Astell & Kern makes some of our favourite portable music players, so we're always excited when the company launches a new one.
Its latest, the Kann, is quite literally big news - with a depth of 25.6mm and weighing just under 300g, it's a hefty unit. It has a stylish design and ridged metallic back, and boasts enough features to qualify as an audiophile's dream.
The Kann has its own DAC and a built-in amp with a normal/high gain switch. A&K says this means it will drive even the most demanding headphones with ease.
It also boasts the lowest impedence of any of the firm's portable hi-res audio players. It supports PCM audio files up to 32-bit/384kHz, and DSD files up to DSD256 (11.2mHz).
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The Kann has plenty of connections too. As well as a USB Type-C port for faster charging and data transfers, and a microUSB, it has slots for both microSD cards up to 256GB and full-sized SD cards up to 512GB. And that's on top of the 64GB internal storage.
Bluetooth aptX comes as standard, for wirelessly beaming tunes to a speaker.
On top of all this sits a 6,200mAh battery - twice what you'd get in a high-end smartphone. That should translate to 14 hours of music listening before needing a recharge.
The Kann is available to pre-order now, priced £900. The Astro Silver model will be available late April/early May, followed by the Eos Blue in late May.
