Astell&Kern

The company that made the high-end portable player a category

When Astell & Kern launched the AK100 in 2012, portable high-resolution audio barely existed as a product category. Phones were replacing dedicated players, and the idea of spending serious money on something that only played music looked like a step backwards. The company making that bet was iriver, the Korean firm whose MP3 players had been among the few genuine rivals to the iPod before smartphones took that market away. Rather than compete with phones, iriver went where phones could not follow and launched Astell & Kern as a separate brand in Seoul. The category they opened is now well established and Astell & Kern still define its upper end.

What separates them from a phone is not just the DAC. It is the analogue stage after it, the isolation between the digital and analogue sections, and a power supply designed for audio rather than for a screen and a modem. Astell & Kern group this work under the name Teraton Alpha, their own audio platform covering power delivery, noise removal and amplification. It is difficult to do in a device that fits in a pocket, and it is the reason the price ladder goes as high as it does.

The industrial design is deliberately unusual, with angled cases and volume wheels that have become the brand's signature. Not to everyone's taste, and the company has never pretended otherwise.

Astell & Kern also make earphones, portable amplifiers and USB dongle DACs, so the line covers everything from a phone accessory to a reference player.