gotta love astell kern…they literally have a new version every few weeks lol
So, I noticed today that headphones.com has listed the “new” A&K HC2 dongle for sale and I wanted to share my experience with the A&K PEE51 (the aesthetically identical model that preceded the new HC2). I used the PEE51 lightly-to-moderately for about a year during the covid lockdown ear - which is to say I wasn’t going out much and only used it “from time to time”. After about a year of owning it the cable insertion to the dac end of the dongle got real janky and I had to fiddle with it to make sure the internal connections were seated properly when I wanted to use it. A few months later the connection just broke completely and the dongle stopped working entirely. Just over 1 year to the day from the date of purchase, so the warranty was expired and it was simply garbage.
A&K may be known for high quality DAPs, and by extension you might be led to believe their dongle DAC would be similarly impressive, but in my experience while the performance may be excellent, the build quality made it a really bad purchase for me.
The new model may well be different, but from the picutres it looks exactly the same in form if not in internals. YMMV.
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Well that sucks! I f’ing hate when shit like that happens.
They’ll probably not do anything, but if it were me I’d still contact A&K to let them know about the poor build/QC, and see if they offer anything like a replacement or sizeable discount on a new one.
Good luck, super disappointing…
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I’ve long since abandoned it and moved on to iFi instead. Just thought I would share my not-so-impressive experience with A&K dongles for anyone thinking of picking up the new one. The performance was great when it worked, but the design/build left a lot to be desired.
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I moved to FiiO M11 Plus due to Roon Ready that works just fine.
If A&K would have the same functions that works, than I would return.
Torben
Hello!
My name is Diego, I am in Argentina.
I’ve wanted one of Astell daps for a while and I found someone who sold me a Kann Cube in excellent…aesthetic condition. Upon bringing it home and testing it out a bit, I quickly noticed that the device is almost in a brick state.
When you turn it on and enter the settings, it remains in a perpetual state of scanning media. It only recognizes files that are within the internal memory, none of the external memory. However, when entering “Folder”, the system is detecting the external memory, but apparently the system is not able to load the information contained in the micro SD.
At the same time, I wanted to factory format it, but all the formatting options are broken, that is, they are visible but when you choose any of them, it does nothing, it does not execute them.
I want to save this device and I need your help please.
Thank you so much.
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Salu2, ruidito. Welcome to our forum.
One question.
¿Estudiantes o Boca Juniors?
None of them, both 
River Plate? Independiente? I spent a year in Argentina (Mostly Mendoza) long long ago. Back when Godoy Cruz was good. I’m old enough that I actually met Borges (I think I was 11 at the time, and it wasn’t in Argentina).
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