Beat,
It is toward the middle top and you can only see a small part of it.. It is small pic on purpose. This is not my pic but one from Krell. I have a bigger pic if you want to see it.
Basically what has happened was I bought the silver one. It was used and about 1 year old. It was owned by a guy who is meticulous and always wants the best. He traded that in and bought the Krell 525 (EVO) and one if not two KRell EVO amps plus a limited edition of only 25 made, Conrad Johnson Art3. I believe he dropped well over 50K for this minor upgrade!
I asked, just for grins to plug the one I bought in to make sure it worked, and sure enough it would not eject the CD without some effort. To make a long story short, (I know too late) it went back to Krell to get a once over and get fixed. I was told they are fanatical about their stuff and always go through the entire unit. I was hoping to get it back by today but so far nope.
I was given the brand new one the store had just put out on the floor. It is in black and I do like the silver better and if I wanted to keep it I would have to come up with another $1.5k.
So I have been doing some testing with the loaner and I will test again with mine when it gets back. From what I can tell there is even more depth within the sound stage presentation the highs are about the same but different in their presentation. I guess more natural though the upper register. There is more bass so I had to turn down my sub! I have my sub crossover set at 45db! It seems the sound is overall more blended, natural and defined than before. I did a comparison for about an hour between the Krell with and without the DAC and it is so close it is almost impossible to tell. There is such a slight difference you really have to listen for it and of course it is dependent on the recording too. All this testing was done on Redbook. I had a friend also listen to about seven recordings and he chose the Krell 5 out of 7 times over the DAC as to what seemed more natural but we both agree most people probably could not tell and that it was extremely close.
I only have 3 SACD's right now and they are ok recordings so it is hard to really judge this part yet. I will be getting some more real soon to do more testing on this. Although the recordings are not the best sonically in comparison to the Redbook but they are involving and do pull you in to the performances. I am impressed.
I am not downplaying the Rotel 1072 one bit. It is an amazing piece of equipment for the price (plays HDCD's too) and with the Channel Islands DAC it truly was a step about anything close to its price rage. If this had not presented itself I would not have changed.
So I will have to sell the Rotel and it looks like I will sell the DAC too. I hate to part with these pieces but I have to pay for this somehow.
Jeff