The renowned South Korean firm Astell&Kern, world number one in “Hi-Res” portable digital audio players, has just shown off once again its renowned purism with the market launch of the PA10, a refined portable headphone amplifier with Class A operation. Equipped with the exclusive TERATON ALPHA technology from Astell&Kern, this sophisticated electronics offers a natural, spacious and distortion-free sound that is genuinely “analog” with a very wide range of headphones. Equipped with an industrial design and construction quality that harmonize perfectly with that of the brand’s portable players, the PA10 takes advantage of vast experience in the design of ultra-compact amplification circuits of audiophile gradein order to not only extract all the subtleties contained in “Hi-Res” musical recordings, but also reduce energy consumption and increase output power while eliminating all types of parasites.
For its part, the aforementioned TERATON ALPHA technology guarantees that sound reproduction is the closest possible to that of the original recordingapplying highly elaborate strategies with the objective of suppress noise present in the power signal and increase efficiency in its management. Regarding the Class A amplification section itself, it must be emphasized that it has been designed to reduce energy consumption and increase the output power and minimize noise, to which they add two gain levels and output current control in order to ensure the perfect adaptation to all types of headphones and maximize the spatiality of the sound.
Despite its small dimensions, the PA10 includes a entrance exit for 4.4 mm balanced connector and its crossfeed function is implemented exclusively with hardware and not with digital software, in order to achieve a enhancement effect of the most sophisticated and seamless spatial presentation without degrading the original sound. Finally, let us point out that the new Astell&Kern headphone amplifier incorporates a lithium polymer battery of 4,200 mAh that provides an autonomy of around 12 hours (unbalanced mode, volume at 30%).