The Astell & Kern AK is with USB-C Dual DAC cable to protect your mobile device from bad audio. Unless you have an iOS device …
Astell & Kern introduced the AK USB-C Dual DAC cable (£ 109), which claims that “music fans will be able to experience the best sound quality from a computer or mobile device”. It joins the company’s well-known portable music players and headphones, and is currently slated to support Android smartphones, Windows 10 PCs, tablet PCs or MacOS computers only.
The lack of any iOS device support is less than the amount of current required to turn on the cable. Since it is a dual cable configuration, it requires more current to run than a single cable and current iOS devices limit the “current export volume”, so it is no dice with mobile iOS devices.
The introduction of the USB-C DUAL DAC cable is down to the continued trend of headphone jacks dropping smartphone OEMs and affecting the playback quality of high-quality music, including low-performance DACS in the set-up (especially with all that Reduces noise) circuitry of a smartphone). According to A&K, to start your Hi-Fi listening experience the way it should be heard, you plug in a Dum Dac cable, connect it to a pair of 3.5mm headphones and you can use your Hi-Fi Ready to start listening experience.
Inside the dual DAC are two Cirrus Logic CS43198 MasterHIFi DACs, which support native DSD256 and Hi-Res audio playback up to 32-bit / 384 kHz. A&K has succeeded in fitting the component described as the size of a chewing gum packet (17 x 50 x 10.3 mm), so it shouldn’t be too annoying to keep it in the pocket. Bespoke designed capacitors are integrated to optimize the audio circuit “to suppress the fluctuations of power” for stable performance.
A & K’s sound quality should be “live, warm and clear”, distortion-free in the way the artist intended, with the cable capable of enabling a variety of high impulse headphones with 2Vrms (condition no load) output levels .
Priced at £ 109, the Estelle & Kern AK USB-C Dual DAC Cable is expected to go on sale from April.
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Cobb started his career in What Hi-Fi. Started in the dusty stockroom before rising up the ranks to join the editorial and production team as a Buyer’s Guide Editor. Both experienced in magazine and…
