So you've upgraded, and replaced your separates with the Denon CD/MD all in one stack?

So here is the system now after a few bits arrived.











I succumbed to a Krell KSA-80 and also have replaced a few boxes with the Audiolab 8300CDQ, for all things digital.

I have listened properly to the amp for about 1 hour now, Peter Gabriel - “ The Rhythm Of The Heat”, Paul Simon - “Boy in a Bubble”, 1st side of Supertramp “Crime of the Century”, some Eva Cassidy - Nightbird - “Fields of Gold” & “Baby I Love You”, Ravi Shanka - “Tala Rasa Ranga” & “Dhun” for Protrait of Genius, Sinéad O’Connor - “ Feel So Different” from “I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and Hugh Masekela - “Stimela” from Hope. These are all go to test listening tracks for me which have a good mix of bass, drums, voice, and natural instruments, and are great recordings. Well worth a listen if you don’t know them.

So my initial thoughts are OMG, there is massive control on the bottom end, the separation and soundstage is improved, attack of drums, cymbals and percussion is crisp and clear. Overall quite stunning. I need to have a longer listen to form a final opinion but pretty good so far. I am quite impressed with the Audiolab as a pre-amp, the listening above was to vinyl and it seems to be very neutral in my opinion.

I think the key improvements are a much better match with my Wilson Benesch Vectors, more control, detail and punch.

The Krell looks monster.

Hope it doesn't inconvenience your electric bill too much! 

Haha yup, a bit of a change - 300B valves to a mahooosive Krell.

Congrats - I hope you enjoy it all.

Having had a Meridian 557 before I thought a Krell would be similar but better, which it is IMO

It’s about 30p an hour at current rates, so around £1 a day based on my listening. So £350-£400 a year, so not the end of the world for a main hobby. Also it will offset some heating in the winter. My 300b was doing about half that I think.

30p an hour was well over the top, I have just done a check on the meter after listening for and hour and the usage was 1.1kw/h for the whole house, so I reckon its about 1kw/h for the Krell so at my current rate £0.14/hour. 

So having listened to quite a variety of albums and tracks I thought I would try and follow up on the above as I now have formed a more cohesive opinion of the Krell.

So far the majority of my listening with the Krell has been with vinyl although I am also rather pleased how it sound with the FM tuner.

I think that describing how it performs/sounds is best done while I listen to Patrick Moraz - ‘The Story of i’, for those of you who do not know this album it is a stunningly complex recording, with layers of keyboards, synth, drums, bass and guitar, there are also huge transients and some very deep extended bass notes in places. It can be a difficult album to listen to in my experience because it can sound jumbled on a poor system, and also sometimes edgy, so it is a challenge.

What immediately hits me when listening to it with the Krell is the separation of the layers in the recording, to the extent now that I can appreciate different aspects of the mix, the soundstage is wide and detailed, to the extent that it has made me sit up in certain passages as the 3D out of the box experience surprised me and made everything feel totally real. There is absolutely no distortion that I can hear, and the depth and control of the low registers is quite astounding. I can literally close my eyes and pick out the layout of the drum set and where the other percussion is, amazing. There is a piano section on side two, and the depth, detail and tonal extension gives the impression of the piano being played in the room, wonderful. Nothing so far sounds harsh or tonally wrong, it’s just sounds like I am actually getting very close to hearing what has been recorded. I guess on a poor recording this level of detail and control is likely to make them sound even worse.

To sum up what I am trying to say is that I am now hearing things in the recording and music I was not before, and to use that old cliche, it is as if a veil has been lifted from in front of the speakers. So I am rather pleased that I moved to the Krell.

As an aside the Audiolab 8300CDQ as a pre-amplifier is rather impressive, I am sure there are better pre-amps out there, but it certainly is fine for me at present. I will report more on it from a digital perspective when I get round to listening more to CDs and HiRes streaming