Korean audio company Astell & Kern introduced a new portable music player at the 2018 Munich High End Show. The A&norma SR 15 is the first model from the “standard” line of the brand. At just 154 g, the device is meant to be carried around for daily use.
The first thing that most will notice is the unique design of the music player. The touch screen is roughly 10° counter-clockwise tilted, leaving a thicker bezel on the top right side of the device and offering space to accommodate the large volume knob. If the user holds the player naturally in his right hand, it means the device is held at an angle, making the screen stay vertical in your palm.
Interesting appearance aside, inside the aluminium case the A&norma SR15 is the Dual DAC of CS43198, MasterHIFI tier chipsets from Cirrus Logic, which is a first inside a portable music system and is able to deliver music with the best clarity, just as the musicians intended it. The player runs on a powerful Quad-core CPU, ensuring smooth playback even for big audio files. It plays any resolution of digital files up to 24-bit/192 kHz, and the 32-bit audio will be downsampled via a Sample Rate Converter method. File transfer and charging is supported through MicroUSB, and music output is via the balanced 2.5 mm jack or 3.5 mm headphone jack. The SR15 comes with just 64GB built-in memory, but an extra 400GB can be added through the use of a micro SD card. Streaming is also feasible as the device is supported with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
