Astell&Kern A&Norma SR35 Portable High Resolution Audio Player (Charcoal Gray)

Beautiful sounds. The player makes the music so nuanced. You can hear each instrument and the vocals clearly. Studio reproduction.

Amazing and excellent product

I’ve received it a couple of days ago. The sound quality on the few preloaded tracks is very good, but so far, I’ve not managed to connect to the services provided. I can’t connect to my Tidal account, I am unable to download any of the optional services, such as Amazon music etc.. The online user manual is pretty useless in this regard. I’m quite I’ll eventually manage to resolve this and find a workaround, but this is pretty sloppy. At this price, one expects some user friendliness as well as good sound quality.+++A few days later, I figured that it doesn't like some network settings. Once you sort this out, it will connect to Tidal and download Amazon Music etc.. However, I've yet to discover how to add album art work (which is advertised as 'easy' in all the pub) - no word on it in the manual either.

Unpacking:AK SR35 is a small, good looking device. Arrived in a box with a user's manual, usb-c cable, and, I'm not mistaken, a spare of screen protecting plastic sheets.Buttons and switches:After unpacking the DAP, the first thing I noticed was wrongly placed power button - (next to the set of playback controls) - there's no way you can reach it without involving another hand - which defeats the purpose of this DAP declared by AK as "one-hand-operated device".CPU:I can't be 100% sure but the CPU inside the DAP seems to be the same as in SR25II or even SR25.It is really SLOW! AK should have updated CPU for a faster one (along with a new DAC) - otherwise there's no sense putting a new DAC w/o CPU powerful enough to drive the DAC.Browsing music:Working with music collection was not much of fun either - a bunch of red rectangular icons jumping across the screen during browsing the albums instead of artwork pictures which take a second or two to be loaded.User interface:The UI(updated) would look much better on 5" or bigger screen but not on the SR35. The font is small and there's no way to edit it in the menu. Looks like AK just squeezed the layout of SP3000 into this small unit and did not even consider adjusting the fonts accordingly.The sound:The sound quality is okey... with 4 DAC activated (tested on my Noble Encore Kaiser IEM) - I was using 4.4 balanced output. I could hear the typical AK color but not much of full-body character...The DAP sounded a bit artificial to my ears. Listening to beautiful voices of Alison Krauss, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Jane Monheit, I did not feel they sang for me unlike listening to my desktop system. They were too far - no intimacy, I was not involved in their stories... and 4-core DAC did not help much.Conclusion:I wish my experience listening to this DAP were more positive though. I strongly believe that Astell&Kern could do much better than this.

Their software is terrible, and you can potentially damage your hearing with the volume swipe option.There is literally ZERO customer support with this company as well.For the amount you pay, everything should be way better!

Very frustrating, it is so slow, you spend too much time waiting for the player to catch up, I would not buy it again. The price should be around 250 dollars. Yesterday the player went complete dead, the baterry wasnt being used for couple days, when i plugged yesterday was zero battery left. Wondering now if the player is good, it is only 2 months old. I think I want my money back, I paid 699 dollars for it, NOT WORTH THE HEADACHE.

I purchased this unit and it came with a screen problem. The support is awful as is quality control. I would not recommend purchasing from them.