question for ML/Krell owners

OK guys...I finally got my Krell 400xi in and to my dismay the volume level seems much reduced compared to the Musical Fidelity A300 I had previously. I wrote to Krell asking if the amp might need to be sent in and checked out, and here is their response:

"There can be a substantial difference in speaker output coming from a box design and moving to a Dipole electrostatic design, this deviance is referred to as a speakers efficiency, it requires more wattage to get the same amount of acoustic output. It is perfectly ok for your 400xi to run at 100, keep in mind that the presentation of the electrostatic speaker is more refined and not designed to play at higher listening levels typically. I suspect your 400xi is working perfectly."

I assumed (maybe incorrectly) that the efficiency of the speakers was the key to volume rather than the ESL design. For those of you that have a 400xi or a similar 300i, tell me if you agree or disagree with what Krell is saying. My MF I could reach the same volume level at 1/4 as the Krell at "75". At say "50" I can stand directly in front of the speaker and carry on a normal conversation on my phone. Movie soundtracks dont have the impact I expected, and unless changing up my room (8 ft ceilings to 12 ft vaulted) made this huge a difference, I am lost as to why I have to turn the Krell up to what seems an extravagant level to attain decent volumes. I realize the MF had an analog volume dial whereas the Krell has an electronic version, but should it be THIS big a difference? The MF was rated at 250 per channel at 4ohms where the Krell is rated 400 wpc. One note, I do still use the cheesy ML jumpers but am bumping up to a bi-wire system as soon as I fine a good set used.

Even the guy I bought it from was shocked as he tells me he could turn it up to about a "50" to reach a solid volume level and has never had it past "100". I am still using plain jane monster speakers cables and a standard protection strip, although a high current 20 amp Panamax conditioner is on the way. Am I doing something wrong or am I overlooking something? Your input GREATLY appreciated. (and before you say it, yes I turned the mute button off )

here is the new setup and a pic to give you all an idea of the ceiling dimensions. The room is approx. 15x20.

I want your 400xi...

Impact has to do with bass and how your room is loading your speaker, my suspicion is NOT the amp and your new room... the difference is THAT big.

As for the volume attenuation on the Krell vs the MF, I dunno.

I don't run a Integrated system. However; That should not be a issue. Krell are known for huge currant and power. I would go through the whole manual and make sure nothing is left forgotten. If not I would definitely try it on some other system or if you can go listen to one somewhere. If it falls short send it to Krell they will rebuild it. It should not have to be at 100 to be loud, I don't care if the speakers are 80DB speakers.

My .02 worth

My Sequels get crazy loud on the 360w that they see at 4ohm, I would think the Krell should give you plenty of output.

Have you tried plugging the Krell directly into the wall? I wouldn't think it could make that big of a change but you never know.

abhijit said:

Hope the output sensitivity of your preamp is not low or Krell may require higher input voltage to drive itself. Another reason may be the impedance mismatch between your pre-amp and power amp.

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Dont think he has a preamp though....

coolcobramatt,
I have Ascent (i) in a 13' x 12' room, 9' ceiling. I have a 400xi, it is currently for sale. Until a few weeks ago I had Magnepan 1.6s. I preferred the Krell on the Maggies, but I prefer a Quicksilver pre and Sunfire power with the Acents, but not by a whole lot. Many people would prefer the Krell on the Ascents as well, and visa versa.
My room is smaller than yours, but here are my impressions.
The Krell drove both the Maggies and the Ascents to very loud levels with absolutely no distortion. If my memeory serves, I would hit 100 on the dial with either the Maggies (86db) or the Ascents (91db) only when I wanted to crank it up to see what it could do. I believe we're talking mid to upper 90 db 8' from the speakers. I've had it as high as 120 with the Maggies "just to see." The dial goes to 151.
The Krell dial is not linear, which may be a significant point in all of this. At lower numbers, there's a bigger increase in output than at higher numbers, at least to my understanding.
I guess my question would be, "Why do you care?", as long it's loud enough at 151 on the dial (slight exaggeration), and there's no clipping/distortion.

sebrof2000 said:

I guess my question would be, "Why do you care?", as long it's loud enough at 151 on the dial (slight exaggeration), and there's no clipping/distortion.

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I think coolcobra is just worried... that's all.

