FFUTSOTH

NONPHONE

AUDIO IS THE

NEW OLD THING

ASTELL & KERN KANN

HOT

FOUR

People, mostly dads, snort derisively at

what they perceive to be the cyclical nature

of music. But actually, all flavours of music

exist continuously; it’s just that particular

types and trends float to the top of the radio

playlists every few years, causing Dad to

say: “Well, this is just like what we used

to listen to.” So it is with portable music

players. It’d be simple to rejoice at the

renaissance of people listening to music on

a separate device to their phone, but really

they’ve been out there all this time, using

fancy hi-res audio players. Of which this

is one. And as we said it would be simple to

rejoice, we will: just look at it! Corrugated

aluminium encasing a barely contained

menagerie of high-end audio wizardry

and up to 576GB of storage. It reminds

us of when iPods were cool. Oops,

that’s a dad comment.

As hot as... a Creative Jukebox

on a shoulder strap

£899 / stuff.tv/kann

WHAT’LL IT PLAY?
All sorts of wav and mp
and FLAC and OGGs... but
presumably you mean this
question more like “Cor,
how fast will it go, Mister?”
To which the answer is a
max of 32-bit 384kHz.

WHAT’LL IT HOLD?

The Kann has 64GB of

internal memory, plus

full-size SD and microSD

slots that can take cards

of 256GB capacity. That

means you can have up to

576GB of cracking tunes.

WHERE’LL IT PLUG IN?

There are two headphone

outputs and two line

outputs – one each of

standard 3.5mm jack and

balanced 2.5mm jack. It

can also send music out

over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

WHERE’LL I PUT IT?

The Kann weighs 279g,

measures 71x116mm

and is 25.6mm thick. For

reference, an iPhone 7

is 7.3mm thick... and the

original 5GB iPod was

about 20mm thick.

NERD’S NOOK KANN WE BE OF ASSISTANCE?