Classic Integrated Question: Krell or Classe?

@alexatpos 

agree

ayre >> krell for sq, all day, any day of the week

maybe krell has more solid deep bass... that would be only area where krell may be superior...

@jsbach1685 

try a belles aria or a hegel

they are very very good

@jsbach

i didn’t know you had owned a bad sounding krell before... now you know what they say about life and making the same mistake twice, right??? :)

on the q about xlr’s... it is a bit complicated... normally, with properly implemented balanced outputs and circuitty, the voltage swing will be double of a single ended one ...

...however ... many pieces and manufacturers will provide an xlr connection on their gear -- but only as a convenience... the circuitry is not balanced, and thus only one of the two hot pins are powered relative to the ground center pin... so you have in this case a single ended voltage swing carried in a balanced connector

so bottom line is it depends on the gear... hope this helps

the original post asked if a krell integrated is worth twice the price of a comparable classe

that is an easy one, already answered hell no

depends as usual on what a buyer values... krells are extremely overbuilt, classe’s are less so - sq differential is much more of a mixed bag

krell over the years have made some wonderful pieces (particularly their ksa class a series) but also some truly bad sounding true dogs (esp. when they tried to do home theater type amps)

classe used be one of the sweetest sounding solid state brands, always beautifully voiced, imminently listenable for long stretches... classe as a company has also changed it focus in more recent years - both companies have changed ownership at least once since their heydays

so research and care need to be exercised in either case, make sure you get one that is truly worth owning

a krell is not twice as good as a classe