Oh, the souund!
Astell-Kern aNorma SR-35, Round II
After buying one in July and having mixed reviews on it, the unit sadly disappeared in October, likely due to theft. After feeling initial frustration, I had gotten used to the little guy and had adopted it as part of my lifestyle - walking, driving, before sleeping, using it all the time. My ultimate testimony is when the unit failed to turn up I bought another one. Here you go, and as I see it, the good and not so good:
I use the unit primarily to use as a digital audio player, and to be able to choose a folder of songs and not have to worry about playlists. I do not use the unit as a digital audio converter though it seems it has very strong features for that use.
The good:
- The sound! I had moved my music from CD's and records to my iPhone, all MP3's burned from CD's using iTunes, or starting with lossless WAV files from records using Audacity. I now burn FLAC files using DB Poweramp, a premium RIP software that will generate multiple formats simultaneously when you burn a CD. I found the FLAC files from the SR-35 much crisper than the MP3's burned with iTunes, whether on headphones, earbuds, 3 vehicles - everything.
I use a pretty decent pair of over the ear Bose headphones wired with a 3.5 mm jack. Maybe they are not the greatest like some of the unbalanced options out there, but they are pretty decent. I can hear EVERYTHING including instrumentation and inflections in tunes I never knew existed. Tunes on the iPhone via bluetooth now sound "thick" in comparison and you don't even know what is missing. There is a crispness in the SR35's rendering of the music that is simply amazing.
- Going further - I did a firmware update on receipt of SR-35 #2 and found a whole lot of new options in the Settings I hadn't seen before. L/R channel balance, a variety of different bluetooth codecs, multiple ways of addressing the USB 3 port, and a long list I haven't even had a chance to look at. What was a robust little device became even more so!
- The variety of ways to choose your music - song, album, artist, genre, favorites, a playlist, and to me most importantly, folder view to simply choose a folder of music. I am not fond of having to setup playlists as I have said. It is cumbersome and they are not always easily transportable from device to device. Give me a computer, let me set up folders of music collections, and I am good to go. What you see is what you get!
- It is easy to set up multiple EQ's for different genres or listening devices.
- Album art if properly saved/embedded in your song files is faithfully reproduced on the home screen during play. That is a feature I like if I hear a song and want to go back to it later on.
- The ability to add a song as a favorite during play and easily being able to dive into album, artist, or folder from the song screen.
- And don't let me forget - the sound! Oh, did I cover that already? Once you get used to it, it is hard to give up and listen to your music on something else.
The not so good:
- Tiny text on menus and overall will test your eyes and at times I need my glasses to see it all. I have read reviews and am not the first to note that.
- I noted with unit #1 it did not display album names in any of my vehicles. Song and artist names, yes. Maybe that will change with unit #2. It hasn't. I will check the manual and see if I can manage the fields to display on the unit's screen.
- Bluetooth range was not great with unit #1 and it took a while to set up devices (earbuds, vehicles, etc.). Hopefully that has improved. I have lots of bluetooth devices and sometimes my phone or iPad hijacks the setup of a new device.
- The menu response is not all that fast which is likely a Droid thing. Since I listen random songs from a folder with 6000 or so songs in it and that is not the biggest deal to me, I simply deal with it.
- The menus are "clugy" at times. There are so many features it is hard to remember at times where they are.
Overall, the sound makes it all worthwhile, and I enjoy the SR-35 immensely.
