General Asylum: REVIEW: Krell KPS-20i CD Player/Recorder by Dave Bender

Having converted from vinyl to CD many years ago, the CD player (or separates) are the heart of my system. It would be prudent to choose a new source wisely as it's merits dictate the outcome and character of the whole system. I was previously using a CAL CL-10 and through a calculated entire system upgrade of CD player, amplifier/preamp, speakers and cables, I embarked on driving within 120 mile radius (land permitting) to listen to the best available CD players within the South Florida audio dealer network.

I listened to the Meridian 508.24, Krell KAV-300cd, Mark Levinson 39 and 36/37 combo plus a CEC TL-1/Camelot Uther combo. Most of these were in the $3000 to $8000 range, this was within budget for the system upgrade. I'll spare you the details but I liked the 508.24 and the CEC/Uther the best of that bunch but I wasn't ready to part with my money, yet.

I made a phone call to the local audio chain store (kinda like the McDonalds of the audio world) and asked them if the had any leftovers of the now discontinued Krell high end CD offerings. Lo' and behold, they had one unit left, a new in the box KPS-20i at one of their stores 115 miles south of me. I called the manager of that store and confirmed that it was still available and asked him to hold it for me until the following morning and I'd be down to pick it up. Their home audition policy is, "you buy it" and have 30 days to return it for a full refund, no questions asked. I got the unit below their cost at $3995 the next morning and I noticed on the shipper that it had the latest upgrade from the factory, the Delta 9(more on this later). This was getting REAL interesting. I got home and calmly unpacked the unit and was impressed by the weight, 30+ lbs and the remote was hogged out of a solid piece of aluminum. Hmmmm....these guys don't fool around, I thought. I placed it on the rack and got it leveled, plugged all the appropriate cables and cords in and powered it up. While it was warming up, I scanned through the owners manual for any last second advice, it was time to start breaking it in. I pushed the remote button for opening the top load door and was greeted by 20 green LED's bathing the transport in green light. I put the first cd on(Cafe Blue, as I recall) the spindle and attached the 5 spoked, machined magnetic clamp. I closed the CD door and pushed Play. With the volume set at a moderate level, the first thing I noticed was that the bass was powerful! In fact, I had to stop and recalibrate the subwoofer setting because it was so overwhelming. Out came the test cd and SPL meter and sure enough, about a 4 to 6 dB reduction was in order! The sub is set to a 32Hz cutoff....hmmmmm, I had always heard that Krell excels in bass but I had just experienced it, with measurements. How could the CL-10 have been this anemic? I thought. Back to the music, initial impression was, WOW!! and I had thought I had a pretty good system before, this is pretty astonishing. Maybe it's just psychological, calm down Dave and "play on".

Over the next 2 weeks, I allowed the unit to break in and I received the last of my upgrades, namely the Z-Systems rdp-1 + D60's and Tice Power Block 3A HP PLC. Eliminating the analog preamp and digitally controlling volume by taking the digital output from the 20i's transport, processing it throught the rdp-1 and inserting back into the 20i's DAC was mindboggling. After allowing another 100 hrs of break in and commencing the fine tuning of the system in the room, I started to listen very critically.

First, I should give you a description of the KPS-20i. A "thirtysomething" pound machined aluminum housed, battleship gray anodized (black trim) top load integrated cd player. A Philips CDM-9 Pro transport nestled in a 4.5 lb block of machined brass, suspended carefully in the housing. As mentioned earlier, 2 rows of 10 green LED's bath the CD and it is clamped with a machined 5 spoke quenched magnet clamp to flatten and securely hold the CD. On the DSP side of things, it came standard with a Motorola DSP-56002 processor operating at 66MHz. The Delta 9 upgrade uses the newer DSP-56009 running at 80MHz. Krell written reconstructive software runs at 705.6 KHz and no dithering is employed. The DAC section is four Burr-Brown PCM-63K 20 bit Colinear DACs in differential configuration feeding a well engineered fixed output analog section. The I/O options are as follows, Inputs = ST fiber, AES/EBU, SPDIF, Toshiba fiber Outputs = Analog: balanced and single ended; Digital: ST fiber, SPDIF(RCA). Claimed spec's are Jitter = 0 psec for KPS-20i read discs and 40 psec for external sources; S/N > 135dB@60Hz and > 120dB@20KHz; Frequency Response is 20Hz to 20KHz +0, -0.2dB. The remote is a work of art unto itself and it completely duplicates the front panel of the 20i. I should also mention that Krell developed something called "Time Sync" which internally controls the clock pulses and according to them, eliminates jitter.

