Astell & Kern KANN ULTRA High-Resolution Music Player

Astell & Kern Kann Ultra Overview

Audiophiles can enjoy high-fidelity music while on the go with the KANN ULTRA High-Resolution Music Player from Astell & Kern. Compared to the previous KANN CUBE, the ULTRA is lighter, has a larger 5.5" display, and most importantly, has a more powerful output at up to 16 Vrms. Through a triple output of headphone, pre out, and line out, the KANN ULTRA can support demanding IEMs and headphones, component amplifiers, and other external devices. Four gain modes let you dial in the output power you need, as the ES9039MPRO dual DAC chips and seven different DAC filters ensure a clear sound with minimal distortion and noise.

Triple Output Sound

• Headphone out: power demanding IEMs and headphones with a selectable gain of up to 16 Vrms
• Pre out: goes through a specially designed pre out amplifiers to external components
• Line out: outputs sound directly from the DAC without going through amplification, providing a low noise level

TERATON ALPHA

Astell & Kern s TERATON ALPHA technology works to bring all internal components together, providing optimized noise removal, power management, and clean amplification. The result is audio playback that sounds close to the original source material.

Dual DACs & DAC Filters

KANN ULTRA runs dual ES9039MPRO DAC chips, which offer advanced modulation to reduce power consumption, noise, and distortion. They also incorporate a built-in hardware MQA renderer that delivers the sound of original master recordings. In addition, seven DAC filters can be chosen to let you create your own sound style:

• Minimum phase (default): low latency, minimal pre ringing and low passband ripple.
• Linear phase apodizing: full image rejection by FS/2 to avoid any aliasing, with smooth roll-off starting before 20k.
• Linear phase fast roll-off: most common filter with clean suppression and high rejection, best for music with high transients. Provides crisp clean highs.
• Linear phase slow roll-off: low group delay and symmetrical inputs response. Less ringing then Linear phase fast roll off. punchier bass than LPFR, with clean highs.
• Minimum phase fast roll-off: minimal pre ringing, preferred for imaging and soundstage. No aliasing in frequency domain. Stronger bass than Linear Phase, clean highs.
• Minimum phase slow roll-off: non symmetrical filter designed to minimize pre ringing. Strong punchy bass with good transient attacks.
• Minimum phase slow roll-off low dispersion: provides a balance of the low latency of minimum phase filters and the low dispersion of linear phase filters. Minimal pre-ringing is added to achieve the low dispersion in the audio band.

Digital Audio Remaster

DAR (Digital Audio Remaster) technology is designed to deliver improved sound quality at higher sample rates. It does this by upsampling tracks beyond the limits of the source format, all without losing acoustic nuance and a full-bodied sound.

Crossfeed

Ear fatigue can occur during prolonged listening via headphones, where left and right channels are separated. Turn on Crossfeed to have signals from one channel sent to the other, with a time difference to center the sound image, thereby providing a more comfortable experience. An experience you can adjust to your own listening preferences with Shelf Cutoff, Shelf Gain, and Mixer Level features.

Crimson-Themed UI/UX

The crimson-themed interface reduces eye fatigue with a black and red color scheme, while making it easy for you to quickly browse music categories to find exactly what you want to listen to. With album art search, you can experience the joy of finding music through their iconic album covers. The system also offers artist view and access to many online streaming services.

AK File Drop

Easily transfer files to the KANN ULTRA using your PC, smartphone, or an FTP program on the same network

BT Sink

Connect the KANN ULTRA to an external Bluetooth device with BT SINK and stream the music through the KANN ULTRA to improve the sound quality.

Roon ARC App

Supporting the Roon ARC app through Open Service, the KANN ULTRA can remotely access your complete, personalized library of music by artist, album, playlist, and tags.

ReplayGain

This feature automatically and uniformly adjusts varying track volumes to a singular playback volume, making long listening sessions easier to enjoy without requiring regular volume adjustment.

Illuminated Volume Knob

An analog volume knob is backlit with a multi-color LED that changes color based on the current track. Based on the color, you can quickly see the bit depth or current AMP mode, with color-coding for 16-, 24-, 32-bit, and DSD.

Additional Features

• Fast octa-core processing
• Up to 11 hours of battery life
• Support for DSD256 and up to 32-bit/384 kHz
• Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX HD and LDAC
• Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)
• 128GB of built-in memory
• microSD slot that supports cards up to 1TB
• MQA support
• Roon Ready

EAN: 195674000590