I think I'm right when I say that many US audio enthusiasts are blessed with very large listening rooms, where a medium sized UK speaker would look like a tiny midi-system box to them. Big box speakers with loads of drivers often have silly loads, so amps needed to be designed for them I think. Later on, there's a market gap for a 50W Class A amp that's actually nearly double the rated power, and so the Krell KSA 50 was born. bring in big Maggie and Apogee panels with cruel loads and off you go to the exalted huge monster amps out there and silly speakers that depend on them.Firebug1 wrote:Can't understand big hifi brands like krell, mark levinson, mcinntosh, accuphase...and people who are willing to pay anything to get products from those brands.
The early Levinson amps were reported to be amazingly good, but the fascination of Hifi News with everything that UK distributor Absolute Sounds sold tended to prevent much if any Levinson being reviewed here I'm told. Krell was THE maker over here and the bigger they got, for a while the harsher they seemed to be too, so fruity sounding ARC valve preamps were used with them. I must admit to having loads of respect for the Krell KSA 50S that was presented to me recently. It HAS got better and better, but there's so much 'stuff' between input and output in comparison with, say, an NVA amp, which seems to have a fairly simple sonic path with apparently, only a little out to the side to help stabilise it all.
There was an interesting reviewer, who was an expert at seemingly saying one thing, but between the lines another. His commercial interests were always there, just out of sight though and items going into his reference system always came at a price.
