Astell&Kern's Acro CA1000 is an intriguing design that appears to pack in everything an ardent head-fi aficionado would want in a compact and portable device whose 8400mAh fast-charging battery offers up to 10.5 hours playback before needing a plug socket.
Looking like a docking station with separate DAP, the in-built digital music player has a 4.1-inch 720x1280 pixel portrait touchscreen that can tilt upwards up to 60-degrees, allowing you to control playback and adjust settings through its Android-based OS. Alternatively, the screen can lie flat within the aluminium chassis when not required.
The CA1000 boasts balanced 2.5mm and 4.4mm alongside unbalanced 3.5mm and 6.35mm outputs up front, as well as a four-step Gain Level setting ensuring that all headphone types no matter their impedances will feel at home. Meanwhile, wired inputs around the rear cater for RCA, Coax, Optical and USB-C.
Wireless connectivity includes the ability to receive music over Bluetooth from a connected phone (via the BT Sink function) and send playback wirelessly to a pair of wireless headphones thanks to its Bluetooth 5.0, aptX HD and LDAC support. Naturally, the CA1000 features dual-band Wi-fi, too, although there is no news of its Roon capabilities in the press release.
Additionally, you get 256GB of onboard storage, which can be further augmented up to 1TB via a microSD card with a Quad ES9068AS DAC performing conversion duties, including native DSD512 support and 32bit/384 kHz playback.
Finally, the Acro CA1000 utilises Astell & Kern's Teraton Alpha technology as introduced with the A&futura SE180 pocketable player. This tech promises to deliver optimal audio output through efficient power management and the removal of amplification distortion and power noise.
The Astell & Kern ACRO CA1000 lands in February with a ticket price of £1,999/ €2,299.
Visit Astell&Kern for more information
Posted in: Headphones
Join the Discussion
What do you think? Head to the forums and share your thoughts with 100,000+ other community members.
Go to Forums