[DeweyCH]

Hey y'all, I love the sound quality of my KANN, but the total lack of firmware support from A&K sucks hard. Tidal hasn't worked for quite some time now, and while I have a lot of music loaded onto it, sometimes I just wanna stream.

Does anyone know any 3rd-party firmware, or any way to sideload something like a KANN Alpha or KANN Cube image onto it?

Thanks.

 

[Gasman117]

A&K stopped supporting the Kann .
Way to leave users hanging.
Now we’ve got a expensive paperweight…
I’ve started looking at hacks. Not much luck.
Let’s post if we find some way to restore some function to it..
I see a ton of alphas for sale. Wonder if A&K will do the same to it .

 

[earmonger]

I have an AK70, same situation with Tidal -- Tidal says it's A&K's problem, A&K says nothing of any use.

I would never get another A&K player. With their luxury prices they owe their customers longterm firmware updates, and clearly they have no intention of providing them.

Really swell that Astell&Kern is a Head-Fi sponsor.
https://www.head-fi.org/sponsors/astellnkern/

Wish there was a MrWalkman for us. https://www.nwmods.ml/

 

[Gasman117]

I have an AK70, same situation with Tidal -- Tidal says it's A&K's problem, A&K says nothing of any use.

I would never get another A&K player. With their luxury prices they owe their customers longterm firmware updates, and clearly they have no intention of providing them.

Really swell that Astell&Kern is a Head-Fi sponsor.
https://www.head-fi.org/sponsors/astellnkern/

Wish there was a MrWalkman for us. https://www.nwmods.ml/

 

[Gasman117]

You have to dig through the web to find it. a&k says Tidal changed their app. Evidently A&k didn’t want to write new code so they just disowned the Kann.
There was very little discussion of this on the web so I’ve be passing along the info.
Most businesses would at least offer a discount on a new unit. This is an insult to all their customers.

I’ll never buy from them, and I guarantee they’ll do this again.

 

[earmonger]

Oh, hey, isn't this cute on Astell&Kern site?

 

[Matpar]

A&K stopped supporting the Kann .
Way to leave users hanging.
Now we’ve got a expensive paperweight…
I’ve started looking at hacks. Not much luck.
Let’s post if we find some way to restore some function to it..
I see a ton of alphas for sale. Wonder if A&K will do the same to it .

Hi, wait, is that somewhat official or...

 

[Gasman117]

I honestly don’t know.
I got my Kann used at a good price, many of them popped up for sale at the same time. Like rats leaving a sinking ship I think.
As for the alphas, zebras don’t change their stripes. If A&K got away with doing to one on their flagship products, what’s to say they won’t do it another?
Wonder if you can jailbreak the Kann?

 

[earmonger]

Vaporware was announced last April to arrive in May and June 2021. Which came and went.

https://us.astellnkern.com/blogs/ne...ith-embedded-tidal-app-on-astell-kern-players

 

[DeweyCH]

As I understand it, Tidal implemented a new authentication protocol and it's not supported on Android 6 or earlier. In order for the KANN to work with Tidal again, A&K would have to put out an update to the KANN to bring it up to a more recent version of Android.

Like Gasman, I will never buy another A&K product again if their idea of supporting a thousand-dollar product is to let it shed any and all third-party support within a year of it still being sold new at its original MSRP.

 

[DigitalScrap]

Ugh, this is all very bad. I only own one AK product - the SR25, and while I have been happy with it, I have been considering upgrading, and was pretty sure it was going to be another AK. Based upon this, I'm a bit afraid to upgrade to one of their more expensive DAPs if they have shown that they may drop support so quickly. Very poor way of doing business...

 

[DeweyCH]

Just an addendum to what I wrote before, Tidal puts its Android requirements at 6 or higher. Meaning that a flagship level product launched in 2017 is built around an Android kernel that got its last update in April of 2015. Why?

 

[Gasman117]

I don’t understand whether hardware limitations or copyright issues or something else that made them abandon the Kann.
The Kann seemed like a good device, for them to just walk away, something serious must have occurred.

 

[earmonger]

Or it could just be laziness, greed and arrogant disregard for customers.

They've received the money for the players already, so their only incentive to update would be basic human respect. Oh, they don't teach that at business or engineering school. Take the money and run.

 

[Avenida]

Hey y'all, I love the sound quality of my KANN, but the total lack of firmware support from A&K sucks hard. Tidal hasn't worked for quite some time now, and while I have a lot of music loaded onto it, sometimes I just wanna stream.

Does anyone know any 3rd-party firmware, or any way to sideload something like a KANN Alpha or KANN Cube image onto it?

Thanks.

edited