Astell&Kern, the leader in portable high-res audio players, announces its newest flagship portable hi-res audio player – the AK380, which goes on sale in June for £3,000 ($4,700). The AK380 builds on the company’s previous flagship model, the AK240 (£2,500) by adding a raft of extra features and functionality. It is crafted from aircraft-grade Duralumin and has dual 32bit DACs (32bit/384kHz Dual-DAC, bit-to-bit playback). Other features include a 4-inch high-resolution TFT-LCD screen, 256GB of internal memory with one microSD card slot supporting up to 128GB microSD card for a total of 384GB of storage and Bluetooth 4.0 support.
The AK380 offers finer EQ settings over previous Astell&Kern models using a Parametric EQ capable of 0.1dB increments over 20 bands. Previous models offered EQ settings of 0.5dB increments over 10 bands. Like the AK240, the player is also Wi-Fi compatible to download music wirelessly, and can also act as an external USB DAC. Users will also be able to stream files and control the AK380 from an iOS or Android device with a forthcoming app.