Krell Power Consumption

Here in Southern California our power is very expensive.
While my first 280kwh or so is at about 0.15$/kwh, once I'm above that point, my rates go in 2 tiers. The highest marginal rate is about 0.20$kwh and I expect that to go UP since we now have rat-fink electronic meters that can be programmed for different rates at different times of day.

At 7.2kwh/ day, the Krell is wacky expensive to run. My current usage is about 450kwh/month to which the krell would add about 50%. That's even MORE than the 20 year old 'fridge I just junked out in favor of a unit rated at about 450kwh/year.

I use slightly different numbers to get to agreement with Ken.

Krells run hot and use lots of power . Levinson also did but they fixed that a few generations ago .

Dan D'Augostino (spl?) is expelled from Krell and part quality go down and so the sound...

Mark Levinson was sold to Harmon Group... The same group which in 1970's bought famed names like Infinity and converted it into mass production junk.

The co-founder of Infinity, John Ulrick started then "Spectron Audio" and went to development of new class D amplifier mostly for pro-audio (and introduced first hi-fidelity one in..1974).

I always was "toobeman" and never tolerated Krell/Mark Levinson for brutish sound but now with my B&W 802 Diamond I needed very power amp and I drive them by Spectron monoblocks. Paired with flagship Joule-Electra full tube preamp its the best system I owned or auditioned.

You are talking about cost of electricity, heat (and weight) and.... cannot get out of "brand names" class A behemoths !!!!.

Did any of you tried high quality class D amps like Spectron, Jeff Rowland(312), Weiss etc [ I do not mean cheap junky class D with noisy switching power supplies ] ?

However, if you still insist on class A begemoths then there is new generation of such amplifiers, much more musical and involvong then Krell/ML. These are BAT600SE, Plinius Reference & Pass Lab XA200.5 - none better then my Spectrons but classical class "A"....

Dob,
Into which camp do you place the ASP modules from B&O?
I've lost track of all the players using these modules....from Bel Canto on down.
My PSAudio is a fine piece of goods but has the dread SMPS.

Magfan,

I believe Jeff Rowland did fine job with ASP modules but his main achievment was development of very high quality of switching power supplies with Power factor Correction, PFC - making this power supplies highly regulated. It was done in his "312" amp. Interestingly, Spectron uses switching power supplies with PFC in their pro audio amps but in their hi-fi amp, Musiican III they use traditional transformer based power supplies

The rest just (IMO) grabbed ASP, placed into their chassis, put their label (the best added their midor mods) and sold.

Bel Canto Ref 100 MkII has added battery of electrolitic capacitors improving power supply.
H2O uses (like Spectron) traditional power supply with B&O which improve sound.

However, my post was specific for this thread dedicated to the titans of 1980's - Krell and Mark Levinson - now 30 years later new geberation of class A and class D (and others) amplifier are available. not cheaper, as a rule, but...better in sound.