I C O N AS WELL AS HAVING INPUTS FOR EXTERNAL SOURCES, IT CAN BE USED AS A STANDALONE MUSIC PLAYER
ASTELL&KERN ACRO CA1000 £1999 / astellkern.co.uk So that’s where all the headphone ports have gone… Well spotted. While it’s pretty much impossible to find a phone with a socket for your cans on it these days, Astell&Kern’s ACRO CA1000 has four of them – but you’d have to be a headphone mega-nerd to make use of every one. Across the front you’ll find unbalanced 3.5mm and 6.35mm (quarter-inch) plus balanced 2.5mm and 4.4mm outputs, so
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it’ll cater for pretty much any type of wired headphones you could possibly want to plug in. And if you’re the type of person who’d consider spending £2000 on a headphone amp, chances are you’ve got a few. Ah, so that’s what it is! That’s only half the story. As well as optical, coaxial, USB-C and RCA inputs on the back for plugging in turntables and other sources, the
ACRO CA1000 can be used as a standalone Android-powered music player, with 256GB storage that can be bumped up to 1TB with a microSD card – plenty for that collection of hi-res audio files you’ve been building up. While the 4.1in tilting touchscreen looks just like one of A&K’s portable players you can’t actually remove it, but the whole thing is portable, weighing just over 900g with an 8400mAh, 10.5hr battery built in.
Hmm, perfect for the commute… That shiny aluminium chassis and big volume wheel would definitely turn heads on the train. But in that instance you might be better off using the onboard Bluetooth to connect a pair of wireless cans and stream through it from your phone – perhaps making use of the Crossfeed mode that’s intended to help relieve ear fatigue by making it sound more like listening to a pair of speakers.
