Astell&Kern SP3000 vs Astell&Kern SR35

Both are portable players, $3700 against $800. This page puts them side by side on the only three things a maker can be held to — power, output impedance and noise — and then asks the question that actually matters: which headphones do they treat differently?

On raw power they are level: each reaches 100 dB on 565 of the 567 non-electrostatic models here.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationAstell&Kern SP3000Astell&Kern SR35
Power into 32Ω340 mW300 mW
Power into 150Ω73 mW64 mW
Power into 300Ω36 mW32 mW
Power into 600Ω18 mW16 mW
Output impedance0.7 Ω1.1 Ω
Output noise3 µV unverified4 µV unverified
Price$3700$800
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
565565

A figure marked not published is missing from the maker’s own material, which is not the same as being good or bad. Where one of these two publishes a number and the other does not, the comparison on that axis cannot be made at all — and saying so is more useful than guessing.

The headphones that tell them apart

On power they are interchangeable across this whole database: there is no headphone here that one reaches 100 dB on and the other does not.

24 headphones are left alone by the Astell&Kern SP3000 under the one-eighth rule but coloured by the Astell&Kern SR35 (64 Audio Nio, 64 Audio U18s, 64 Audio Volur, 21 more).

565 of the 567 models here reach 100 dB on both. That is a power count and nothing more; whether either source suits a given headphone also depends on the two lines above.

Both pages in full

Each has a page of its own with every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: Astell&Kern SP3000 and Astell&Kern SR35. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

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