The company behind the iRiver MP3 players has introduced a premium offering to the market and it sounds amazing, writes Paul Skelton.

When I got my first job at the age of 15, I developed a nasty habit of spending my entire pay packet every week. I didn’t want to save. No, I wanted things. AV things (and alcohol things, but that’s a different story).

And the first thing I bought was a ‘massive’ 34cm TV, followed shortly after by a 6-Head VCR. Within a few years I had amassed a collection of AV equipment that I really had nowhere to keep.

Then, when I was 17, Apple launched the iPod and, to be honest, I couldn’t have cared less. To me, it wasn’t the same as listening to my hi-fi equipment, but all of my friends insisted that I had to buy one. So I went to JB Hi-Fi to check them out.

At that stage I didn’t really know anything about digital audio. And I didn’t want to spend the money on something I didn’t really want. That’s when I saw the iRiver H10. It was on sale and it looked so much nicer than the iPod.

I bought it and, within weeks, we were inseparable. A few years later, though, I had to convert to an iPod so I could review the incredible number of iPod docking solutions that had become available. I was reluctant to make the change and I have had fond memories of the H10 ever since.

Now, the company behind the iRiver has released a premium offering to the market – the Astell&Kern AK120. Essentially, the AK120 is a high-end audiophile-grade portable music device that supports high resolution audio formats and gapless playback.

Distributed in Australia by Busisoft, the AK120 builds on the heritage of the iRiver MP3 players and addresses some of the pressing concerns of audiophiles when it comes to portable music. It is also a fantastic source device for high-end audio installations that could prove lucrative for custom integrators.

“Astell&Kern launched just over a year ago when the founders realised there was a market for high-end audiophile portable music player,” Busisoft sales and marketing manager Graeme Dunlop says.

“At that time a lot of people were crying out for a drag-and-drop device that had the ability to play almost any format that you threw at it. The inability of other devices to play FLAC natively, for example, was a big letdown for some people. Similarly, a lack of support for gapless playback was problematic for music lovers that listened to DJ mixes or prog rock.

“Astell&Kern supports both, but it’s targeted at a different price point and different market than iPods and other entry-level MP3 players.”

One of the reasons the AK120 is finding traction among the audiophile market is its support of the Mastering Quality Sound (MQS) format.

MQS refers to collective lossless and high-resolution digital audio in 24-bit/44.1-to-192kHz sampling rates. This is identical to the original studio mastering recordings.

“MQS is incredibly popular in South Korea, where Astell&Kern is based, and the availability of MQS audio is growing in Australia,” Graeme says.

“There are also other sources to obtain high-res audio on the internet. And Sony has just released its high-res audio players, so soon Sony Music will behind the platform as well.”

In addition to MQS, the AK120 also supports the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format, which is found embedded in Super Audio CDs (SACDs). This means you can listen to SACD quality sound without the need of a dedicated SACD player – something other portable devices can’t offer.

The real reason as to why the AK120 sounds so good, though, is quite probably the two Wolfson WM8740 digital to analogue (DAC) converters  that output audio signals independently to each channel, which makes the AK120 a true dual mono (dual monaural) setup like those found in hi-fi equipment.

I had the opportunity to play around with an AK120 for a couple of weeks, to test whether or not it lived up to the claims. The audio playback was impeccable, but it wasn’t until I listened to the MQS files that I truly understood what was possible from a portable audio device. So much so that I really don’t want to send it back.

Yes, the AK120 is expensive and there are some people who simply don’t care enough about audio reproduction to justify the cost, but if one of your clients is picky about sound quality then I highly recommend showing them the AK120.