Astell&Kern's new flagship Hi-Res player promises an incredible audio upgrade

(Image credit: Astell&Kern)

published 9 May 2025

Quick Summary

Astell&Kern has a new Hi-Res Audio player that will debut at High End Munich in May.

The SP4000 will go on sale this summer and sports a quad-DAC architecture, new high drive mode, and a host of audio improvements.

Astell&Kern is preparing to launch a new flagship Hi-Res Audio player, the A&Ultima SP4000.

It comes with several significant upgrades that make it the brand's most advanced personal audio player yet, and it'll be shown off for the first time at the High End Munich show next week (18-25 May).

One of the most intriguing improvements has been described as akin to four-wheel drive for your ears. The new High Driving Mode pairs two parallel OPAMPs to increase the driving range with no increase in noise or signal to noise ratio.

According to Astell&Kern, this results in significantly increased driving range and enhanced sound detail.

And that's not the only upgrade, there are big improvements to the signal processing capabilities too, plus an update to Astell & Kern's operating system.

Astell & Kern A&Ultima SP4000: key features

The SP4000 features a typically luxurious design, and this time the material of choice is 904L stainless steel. That's the same grade used in high-end watches from brands like Rolex. The back is PVD-coated ceramic and it comes with a calf leather case.

Inside, there's a new circuit architecture that pairs one AK4191 digital processor with a AK4499 analogue DAC. In previous models that was done in a 1:2 ratio of one processor to two DACs, but this time around it's 1:1, enabling the company to deliver a true quad DAC.

According to Astell&Kern, that was previously considered impossible due to noise and other issues, but the SP4000 has solved those problems to deliver what it claims to be "an incredible level of sound that has never been experienced before."

Other features include proprietary enhanced signal alignment (ESA) technology to minimise group delay, an ultra-low-noise LDO regulator for noise suppression, advanced Digital Audio Remaster (DAR) technology, 24-bit wireless streaming via aptX Adaptive and LDAC, and version 4.5 of Astell&Kern's user interface.

Pricing hasn't been announced just yet, but the SP3000 launched in 2023 with a recommended retail price of £3,799 / $3,699 / AU$5,499 / about €4,475. That could be an indication.

The A&Ultima SP4000 will go on sale this summer.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).