Finally, TIDAL Is Here!
As many of you with AK70's and AK300-series players are figuring out, the OTA update for your Astell&Kern players is available today that finally enable TIDAL on your players! Here's a quick video we shot last week showing the TIDAL user interface in an AK300:
TIDAL support will be added first to the AK70 and AK300 Series players this week and will roll out to the AK240, AK100 II and AK120 II Wi-Fi enabled players soon after.
Tidal isn't the only cool addition in this firmware update. According to Astell&Kern, here are other things that come with it:
aptX HD Support
This week’s firmware update for the AK70 and AK300 series players will add support for Qualcomm’s aptX HD protocol.
aptX HD supports streaming of 24-bit/48 kHz high-resolution audio over Bluetooth. Astell&Kern is the first portable high-resolution audio player manufacturer to feature support for high-resolution audio streaming via Bluetooth.
When paired with devices supporting aptX HD, such as the Astell&Kern XB10 Bluetooth DAC ($189), users can now playback high-resolution audio wirelessly from their players to headphones or speakers without being physically tethered to their player.
I have not used the Astell&Kern XB10 Bluetooth DAC yet, but I'll give it a go at the Tokyo Headphone Festival next week, or sooner if it arrives at Head-Fi HQ before then.
Now this next announced feature in this firmware update is
very cool for vinyl enthusiasts who like to rip their LPs, or are interested in doing so:
New AK Recorder Features
A popular use for the Astell&Kern AK Recorder module is to digitize vinyl so users can listen to their collections on an AK300 series portable player on the go.
With the latest firmware update for the AK300 series players, the AK Recorder now features a new LP Recording feature that will separate songs recorded from vinyl into individual tracks and then add full album information and artwork via Gracenote lookup. Now it is even easier for you to take your entire music collection with you, anywhere in the world.
You can see this one in operation in the following video, with the AK Recorder--this is amazing, and I can't wait to try it!
I plan on jumping back into vinyl soon, so this feature set looks
incredible to me.
The new firmware for the Astell&Kern AK70, AK300, AK320 and AK380 high-resolution audio players will be available starting October 13 and can be downloaded by enabling Wi-Fi on the players. Once the update is ready to be downloaded, the player will notify the user a new update is available.
