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Astell & Kern PD5 review: the most 'sensible' player yet from A&K visually —but sonically it soars above the competition

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Astell & Kern PD5 review: the most 'sensible' player yet from A&K visually —but sonically it soars above the competition

It’s been a long time since Astell & Kern has had a genuinely affordable digital audio player in its line-up, and the launch of the PD5 does nothing to change that.

It’s been a while since the company had anything as visually unremarkable as this in its catalog, too — but try not to get hung up on the perceived value and instead concentrate on the priceless nature of its sound quality.

And besides, a considerable amount of money put Astell & Kern’s way for a PD5 may not buy you much in the way of design or tactility but it gets you an extremely thoroughly specified device. Eight Cirrus Logic DACs? 20-point EQ adjustment? Balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs? The ability to work as a desktop DAC? Enough power to get a tune out even the most uncooperative headphones? The PD5 has all of this, and more — and it’s all in the service of audio performance that’s as good as any portable device at anything like this price point.

When it comes to clarity, to detail retrieval and to outright fidelity, the PD5 is extremely hard to criticise and yes, it fully emphatically deserves a place in our best MP3 players guide . And its talents don’t stop there, not even close — its sound is punchily robust, effortlessly dynamic, brilliantly controlled and organised, and thoroughly engaging. If you take your portable listening experience seriously (or your desktop listening experience for that matter — the PD5 is also an excellent USB DAC), this Astell & Kern absolutely demands your attention.


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