Sorry guys I was away from the computer for a few hours. Here's the responses to your advice and/or questions so far:

(1) the reason I care is because thee previous owner was shocked as well. He claimed that it was stout enough to drive his Hyperions at a setting of "50" and the reference was that you could not carry on a normal conversation at this level. I have to be at "100" or better to reach this level. I dont want to push the amp more than it should be and damage my speakers accidentally. A two-fold loss would kill me! When it arrived good ole Fedex had obviously dropped it as one terminal was bent slightly. It made it difficult to loosen and tighten, so I was afraid something internally might have jarred loose. It was doubleboxed (the two holes were on the inside Krell box) so you can only shudder at the drop it must have taken.

(2) no I do not have a pre-amp.

(3) yes I plugged it directly into the wall circuit, something the past owner suggested. It made no difference.

(4) the owner's manual would truly shock you. It was literally 4 pages (total) with NO troubleshooting guidelines at all. It actually spent the first two pages telling how to hook it up, and that was simply the basics (i.e. use the rca's for your cd; we prefer balanced connections, dont use a basic power strip, etc).

(5) the only high quality amp I can compare it to was the MF, and in a smaller room it was much louder with more impact. When I say impact I mean transitions in midrange and treble, not the deep bass part. My sub does a good job of handling bass notes, so this isnt a concern currently.

(6) I just expected if I was at "100" or better it would blow me out of the room. I didnt think I would ever need to go past that number to get a punch in the gut fro car crashes, or to be encased in sound. Bahamaman is dropping by in a few weeks, os between us maybe we can figure something out. I admit I am not adept yet at positioning my MLs, but with my Sequel II's and a Denon 4802 (120 wpc prob not high current) movies jumped off the screen.

Surely I am not expecting too much from an amp that should be light years ahead of a receiver I appreciate the replies so far, keep them coming!

For what it is worth, I am running my Aeon i's through a krell 300i with a separate valve preamp runing ht passthrough. I have never needed to turn the volume more than about 40% - it hits over 100 db at that level.

For comparision I previously had a Thule PA 350b - 350w at 8 ohms as opposed to 150 for the Krell. For that I only needed to go up to 1/4 dial max.

When I use the tuner on the krell which uses the on board volume control i never need to get over about 1/2 volume and it is VERY loud.

Your 400xi is more powerful and I dont see why you have to go so high on the volume contol - i assume 100 is max volume.

I would try better speaker cables and see what that does.

Let me get this straight... You changed the room and the amp and that's it? If that's the case and you told Krell that you replaced a Musical Fidelity amp with their amp on the same speakers and Krell replied talking about efficiencies then you should go to their headquarters and slap someone on the back of the head.

The larger room will definitely affect the apparent volume, but not like what you're apparently hearing. The one thing, though, is that I have no idea what "50" or "75" on the Krell means. I do know that the volume knob isn't necessarily a 270º-sweep potentiometer so however many degrees from 0 dB you turn the volume knob doesn't really compare. How far have you cranked it in relation to maximum volume? If your "75" is out of 200 or 500 (you did mention it goes "past 100") or some other random scale then there's not a problem.

Other than that, is there a "mute" or "low level" or "contour" switch on the front panel? It seems kinda silly but you might just have it muted.

coolcobramatt said:

(6) I just expected if I was at "100" or better it would blow me out of the room. I didnt think I would ever need to go past that number to get a punch in the gut fro car crashes, or to be encased in sound. Bahamaman is dropping by in a few weeks, os between us maybe we can figure something out. I admit I am not adept yet at positioning my MLs, but with my Sequel II's and a Denon 4802 (120 wpc prob not high current) movies jumped off the screen.

Surely I am not expecting too much from an amp that should be light years ahead of a receiver I appreciate the replies so far, keep them coming!

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I bet something is not set up correctly in the internal "set up" part of the Krell.

Hey Cool,

I can't directly fix your problem. But you are severly missing some sonic capabilities of your speaker/amp setup with those Monster speaker cables. I had those same cables and switched to just a reasonably good cable and it was night and day difference. Every thing was better. Go to this website and call Frank tomorrow and order them:

http://signalcable.com/ultraspeaker.html

I also think the fine quality amp deserves better IC cables and speaker cables to get every thing you deserve.

I think James is on to some thing with the "setup" idea.

Brad

MotorToad said:

The one thing, though, is that I have no idea what "50" or "75" on the Krell means. I do know that the volume knob isn't necessarily a 270º-sweep potentiometer so however many degrees from 0 dB you turn the volume knob doesn't really compare. How far have you cranked it in relation to maximum volume? If your "75" is out of 200 or 500 (you did mention it goes "past 100") or some other random scale then there's not a problem.

Other than that, is there a "mute" or "low level" or "contour" switch on the front panel? It seems kinda silly but you might just have it muted.

