You probably won’t have heard of the Activo, nor the hi-res streaming service provider Groovers Japan that makes it, but the Activo CT10 has been developed in collaboration with Astell & Kern and its parent company iRiver. There are nods to Astell & Kern’s signature designs here, such as the mint green volume dial, as seen on the A&norma SR15, but it looks like a smaller, thicker iPhone 3S.
Using Astell & Kern’s new Teraton module (proprietary hardware that incorporates a clock generator, power, amplification and DAC), the CT10 ticks all boxes in terms of hi-res digital audio playback, supporting all major lossy and hi-res file formats, including MP3, OGG, WMA, APE, ALAC, FLAC, AIFF, DSD and WAV up to 24-bit/192kHz. There’s even a 'Hi-Res' menu option, for browsing hi-res…
