Astell&Kern A&ultima SP3000T

Verdict

The price means it’s not for everyone, and the relative size and weight mean it’s not the most portable of portable music players – but if you can accommodate these issues, there’s so much to enjoy about the SP3000T…

Introduction

These are uncertain times, but it’s good to know we can all rely on Astell & Kern.

The company is seemingly on a mission to develop and deliver the most complex, most high-achieving and – let’s not be coy – most expensive portable digital audio players it possibly can. And so far, it seems to be going pretty well.

This new A&ultima SP3000T is just the latest example of Astell & Kern’s dedication/mania (delete as you deem appropriate). It’s complex and it’s expensive, that’s for sure – so as long as it’s high-achieving too, then it’s job done…

Availability

The Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000T is on sale in the United Kingdom it costs an eye-widening £3199. In the United States it’s a (slightly) more palatable $2999, while in Australia it sells for AU$5299.

Need I say with undue emphasis that this is quite a lot of money to be paying for a portable music player? Especially when you consider the amount of money you’ll need to spend on the headphones to do it justice?

Design

• 142 x 85 x 18mm (HxWxD); 483g
• 316L stainless steel with 99.9% pure silver plating
• The usual A&K angularity

It can’t be all that easy to make a product that’s trying to be portable like the sort of premium product this asking price implies. But that doesn’t mean Astell & Kern hasn’t given it a right good go…

The A&ultima SP3000T is a hefty 142 x 85 x 18mm (HWD) handful, and at 483g it’s going to put a strain on all but the most robust pockets. The four edges of its chassis are built from 316L stainless steel, which is then plated with 99.9% pure silver for additional bling.

As is Astell & Kern’s wont, there’s some angularity to the left and right edges of the frame – and the jewel-like volume dial on the upper right side is set into a deep six-sided recess. A light behind the dial shines in one of a few different colours, depending on the size and type of digital audio file the SP3000T is handling.

The other side of the chassis features four slender playback controls, and on the bottom there’s a USB-C input and a microSD slot. The USB-C is purely for charging the 5050mAh battery – if you listen to not-especially-hi-res content at not-especially-high volume, you should be able to get around 10 hours of action between charges. From flat to full takes a chunky 3.5 hours.

On the top of the player there’s a power on/off button and three outputs – 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced, and a 3.5mm unbalanced alternative. This last one is a hybrid socket – it can also function as a 3.5mm digital optical output.

The front of the player is basically all 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 touchscreen – it’s bright, crisp and responsive. And on the back there’s the SP3000T’s only visual party-piece – a little window through which the two vacuum tubes can be seen glowing in the manner of one of those old three-bar fires that pre-date central heating.

Obviously all this expensive hardware needs to be kept safe and scratch-free – but quite why Astell & Kern feels the need to specify shrunken calf leather for use as a protective case is beyond me. It doesn’t matter how famous or storied the Italian tannery from which it’s sourced, there are surely alternatives that can do as complete a job without making vegan customers decide against SP3000T ownership?

Features

• Three amplification modes
• 32-bit/786kHz and DSD512
• Bluetooth 5.0; SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility

Astell & Kern has thrown pretty much everything short of the kitchen sink at the A&ultima SP3000T, so there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to features… so I’d better get right to it…

A Snapdragon 6125 octa-core processor with 8GB of DDR4 memory is running the show as far as user interactions go. It intends to allow for rapid system response and a smooth, stable and reliable user interface. The CPU, memory and wireless communication components are all gathered as a single system-on-chip for optimum efficiency and as little heat and digital noise as possible. Internal memory is a useful 256GB, expandable by up to 1TB using the microSD card slot.

The SP3000T uses two AKM AK4499EX DACs in conjunction with a pair of AK4191EQ alternatives on a separate audio circuit. The idea is for the AK4191EQs to act as modulators to reduce digital noise from the input stage, and are applied to the left and right channels independently.

This way, the AK449EX chipsets only process analogue signals in what is (according to Astell & Kern) a unique audio circuit configuration. There is a choice of six different DAC filters a little further downstream, too, so it’s possible to have quite a say in the minutiae of the sound the SP3000T serves up.

