A&K x Volk Audio Stella

This Stella never lost its Groove!

PROs: W-shaped balanced signature with a naturally revealing tonality, deep, punchy bass, natural mids, a huge holographic soundstage, solid build, compact, comfortable shells, redesigned vent eliminating the driver flex, and a premium cable.

CONs: price.

A&K x Volk Audio Stella was on loan for a week for testing and analysis. Thanks to A&K, Volk Audio, and Musicteck for the arrangement.

Manufacturer website: A&K. Available for sale through authorized retailers, including Musicteck.

Intro.

In some cases, I find the IEM industry resembles the music industry, where the name of the brand or band carries as much weight as the people behind it, who can find success with different brands or bands. What I’m getting at is that from the start, Jack has been the face of EarWerkz, which evolved into Empire Ears, and last year branched out into his own company, Volk Audio. So, it doesn’t matter what the name of the company is, because, based on his track record, I’m more curious about the products he is behind.

That is exactly what drove me to test his debut release, Etoile, last year, co-developed with Michael Graves of Osiris Studio (in LA) fame. And while many were guessing about the sophomore follow-up to Etoile and the direction the tuning would take, Volk Audio surprised everyone by partnering with Astell & Kern on a collab release of Stella. And, as I already mentioned in my CanJam NYC ’26 report, where I had a chance to preview it, this was not a recycled release, but a completely new, different quadbrid 12-driver design.

While a brief audition in the loud environment of the CanJam show is never ideal for an accurate sound analysis, I wanted to spend a bit more time with these, including taking some measurements and trying them with different sources. Thanks to A&K, Jack/Volk, and Musicteck, I was able to get a pair of Stellas for a week to do a deeper dive. Here is what I found.

Unboxing/Accessories.

I can’t go over a detailed unboxing experience for the Stella, since I only received a pair of IEMs in a case without packaging. The only items to mention are the included leather case and the cable.

The case seems to be made of high-quality leather, with a suede lining, a solid metal zipper, the STELLA logo stamped on the outside, and the signature “A” and “VOLK” on the inside. It’s an average size, and I would consider it to be actually pocket-friendly. IEMs also arrived in a VOLK-branded double-mesh drawstring baggie, and I’m not sure if they will be included in this collab release or if it was just for demo purposes to keep shells safe inside the case.

The cable has 4 wires, with each one about 23.7 AWG in thickness. Each conductor has a hybrid array design using 5N-purity LCOFC Copper, 4N-purity Silver, and even 24k Gold, in a 12-strand litz-type 4S geometry with a fiber-reinforced core. This is not a random cable with fancy wire material; it was used specifically to finalize the tuning of these IEMs. The cable is rather soft and lightweight, using SoftFlex PVC insulation and midnight-black braided nylon outer jacket. Now, I know what some will think: a cloth sheath usually leads to microphonics, but surprisingly, I found this cable to be non-microphonic.

To complement the cable design with a matching material, as used in IEM shells, you will find custom 6061-T6 anodized black hardware used in the housing of a 4.4mm balanced plug, Y-split, chin-slider, and connector housing, including 316 stainless steel mirror-polished accents on the plug and Y-split. These polished accents carry the “Astell & Kern” engraving on the plug, and the “VOLK” engraving on the Y-split. The connector plugs had L/R marking on the inside and VOLK on the outside of the left side and “A” on the outside of the right side.

Design.

I gotta say, that from a distance, you can find some resemblance in the exterior design of Stella with A&K x EE Novus collab. Not the color scheme, but just overall shape and shell design. I wanted to point this out since it looked familiar at first glance. Here, the Stella is machined from aerospace-grade 6061-T6 aluminum, then anodized in a satin black finish. The base of the faceplate, its central plate, is also machined from 6061-T6 aluminum with a matching finish, featuring “A” on the right side and “VOLK” on the left. The central plate is covered by a sapphire crystal, cut from a single block of optical-grade 9H-hardness sapphire glass, and encased in a stainless-steel frame, polished to a mirror finish.

The overall shell size is compact, smaller than Etoile, and very comfortable to wear during extended listening sessions. It features a flush-mount 2pin socket and an average-size nozzle with a small lip to keep eartips on securely. The nozzle tip has 5 sound-bore openings, each corresponding to a sound tube. But to me, the biggest change and departure from the “traditional” EE design was in the new vent architecture of this updated pressure-control system. It’s a single elongated opening machined around the edge where the aluminum shell meets the stainless-steel frame. And guess what? No more driver flex!!! With those familiar with EE IEMs, driver flex was almost like a ‘feature’, while with Etoile it depended on eartips selection. With Stella, I didn’t detect any driver flex regardless of eartips selection and the tightness of the earcanal seal.

Under the hood, you will find a 12-driver quadbrid design featuring 1x VOLK M9-R 9mm DD, 5x Sonion BAs, 2x VOLK MP-2 Planar Magnetic Drivers (PMDs), and 4x Sonion EST Tweeters. The drivers are grouped and controlled by a precise 6-way crossover network, with their output partitioned 5 ways through the corresponding precision sound tubes to each bore of the nozzle tip.

What I found interesting here is the system by which the drivers were partitioned and organized into three fundamental frequency groups:

LF-H System – VOLK M9-R 9mm Subwoofer + Dual Sonion Armatures
Mid-Range System – Sonion Tri-Armature Array
HF-H System – VOLK MP-2 Dual Planars + Quad Sonion Electrostatics

While the Low Frequency Hybrid (LF-H) design, combining DD and BA drivers, is something I have seen before, the High Frequency Hybrid (HF-H) design, combining PMD and EST drivers, was less common and more challenging. So, I couldn’t wait to hear how it turned out.