Thoughts on the Krell 402

The Krell 402E is a great amp.  I have the 403E which is three channel version and it’s a monster amp weighting in at 200 lbs.  It’s a bit of hassle when it needs service.  I recently had to send it for minor service and the shipping cost was more than the actual repair cost.  
The amp sounds great with tube and solid state preamps. The CAST input sounds great and cables are much cheaper.  I have used ARC Ref 5SE, Ref 6SE, Ayre KXR and Krell 707 pre/processor with my 403E and all sounded great.  Be sure to give it plenty of space around the amp since it gets pretty hot.  
 

Rich

So I got the amp in and installed over the weekend. Must say I am loving it so far.

I have a friend who owns a 403e.  It is an excellent amp.  High resolution, transparent and neutral without coloration.  The downsides are the weight and cost.  They are getting pretty old at this point and caps will be drying out.  It may be in your interest to have Krell re-cap the amp if it starts getting glitchy.  My friends amp had a channel start going in and out and hearing clicking sounds.  These are likely the relays that don't have enough voltage to hold open because of electrolytic power capacitors drying out, lol.  I have seen this problem in other older equipment.

That being said, you really have to replace that Emotiva DAC to something much better, such as LKS MH-DA005 or a Holo May or Audio-GD or something similar.  The Emotiva XDA dac is not bad for the price, but it is definitely lacking when compared to others.

You are not kidding about the weight of this amp. I definitely want to replace the emotiva in the future but I need to recover from this expense first: ). My thought is to get a nice pre then look into a solid dac and I really like some of the suggestions you have made. One of the things that bothers me though is most components these days don't have 12v triggers and I really like pushing one button on a remote to bring everything online (laziness at its peak).