Critical Listening:

I listen to mostly Jazz and anything acoustic. Being an amateur guitar player, I naturally gravitate towards this kind of music. My system is geared towards this goal of satisfying myself, that an acoustic guitar reproduced through my system, actually, tonally and harmonically sound like real guitars. This is my reference.

Some of the music selections I recall using are Lyle Lovett's Joshua Judges Ruth track #4, North Dakota. For those of you that haven't heard this piece, it has everything for a great demo track. Beautiful acoustic guitar with rich harmonics, male/female vocal duet and incredible, tasty drum transient attacks. This piece alone drew me into the music with tremendous emotion. The system has accomplished it's mission! It is to die for. Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue is stunning on this system, so lifelike and smooth. Not a hint of the "typical" digital harshness, very analog like. In fact, I would put this system up against any analog system and I think that this CD player, in this system will prevail when judged on all criteria(if you could ever get a "vinylphile" to admit it ;). Sounds of Wood&Steel from Windham Hill features all Taylor guitar playing artists and allows me to compare directly, as I have two Taylors myself. This is the acid test, although the recording process is imperfect, there are certain tracks that I can easily identify the Taylor sound on. One shortcoming is that when I play guitar, my perspective is listening while holding the instrument. This is different than being the audience of it. Still, the system through the KPS-20i scored a hit, it faithfully reproduces something that I'm very familiar with. Doyle Dykes Gitarre 2000 has a few great acoustic guitar tracks on it, also Windham Hill. Reference Recordings Dick Hyman In Recital is a knock out piano recording, close your eyes and the grand piano is in front of you with superb harmonic reconstruction, string attack and so on. Simply, superb! Janis Ian's Breaking Silence gold CD is breathtaking! It just totally engaged me into her musical realm, full of emotion in her storytelling songs, track after track. On the well worn out side of demos, Eric Clapton - Unplugged, the first cut, Signe is one of the most outstanding live recordings of acoustic guitar I've ever heard. Fabulous! Hell Freezes Over, the Eagles, pick any track after #4 of the live recordings, Baby, you ARE there with them! Every nuance of Henley's voice and Timothy B. Schmidt's fantastic bass playing or the nylon string guitars during Hotel California are faithfully reproduced, to my ear.

Clearly, this CD player may have been born 6 or 7 years ago but it is State of the Art. Now I understand why Martin Collums still uses it as a reference piece after all these years, it has no peers. If you want a CD player that has climbed Mt. Everest, look no further. It covers every aspect of musical reproduction in spades. If you can still find a new unit, it's a steal for the money or try to locate one on the used market and it will be the last CD player you will ever need to enjoy your CD collection for years to come.

Associated Equipment is listed below and to add more information for those inquiring minds, the system is setup in the long axis of the room with the reQuests 5.5' out from the front wall and 4.75' from the sidewalls. Center of electrostatic panel to center of the other panel is 9' and listening is done 9' back from the speaker plane. The Velodyne is externally actively crossed at 32Hz with a 36dB/octave slope in parallel to the main speakers from the KPS-20i's single ended analog outputs. The reQuests are running full range from the balanced analog outputs of the 20i.

REVIEW: Krell KPS-20i CD Player/Recorder Review by Dave Bender at Audio Asylum