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Letting our tester speak for itself now, we'll first focus on its response south of the border. That a 35kg 250wpc behemoth wasn't going to fold in on matters of control and bass power was expected yet still I would be up for surprises. A good LF test is "Atlas" from New York's Math-Rock trio The Battles [Mirrored] where drummer John Stanier kicks of with fat toms before abusing the bass drum with heavy quarter grooves.

On whipper-snap dynamics of the toms, the Krell went eye to eye with my arrow-quick Audionet monos which in my book crossed off the first must-have category of this assignment. On substance and displacement the Krell actually bested my Audionets which go a bit lighter on mass and infrasonic power. This tick-off thus got an exclamation mark from me. Clearly energy problems of running dry weren't in the Krell's vocabulary. At all. When it came time to harness the full potential of my Thiel's CS3.7 woofers, the German monos by contrast seemed to actually get a bit winded. And the Krell even was superior at fully differentiating this heaving and teeming low-bass dimension. Hat off.

To nip miscalculations in the butt, tonally the Krell tracked my Audionets by playing it unassailably neutral. Whilst the 2250e can unleash hell with full fury when the music demands it, it's neither fat nor warm. The low bass was ideally precise, neutral and haute-cuisine correct. A very good start. Tonal neutrality extended to the midband and highs. Neither romantically flavored, warm or softened nor lean and overtly fresh, the American's motto seemed to be noticeably unnoticeable. That these registers still weren't common was due to other qualities.

For these I had Canadian multi-instrumentalist's Cevin Key's Music for Cats with its gloomily atmospheric yet detail-intense "Beauty is the enemy". Right from the go and thus prior even to the vocals kicking in I noticed how precise and spacious the 2250e rendered the sonic mosaic which here is made up of tiny rhythmically cycling snippets and effects shards whilst suggesting very tangible generous space. High resolving power, stupendous micro dynamics, blackground calm and brilliant image focus were clear highlights and to such an extent that an A/B against my Audionets raised eyebrows. The otherwise very sorted and accurate monos from Bochum seemed a tad diffuse and foggy by contrast. The myriad microscopic sonic plankton bits were less fixed and not as energetically direct and as such not as contrasted in virtual space.


And that was news. I've had aa score of amps through which were all over the map on price yet only the Hegel H4SE had pre-echoed similar qualities. Here a direct A/B would have been interesting but in the Hegel's absence I won't lean out the window further with any specific comparative comments. Extraordinarily controlled in the bass, dynamic to a fare-thee-well, transparently precise into the very tips of its hair and tonally neutral... these were all impressive hard skills but one must still pay attention to proper speaker matching.