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The manual is 27 pages and can be downloaded from krellonline.com Coolcobramatt - It sounds like you have the Quick Setup Guide if it's only 4 pages. But, there's very little troubleshooting in the manual.

Max on the 400xi is 151. But, the scale is not linear, so 75 (for example) is not necessarily 1/2 way to max. I don't know what percent of maximum 50, or 75, or 100 would be.
There is a mute, and also a balance left / right, via the remote. You could check the balance.

I don't think there's a problem here, other than an incorrect perception of how loud the Krell should be at a particular volume setting. If the Krell can advance to 151 and 100 is fairly loud, I suggest you would not be able to stay in the same room if you attempted to listen at a 151 setting. Every amp is different relative to how loud it may sound at a particular volume control setting. I think all that Krell have done with this particular model is give the owner the option of a wide ranging voume control that enables fine adjustment at all listening levels.

If I'm wrong... you don't know where I live!

P.S. Many amplifier manufacturers engineer the volume controls to go loud with only a small turn of the volume control. This misleads the potential buyer to believe that the amplifier is very powerful with unimited loudness potential. In fact the reverse is true and these amplifiers will probably start clipping around the half way volume control mark. Also such amplifiers make listening at normal or night time spls a real pain because fine volume control adjustement has been compromised.

Matt,

I don't have my Krell 400xi hooked up right now, or I'd play around with it to come up with some hard numbers. My experience is with the Krell driving the Aerius, which seem to be about the same size as your speakers, but may handle the power differently. That being said, when I had the two hooked up in a small room, (10 X 14) the loudest I ever played the Krell was to about 80 to 90 on the Krell's readout. That was very loud. I hooked up the Krell in my new listening space, which is much larger, 16 X 20 with the back of the room open to the dining room and the side open also. I noticed that I had to turn the amp up to 80 to get a reasonable volume. To get very loud required 95 to 100. My listening position was 8 to 10 feet away. Walking up to the speaker, I noticed they were putting out a lot of sound, though. So, the room can make a huge difference! I suggest you try a couple of things....using the remote, press Pre, then Mute to verify Mute is off. I suspect it is, as I don't think you would hear anything at 50 with the Mute on. Second, try any other speaker cable, just to make sure the cables you are using aren't sucking up the power. I had that experience once with some flat Monster cables. Third, double check your interconnects for a good, tight connection. There is one thing that would concern me about listening with the volume set at 100 or greater and that is that the heat sinking on the Krell seeems to be less than optimal, as it gets very hot. Stereophile warned against using the Krell for party levels for a long period of time as they said the heat sinking was "inadequate", though I never had an issue with mine in this regard. One last thing, comparing the position of the volume control versus the power output between amps is meaningless, as those attenuators can be designed very differently.

coolcobramatt,

I've used Krell amps (Showcase 125 wpc and 400cx 400 wpc with KCT) with Martin Logan speakers (Aerius i and Aeon i) for many years and never found the amps to be lacking in power or ability to drive the speaker to ear shattering levels. This was true even with low volume settings on my pre-amp, and in a room 12' by 25' by 9'. You said in one of your posts that you thought Fedex had dropped the box and bent a terminal, a speaker terminal I assume. If this damage could be sustained through a double box, the amp may indeed be damaged internally.

The response you got from Krell seems glib. My experience with Krell service says you have to be persistent. I hate to be a purveyor of gloom, but for peace of mind you really should consider sending it to them, at least to have the damaged terminal repaired. They will check it out thoroughly and fix whatever needs to be fixed.

Bob R.

I'm afraid I don't have too much to add to this except to confirm that the Krell does indeed exceed 100, and if I remember right goes to 151. Not that I would want to listen at that volume. I have a 16x25 room for mine, and seldom see the need to go past 55-65 to acheive a reasonable volume. But purely looking at percentages..... you'd have to be at 75 just to reach 50 percent on the dial.... Addmittedly I seldom play my music at volumes that allow the neighbors to appreciate my taste in music, but I would think that if you find the volume/spl sufficient at 100-110, you won't have any trouble witht the Krell.

thanks guys...I REALLY appreciate all the varied replies. Just to clarify, I don't have it muted and that the mute works well. I know the limitations of the cheapie Monster speaker cables and am searching for a good replacement diligently. My IC's are blue heavens, I will doublecheck them tonight for solid connections. I have a 20 amp line conditioner on the way which I hope removes another potential limitation.

I am seriously considering sending it back for peace of mind. To own a piece of Krell has been one of my goals in home audio, so I won't be giving up on it anytime soon.

Matt, did you send your amp back to Krell for a checkout?