News

Astell&Kern has been offering a range of impressive music players for some time now, with models tailored for all kinds of budget. Planned to go on sale later this month, the Kann Cube is the second model in its Kann series that saw the original priced at £899. UK pricing is yet to be confirmed for the Kann Cube, but the company says it will offer a more powerful amplifier (12V RMS via balanced connection) with selectable low, mid and high gain modes to enable it to drive a wide selection of headphones.

A new amplifier design sees the Cube employ two eight-channel ESS Sabre ES9038PRO DACs in a dual-mono configuration, said to provide a wider soundstage and better stereo separation. It supports up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD256 playback natively. MQA compatibility is also on hand both via downloaded audio files and through the Tidal app, allowing hi-res audio via Masters streaming.

Sporting 128GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot for additional storage, battery life claims around nine hours playback from a single charge and there’s a fast charge mode via the USB-C port. A 5in screen and the latest quad-core processor claim to improve menu navigation and the user experience to keep playback as fluid as possible. The Kann Cube is available later this month and you can find out more about it here.