It’s in the player’s amplification stage, though, that Astell & Kern really goes to town. There are a couple of military-grade Raytheon JAN6418 miniature vacuum tubes deployed as part of what the company calls a triple amp system. Each pair is carefully matched, and then suspended in a fairly complicated silicone PCB arrangement – after all, it wouldn’t do to allow microphonic noise as a result of vibrations or shocks into your listening experience, would it?

And then you’re able to choose between Tube Amp, OP Amp or Hybrid Amp modes – Astell & Kern reckons the differences are between ‘natural warmth’, ‘crystal-clear resolution’ and ‘analogue richness blended with hi-res clarity’.

Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.0 and the SP3000T is compatible with SBC, AAC, aptX HD and LDAC codecs. It’s Roon Ready, too, and has dual-band Wi-Fi on board. Sample rates of up to 32-bit/768kHz and DSD512 are supported, every worthwhile digital audio file type is supported too, and Astell & Kern’s Digital Audio Remaster (DAR) technology is ready to increase the sample rate of your files in an effort to maximise sound quality. 44.1kHz stuff, for example, can be upscaled to 352.8kHz, and sub-96kHz content can be converted to DSD128. 

What else? Well, the Crossfeed feature – which wants to create a loudspeaker effect when listening through headphones – is quite interesting. The technology mixes part of the signal from one channel into the other, with a time-adjustment to centre the image. The company reckons music heard this way is less fatiguing and more natural – you can adjust the level of crossfeed according to your taste.

I could go on (and on), but surely by now the broad point is made. With the A&ultima SP3000T, Astell & Kern has pulled out every stop it could lay its hands on.

Sound Quality

• Spacious, well-defined sound
• Energetic and entertaining sonic attitude
• As revealing a listen as it’s possible to imagine

I suppose it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem very likely to me that you’re thinking of spending all this money on a portable music player without a) having the headphones capable of doing it some justice, b) a quantity of high-resolution content to load onto its internal memory, or c) a top-tier subscription to a worthwhile music streaming service. And as long as you have a) plus one or both of b) and c) covered, the A&ultima SP3000T is a profoundly rewarding device.

With a 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC file of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? by Billie Eilish playing via a pair of Sennheiser IE900 in-ear monitors plugged into the SP3000T’s 4.4mm balanced output, the results are impressive in every respect. There’s no aspect of music-making the Astell & Kern doesn’t understand, and it’s always aware that you’re here to be entertained rather than to be tutored.

So the tonal balance, no matter your preferences where amplification, EQ levels or DAC filter are concerned, is naturalistic and convincing. The integration of the frequency range is smooth to the point of seamlessness. And at every stage, from the deep and confidently shaped low frequencies to the bright, substantial top end via the open and eloquent midrange, detail levels are high.

And that’s the smallest, most transient details, as well as the broader, more obvious stuff – the SP3000T seems capable of extracting every scrap of information from a recording and putting it into proper context without ever losing sight of the bigger picture.

The soundstage the Astell & Kern creates is large and well-defined, so even a complex recording has enough elbow-room available for every element to do its thing without being impacted on. There’s considerable distance available, both front-to-back and left-to-right, and the SP3000T pays proper attention to spaces as well as to actual occurrences. Yet it’s able to open up a recording and lay it out in this manner without it sounding disjointed – in fact, there’s proper unity and togetherness to its presentation, a sensation of performance, that’s by no means a given no matter how expensive the player in question might be.

Low-frequency control is such that rhythms are expressed with real positivity. Dynamic headroom is considerable, too, so the inevitable shifts in intensity that are part of any recording are given appropriate emphasis. And the smaller, but no less important, dynamic variations evident in an acapella voice or solo instrument are picked up on just as readily.

But although the SP3000T has mighty powers of analysis, there’s nothing dry or academic about its overall presentation. Instead, it’s an energetic and entertaining listen, keen to engage you on a corporeal, just as readily as on an academic, level. And when a music player is as insightful, as detailed and as revealing as this one, that’s by no means a given.      

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