Review: Activo P1 Music Player

Acclaimed portable audio brand Astell & Kern has engaged in what I’m going to call a “reverse Toyota.” The Japanese hero of affordable, reliable motoring wanted a piece of the premium automotive action, and so developed an entirely new luxury brand called Lexus. (Fun fact: The brand name stands for “Luxury Export US.”)

Astell & Kern, having established itself as the planet’s leading purveyor of high-performance, high-bling, high-priced, high-resolution digital audio players, has developed Activo. It’s a subbrand that allows Astell & Kern to compete in those areas of the digital audio player market it has long since abandoned in its remorseless drive upward.

Mind you, when you line up this P1 device against competitors from the likes of FiiO and Sony it doesn’t really seem all that affordable. Entry level is relative, and the P1 has been pitched into an area of the market that is, if anything, even more competitive than the rather rarefied areas Astell & Kern is contesting these days.

But then it’s not as if the Activo P1 hasn’t been equipped to compete; a quick glance at its specifications is enough to confirm it has what it takes. Is it worth the extra cost for Astell & Kern lite? That depends on how much you care about looks.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Great Converters

The crucial digital-to-audio conversion of the P1 is taken care of by an ESS ES9219Q Sabre dual-DAC arrangement that’s able to handle digital audio files of up to 32-bit/384-kHz and DSD256 resolution. Amplification comes via the Astell & Kern Teraton Alpha system, which the company deems good enough for taking care of business in digital audio players costing 10 times as much as the Activo P1.

An octacore processor promises a slick and responsive user experience, and the interface itself will be familiar enough to anyone familiar with Android devices. The inclusion of the Google Play store as an embedded app means it’s easy to add to the collection of music-playing apps (Apple Music, Qobuz, Spotify, and Tidal, as well as a dedicated Activo player). Sixty-four gigabytes of internal memory is low, but the SD card slot can expand that by as much as 1.5 TB if you supply your own card.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Getting at the music that’s available can be done a number of ways, and thanks to around 20 hours of action from a single charge, can be done all day and most of the night. There are 3.5-mm unbalanced and 4.4-mm balanced headphone sockets, and Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX HD and LDAC codec compatibility if you prefer wireless headphones. As well as charging the battery, the USB-C slot on the bottom of the chassis allows connection to a computer in order for the P1 to act as a wired DAC, and it will act as a Bluetooth DAC too if you fancy a wireless connection.

Tired Design

The Activo P1 is specified in excess of what you might be expecting at the asking price. Where design is concerned, though, I’d argue this player looks and feels less expensive than it is.

Obviously no one’s expecting the brutally angular, profoundly high-shine finish of an Astell & Kern player. But the P1 combines aluminum and plastic to underwhelming effect, and the player’s plastic-wrapped upper third is slightly deeper and wider than the aluminum below it. It’s deliberate, of course, but is so tentative as a design feature it could almost be a mistake. The touchscreen is bright and legible, though, and the few physical controls on the player’s upper edges are responsive.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Putting files on is very simple, thankfully, just drag and drop. That internal memory will fill up pretty quickly if you’re doing the right thing and loading up hi-res content, but accessing your favorite music streaming service is no trouble either, so even while you wait for that large-capacity SD card to arrive from Amazon, the P1 has a whole host of music available.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of acquiring a digital audio player that can handle properly high-resolution content and output it via a balanced headphone socket, obviously that’s what you should do. During my time with the Activo P1 I listen to all sorts of music, of many different file types and sizes, through a number of different pairs of wired and wireless headphones. I doubt it will come as any kind of shock to learn that the P1 is at its most impressive when playing big, information-rich content through some hard-wired headphones.

Immersive Sound

A 24-bit/96-kHz FLAC file of “Frogs” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds heard through a pair of Sennheiser IE600 via the 4.4-mm balanced output has an awful lot to recommend it. I’ll get to the specifics of the Activo’s performance shortly, but the headline is that this is an eloquent, insightful audio player that balances analysis against entertainment in the most confident and satisfying manner.

It digs deep into the frequency range and shapes bass information convincingly. There’s punch and substance at the low end, sure, but there’s also a deft way with rhythmic expression and plenty of information available regarding tone and texture. Some players think that “thump” is the be-all and end-all of what’s required, but the P1 is a more judicious device than that.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

There’s respectable bite and shine and the top of the frequency range to balance it out, although in absolute terms the P1 plays it fractionally safe where treble sounds are concerned. Still, a little roll-off in the name of good taste is preferable to the hard-edged attack some alternatives indulge in. In between, the amount of detail the Activo can extract from a recording and carefully contextualize makes it a more communicative (and consequently more convincing) listen than any price-comparable rival. The tonal balance it achieves is convincing too.

Big chances in attack or intensity in a recording are articulated pretty well, and even those more minor dynamics of harmonic variation aren’t overlooked. It’s a vibrant and intricate picture the Activo P1 paints, and it seems unlikely that you’re missing out on even the most transient occurrence.

There’s not a huge amount of three-dimensionality to the soundstage the P1 can generate, though. “Left-to-right”’ is well represented, and there’s a decent amount of elbow room for every element of a recording that exists on that axis. But “front-to-back” is in quite short supply, and the more complex or element-heavy a recording is, the more that lack of depth is problematic. In extremis a recording can sound like it exists in just two dimensions, with every individual part of it engaged in a scrap for primacy right at the front of the stage.

While it’s not perfect, the Activo P1 is a very listenable digital audio player with a good interface and somewhat boring design. Astell & Kern has managed to retain a fair amount of what makes its players so compelling while doing what’s required to get the price down to a manageable level. Not everyone can afford a Lexus, after all, but no one ever really feels short-changed paying a bit overmarket for a Toyota.