Audiophilepure

Oh, hell yes! It’s little wonder the EVO3 Aquarius proves popular with the Naim fraternity, because it has really good musical timing (more accurately, it gets out of the way enough to let the system play good timing), but the V5 Aquarius makes the EVO3 sound like it’s on strong antipsychotics. OK, so there’s no drooling or slurred speech involved, but where the EVO3 delivers good rhythm, the V5 is peppy, immediate and upbeat. It simply leaves the EVO3 behind. Given the EVO3 is already considered one of the most fast reacting power conditioners, and that the V5 leaves it almost for dead, this new chassis (and what it contains inside) is something of a revelation.

And the V5 reveals itself when playing some swampy country rock, such as Larry Jon Wilson’s ‘Ohoopie River Bottomland’ [Heartworn Highways, Light In The Attic]. This is a great and mostly unsullied recording, with an infectious beat but one that’s prone to getting lost in the ensemble. Any sense of reticence on the part of the power conditioner makes this track sound almost tired in the middle eight (the key change is so relaxed, you barely notice it until after it happens). Here, everything is just perfectly balanced and pitched. The EVO3 reacts fast to this kind of music, faster than many in fact, but the V5 just reacts faster.

I can understand why the team at Astell&Kern settled on the phrase “Carriable Headphone Amp” to stick on the box – there really isn’t anything else succinct enough to describe quite what the ACRO CA1000 is, or what it can do. But, it’s far more comprehensive than simply a headphone amp that you can pick up and move around with you. To describe it simply, Astell&Kern have taken the screen, functionality and digital smarts of one of their higher-end DAPs, and melded it with a desktop-ready discrete headphone amplifier with enough grunt and multiple outputs that make it ready for pairing with anything from IEMs, to hard-to-drive headphones. And with multiple digital inputs, Bluetooth and wifi capability, plus RCA analogue inputs and outputs, the ACRO CA1000 is also ready to function as an audiophile-grade DAC and preamplifier upstream of other audio equipment, such as power amplifiers or powered monitors.