Today Astell&Kern announced the KANN MAX, a major update to its KANN ALPHA high-res audio player that may be slightly reminiscent of the iPod Touch, but instead packs some serious audio chops inside.

The KANN MAX’s storage can, thankfully, be expanded to up to 1TB using a microSD card, while a clever feature called BT Sink allows high-res music files stored on other devices, like a laptop with a large external drive, to be played through the KANN MAX over Bluetooth, without the introduction of audio compression.

Astell&Kern promises this approach means that the “depth and realism of the sound source can be expressed to the fullest” while “music output is expressed as the original sound without distortion.” As with a lot of audiophile-grade gear, the marketing speak does a lot of heavy lifting, but with some high-quality source files and even higher-quality headphones physically plugged in, even the most casual music fan will certainly...probably...be able to hear the difference between the KANN MAX and what their beloved iPod was capable of pumping to their ears.