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Switching the latter to blue=listen eliminates lengthy warm-up worries before the amp operates at full potential. That said the Krell sounded perfectly passable out of cold green. The now slightly louder turn-on transient—here the circuitry gets hit with higher more sudden inrush current—is no cause for alarm though any such 'plop' is always somewhat inelegant. Be that as it may, my audition predominantly hovered between green and blue. Before I forget, selection of the stand-by modes occurs by depressing the frontal switch whilst the rearward mains is toggled.
To wrap up externals, official stock photos across the web show the heatsinks completely covered by the lid or tucked beneath silver vents. Our loaner showed them open to create a sort of striped look on top. The reason for this discrepancy is simply that the stock photos ran prototypes with still smaller heatsinks. The appearance of our loaner reflects formal final production. On inner values—250wpc into 8Ω, 136.000uF capacity, 2.500VA transformer—Krell boast of 'advanced high-speed output devices'. The plain fact here is that with the Evolution Series Krell began using resin-enclosed Sanken transistors said to exhibit higher bandwidth and lower distortion than their former metal-encapsulated Motorola parts.
Similar goals are pursued with Krell's 'unique current mode circuitry' which routes the internal signal between amplification stages in the current domain. Unlike voltage mode this allows for lower-impedance circuits of concomitantly broader bandwidth. In mixed form this concept isn't unusual but Krell claims much proprietary development for their solution.
I looked forward to this audition since the 2250e would be my first Krell. Aside from show encounters, I'd never had any up-close experience. Well, when four years ago colleague Martin did the honors on Krell's S300i integrated (oh my does time fly), I of course couldn't resist to lend a quick informal ear. That review concluded with “generally the Krell S300i is more for pleasure seekers than furry-brow analysts”, something I could relate to for the firm's then smallest model which exhibited a very unambiguous sonic profile. The same distinctiveness of sound was true for the 2250e though it pursues a clearly different direction.
