Did you test with the HD800s headphones?

Kevin,

I think “eye watering” is a nice way of putting it. I was an early A&K customer and while I liked the device, it became a secondary piece of gear to stick in my pocket next to my iPhone which became rather tiresome to schlep around.

From my perspective, the SP3000 has to be used as both a portable device and primary digital source at home in your home stereo to be worth the money. I agree with Will’s excellent and thorough review that it does raise the bar from a performance perspective. I’ve listened to the Cayin and FiiO players and the SP3000 really is that much better. $3,699 is still a lot of money.

Best,

Ian White

Listening to the SP2k at the moment. It benefits from these of a 4.4mm adapter and/or amplication to make the most of demanding headphones. I almost always plug it into the Cayin C9 as it can sound somewhat flat without.

I wonder if the SP3k has increased the power output and amplification to bring about some of the improvements you describe. I found the SP2k wasn’t really meant to drive full sized headphones, even they are easy to drive.

32-bit, 384KHz isn’t about offering high resolution music at that kind of sample rate, but offering the device enough head room for digital filters to do their magic via over sampling.

Ian, thanks for a wonderful review! I appreciate it. I have the SP2000 T myself. Could you please tell me the best settings to use on the SP2000 T to get the most superb audio experience from my Meze Audio Liric and also what IEM you’d recommend for the SP2000T ! I’ll appreciate your recommendation and reply. Thanks!!

A&K has always been a premier branding and has usually commanded a bit higher price than most others in the market. To me the more troubling trend is companies like Fiio that started out catering to a larger audience are now focused firmly on this same price bracket and we are left with fewer and fewer good budget options. I’m working on getting a Tempotec v6 to review as it lists a great feature set and a much more attainable $350ish price. I have no delusions that it will compete with the SP1000 let alone the SP3000, but it will appeal to a broader market. For those who can afford it, the SP3000 is an end-game DAP if such thing exists, but for most of us its something to drool over at shows and shops and tell ourselves “Someday when I hit the pick-6”.

We winced slightly at the price as well but the product delivers sonically better than anything else in the category and we compared them to see how much daylight there actually was.

The top Sony FiiO, and Cayin DAPs are still very capable players, but the SP3000 is just that much better. We’re not sure how they will improve on this and perhaps they don’t need to for a few years. We shall see.

Best,

Ian White