
 
Feb 23, 2013 at 6:33 AM Post #2,788 of 9,165
Btw, today I find that my AK100 optical out have "Red Light out" through my optical cable,
but the ibasso D12 seems got no signal.
 
But then, I use my hp-p1 output optical to ibasso D12 with same cable, no problem.
 
Damn... is it the Optical Out of AK100 dead? OMG....
 
Feb 23, 2013 at 4:42 PM Post #2,790 of 9,165
I'm sure other (rw)ak100 owners have noticed that there's a couple-second (I count about 5) lag when going from one folder to another, and a one second pause when going back or forward a track.  I can certainly live with it, but for such an expensive player, its definitely a flaw.
 
Does anyone know if its a hardware or software problem?  It would be nice if the lag could be fixed via firmware update.
 

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