We know we may sometimes overuse the term "jack of all trades" here at What Hi-FI?, but this time we mean it. After all, how many times have you seen a desktop headphone amp with a built-in music player, multiple inputs and a quad-DAC array?
Not very often, making Astell & Kern's handsome, do-it-all Acro CA1000 system (let's save time, eh?) a very attractive proposition. If all that versatility wasn't enough, A&K has sweetened the deal in the most delicious of ways, slashing the unit's original price of £1999 to just £549 at Amazon, a saving of £1450 in total. That's a discount of 70 per cent!
Astell & Kern Acro CA1000 deal
So what do you get with the product that Astell & Kern bills as its own little "head-fi hero"? For a start, you're receiving a headphone amplifier with a digital audio player combined into a single unit, with the 10cm player essentially rising from the main amplification console and tilting up to 60 degrees for easy access. A&K's excellent portable hi-res players are generally exceptional, so you're not getting a dud here, either.
The headphone amp can drive high-impedance cans with an output of 15Vrms or lower, and comes equipped with a range of connectivity options - 3.5mm and 6.35mm unbalanced alongside 2.5mm and 4.4mm balanced outputs - for handling a broad spectrum of models.
Internally, the Acro CA1000's quad-DAC offers what A&K describes as "a clear, detailed and balanced sound", whereas the variety of digital and analogue connections "ensures it can be at the heart of any hi-fi set-up". With support for high-resolution audio playback up to native DSD512 and 32bit/384 kHz, it certainly could be.
We're big fans of Astell & Kern's hi-res players, with the Korean brand dominating our list of the finest models for a good while now. In fact, whenever an A&K product drops out of said list, it's usually only to be replaced by one of its newer, shinier cousins. Any deal on one of their models should be considered, but one that slashes the cost by 70 per cent at Amazon? That sort of generosity demands further investigation.
MORE:
Read our Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review
And our Astell & Kern A&ultima SP3000 review
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