Best Krell amp for a 15amp wall outlet.

So I moved into a new/brand new house with decent wiring but nothing too special. So I plugged my FPB750MCX amps in there hoping for the best and they actually turned on with-out blowing the breaker right away, good so far. The sound was not right though, the speakers are the little Apogee Caliper Ultimate so about 85db efficiency and about a 3-4 ohm load. This set -up was running CAST from a KCT preamp and just sounded like it was straining. If we cranked it up the breaker would blow.

Next step was to hook up the KAV 2250 and that sounded pretty good and could definitely flex it's muscle without too much trouble. But the FPB sound was not there. Just for kicks we also tried a S300i in theater mode from the balanced connection and it sounded ok (surprisingly good bypassing the preamp section)but the 2250 was much stronger and more detailed. The S300i would also shut down if driven hard into these speakers from thermal overload.

Next step was a FPB200C stereo amp plugged into the same wall socket and this really sounded good again. Much stronger, bigger soundstage but more than that the magic was there. Tons of detail, more punch a ton more bass than any of the previous set-ups. The mid-range is really good here and the amp does not sound strained at all although a 220V 30amp circuit would be better.

So all this was done through a standard wall wiring with a PS Audio Soloist Ci. I thought this would be a real world set up for a typical apartment. The FPB200C really was the ticket for the power we had available. The mono amps really do sound better and with two dedicated 220V 30amp circuits they will sound even better, which I am doing. But if you have limited options I think this was an interesting experiment. Yes the Big amps sound the best overall but not on a single 15amp 120V circuit, the FPB200C was the real winner.