One good turn...

Led by its frankly enormous knob, Astell&Kern’s headphone amp is unusual in more ways than merely its looks.

Stephen Dawson

Astell&Kern is the brand name used by long-time portable audio player iriver for its high-end stuff. We’ve covered a few of those over the years, including the company’s multi-thousand-dollar flagship portable music player. This time, however, we have something a little different. It’s the Astell&Kern ACRO L1000 Desktop Headphone Amp. Equipment It is a slightly unusual device in terms of functionality, so it’ll be best if we start by making that clear. It is a headphone amplifier — but only for computer-like devices. It has only one input. That’s a Micro-B USB socket. You plug it into a computer and it becomes an audio playback device for the computer. An external sound card, if you will. But there’s more. The box is labelled ‘Made for AK Portable Player’. I guess it’s taking the…

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Sound + Image (Digital) - 1 Issue, June - July 2018

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