Occasionally, we have a fair idea of what a product is like before it has even entered our test rooms – not because of any particular clairvoyant ability on our part, but due to it being descended from a line of very fine predecessors.
The Astell & Kern A&norma SR25 is the latest in what has been a procession of excellent, What Hi-Fi? Award-winning, ‘entry-level’ portable music players, with each new generation invariably proving more talented than the past. The SR25 doesn’t let us down, propelling its lineage forward from the A&norma SR15, which was introduced in 2018, to set a new performance benchmark.
It pushes the price along too, with £649 now the minimum you can pay for a current A&K player. That has now opened up a clear gap for a truly budget player in the line-up, which makes you wonder why the company hasn’t gone after the Apple iPod Touch or budget Sony Walkmans in the music player world. For now, at least, A&K is focused on delivering top-end specification and sound quality for middle-market money, which it does brilliantly.
The A&norma SR25 marks more of an evolution than a revolution of the brand’s entry-level player, but the strides it takes are nevertheless significant.
Whereas the A&norma SR15 downsamples 32-bit files for 24-bit playback and converts DSD128 files to PCM 24-bit/176kHz, the SR25 supports native DSD256 and 32-bit/384kHz audio. This is more or less where file support in digital hardware tops out, and is beyond what most people will actually need.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 2020 من What Hi-Fi.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 2020 من What Hi-Fi.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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