Best sounding Krell ?

((Jeez, if the Pentagon was to design power amps I think they would look just like Krell.))

High praise indeed. Although never much of a fan of Krell's cosmetics, I love what their amps can do.

But if someone dislikes a product so much why would they even contribute to a thread asking which model sounds the best?

The Krell sound is not for everyone but I do know one thing - they are built like tanks. I saw a dealer literally drop a 400Xi from about waist level onto solid concrete. The Krell chipped the concrete and there was barely a scratch on the corner of the Krell. They dealer obviously thought it wouldn't work but we plugged it in and it sounded fine. You could barely tell that it had even been dropped when examining the corner it fell on. Just a small smudge was all there was. I owned one (not that one!) for a while and could really appreciate what Krell does well. It makes your best recordings sound fantastic. My best recordings were about 10~20% of my collection. OTOH hand Whoa Nellie it made bad or mediocre recordings just unlistenable. Anything with compression or boosted highs sent me right out of the room. I eventually went with McIntosh and at least 80~90% of my collection sounds great. I can live with that for now. Also adding a tube preamp helped things along nicely.

Well, I have been reading every now and then. I have to admit though, that I didn't get a Krell. I went with Plinius, sorry Krell fans but the price was right. Maybe down the road I'l try a Krell but for now i'm pretty impressed with the Plinius SA 50 i just picked up here about a week ago.

Nice unit Audiogabby...enjoy!

The Plinius SA 50 is deep and controlled in the bass with good imaging also. The presentaion is not forward but inline with the speakers. The highs are nice ( not hard ) even though not the most extended. The midrange is warm and detailed. You are able to understand Drink Small :) The amp also has great instrumental timbre. Overall, this is a great power amp that has gone unnoticed because there bigger brother get all the attention.