Is Odyssey Power amp Stratos better than Krell?

I know nothing about Krell, except hearsay: "detailed", "harsh", "great", "terrible", etc. Will plead ignorance on that.

However, I absolutely love my Odyssey Extreme Monoblocks, which replaced my venerable B&K ST140. Wow! I think they are fabulous, detailed and not harsh. Maybe not as mushy as tubes, but I like a little BASS, so...

A dealer friend of mine who does NOT sell Odyssey (duh, they're factory direct!) helped to confirm my suspicion that I had stumbled onto a fabulous product. He said, based on his knowlege of the Symphonic Line, that these are one of the top 20 amps in the world--and this is a person who does NOT mince words; if anything would have an incentive to slam the product, not praise it. Even said it was better than a lot of what he sells, which is really high end stuff (won't name any brands, but it's the niche stuff--smaller companies for the most part, etc.). He doesn't carry Krell.

Klaus has been personally available, pleasant and informative each & every time I've pestered him on the phone with what most would consider annoying and unanswerable questions about his Lorelei loudspeakers. A great (and patient) guy.

Klaus: Yes, your extreme monoblocks are reasonably priced (in high end audio terms, anyway) and indeed provide a great bang to buck ratio, but that doesn' mean that they are in any way "mid-fi". For example, how many other power amps at ANY price have 360,000 microfarads of total capacitance????? (I saw a "Bear Labs" pure class A with 500K microfarads a while back, but retail for that is about 14000...)

The man referred to above is a true veteran, knows what to listen for, is a "2 channel guy", likes tubes, and is an absolute STICKLER for smoothness. Even though Odyssey is a "competitor", he had nothing but high praise for the amplifier (he was unable to comment on the Tempest preamp and had not heard the Lorelei speakers). He feels that the Odyssey Extreme Monoblocks are the strongest component of my system, and has basically suggested rebuilding AROUND them, even though he sells some very fine high end amps.

Klaus rocks!

It is possible that some people prefer "tube based distortion generators" to SS based equipment that tries to reproduce the input signal with a higher level of linearity. If one doubts that this is possible, try taking a look at this link to a post that Steve Eddy made over at AA. Many of the makes and models are products from very highly respected and well reviewed manufacturers.

What does all of this tell you? It tells me that it all boils down to either listening skills and / or personal preference. In this modern day of massively over-priced and under-designed "high end" audio, i think that more people demonstrate a penchant for personal preferences due to their lack of listening skills than those that have actual listening skills and put them to use. Then again, that's just my "personal opinion", so take it for what it's worth. Sean
>

Sean,

Thanks for the link.

I agree - a lot of the discussion about tubes vs. SS is
personal preference. Depending on when you grew up, and
what you were listening to; you form your own opinion about
what an audio system is "supposed to" sound like.

Dr.Gregory Greenman
Physicist

I agree it is personal preference, and I do not care if amp have 1% or 0.000001% of distortion or if it have 1F capacitance or only 100.000microF, what I care if it sounds like music to me. And Odyssey did not, like so many others. Most musical amps I have heard so far have been tubed but some was SS too.

Well.... well... well... sometimes there are unknown brand out there that are really better than the well known brand. Plus your dollar will really go for the sound not the name and most of us does not really realize that.
This is like medicine, brand name versus generic and the result is the same. The worst part is the brand name sometimes is made by the generic manufacturer. This is nothing to do with Krell or stratos but .... Now let us go figure!!