![]() ![]() Once I'd heard it, I couldn't not hear it, and I didn't like it. Through the A&K, my friend's high-resolution files sounded distinctly better than the MP3s I'd been listening to through my phone, but a particular sonic character was audible with every file. I'd heard an older A&K player through Stax electrostatic headphones a few years before, at a friend's, and hadn't been bowled over. But better sound on the road must have been on my mind even before LAlast May, at High End in Munich, where the SP1000 made its world debut, I'd stopped by A&K's floor display and listened to it for longer than I could spare. The company's president, Owen Kwon, was there for the US debut of A&K's new flagship portable player, the A&ultima SP1000 ($3499). ![]() I was at LAAS to cover analog, but I also made sure to attend, with John Atkinson and Jana Dagdagan, Astell&Kern's press conference. I could swear I hit Sync but there was some kind of glitch: I took my seat on the plane, opened iTunes, and my phone's record shelves were empty. For one thing, I find using iTunes unpleasant (and with each update, Apple makes it worse), and even my phone's 64GB of storage doesn't give me enough room for all the music and pictures I'd like to have on hand.īefore my last long plane triplast June, from New York to LA, for the first Los Angeles Audio ShowI hurriedly added some new files to the phone and removed others. Music's the main thing, not sound, especially in the air, and since just about every new LP I buy these days includes a card for an MP3 download, I put those files on the phone and I'm good to go.īut lately I've been thinking about better-sounding portable music than my phone can give me. Those multiple-balanced-armature IEMs perform incredibly well, and the custom eartips make seals that are measurably better at rejecting noise than the noise-canceling, over-ear phones worn by Bose-fanboy peacocks who show them off as they strut up and down airplane aisles. The response is moderately tempered when I add that I use good in-ear monitors (IEMs)either Westone ES50s ( ca $995) or Jerry Harvey Audio Laylas ( ca $2725), both with eartips made from molds of my ear canals. That answer always surprises, and sometimes disappoints: " You listen to MP3s?" People often ask me how I listen to music when I travel. ![]()
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