Krell K-300i Integrated Amplifier

Magico A1 Loudspeakers

£21,000 system as reviewed

We need to talk about synergy more. It's strange that this subject gets relatively little coverage in the hi-fi press. Instead, audio reviews focus on one product after another, often with little in the way of context. Having written about hi-fi for nigh on three decades now, I can tell you that the best sound depends on how individual hi-fi separates work with one another in the system chain. That's why, for this review, we decided to invite UK distributor Absolute Sounds to suggest a special combination of amplifier and loudspeakers.

Arguably this is the most critical partnership. Traditional hi-fi wisdom has it that the source is the most important element of the system chain – and there's much to that – yet the amplifier and loudspeaker relationship is vital to get right. On the most basic level, it's a critical electrical 'partnership' – if the amplifier can't pull its weight in terms of power output and current drive, then the speakers have no chance of giving their best. Then you have the issue of tonal balance, transient speed, etc., all of which need to be right too.

If you're shopping for a system, you could spend your life reading endless reviews of products – invariably done largely in isolation – or you could actually visit a dealer who can demonstrate it in front of your very ears. Given that importers and dealers have access to lots of hi-fi, you'd expect them to know combinations that work together better than most. And if you go to a dealer with an account with Absolute Sounds, then you're likely able to hear this Krell K-300i & Magico A1 amplifier and speaker combo in all its glory.

AMP CHAMP

Many seasoned audiophiles will know Krell. Playing the hi-fi word association game, if someone says this company's name, then many will immediately reply with “big”, “heavy”, and “powerful”. Since the early nineteen eighties, this brand has made American heavy metal – pure, unreconstructed, thuggish power stations with enough grunt to flap your flared trousers. Yet Krell has a reputation for great sound, too, of course, and is known for being detailed and three-dimensional – which is perfect for driving high-end speakers like the Magico A1…

The company says the K-300i is its best-ever integrated amp. The designer has attempted to distill down the signature sound into a relatively – by Krell standards – compact package. But by everyone else's standards, at 100x440x460mm [HxWxD] and 23.6kg, you would call this a large and heavy amplifier! It's available in two versions – as a straightforward analogue integrated amp at £8,998 and as tested with the streaming/DAC digital module at £9,998. It's an impressive-looking device with a very high quality of finish – albeit not as silky smooth as some Japanese high end which appears to be made by robots in an almost other-worldly way. The Krell, by contrast, seems like it's screwed together by good old-fashioned artisans who really care about what they're doing.

My biggest beef with the K-300i is its user interface. A high-quality metal-cased remote control is supplied, but if you choose to use the fascia, then prepare to faff around a bit as you learn how it works. The down and up buttons for the volume control are far inferior to an actual volume knob, and the source selection buttons are baffling until you learn how to work them. In a way, this gives the amp character and marks it out as different from the crowd, but in another way, it's just fiddly! Nor does the display get full marks – it looks more at home in 2003 than 2023 and has a long way to match the standards of companies like dCS.

After you've got over the slightly 'quirky' user experience, you can relax and enjoy the sound through your chosen music source. The Krell has plenty of choice here; it has three pairs of RCA analogue inputs and two balanced XLR inputs, plus TOSLINK optical and electrical coaxial inputs, plus HDMI in and out, plus two USB inputs. Also, aptX Bluetooth is provided, which is a handy feature for background listening. The streaming side supports digital audio platforms, including TIDAL, Spotify Connect, Deezer and Qobuz. The USB input can play up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD128 files; the others stretch to 24/96; the K-300i is also MQA compatible and Roon-ready. For streaming, mConnect is recommended, which is decent enough but a tier or two down from proprietary apps.

Look inside, and you begin to realise why the amp is so heavy; that massive 770VA mains transformer is hard to miss, alongside its associated smoothing capacitors. 150W RMS per channel is claimed into 8 ohms, and twice that into 4 – which says a lot about the power supply. It also means that this amp can cope with not just tricky but actually quite nasty loads from loudspeakers. It's said to work primarily in Class A but has Krell's iBias technology to minimise power loss whenever it can. I found it got quite hot in normal use, so it's not something you can rest other components on.

SPEAK EASY

It took Magico only a short time after the company's launch in 2004 to make a name for itself, one that now goes on some of the world's finest premium-priced, large loudspeakers. That's why, for me, the little A1 is especially interesting – because here, this illustrious brand is out of its natural habitat, off reservation, you might say. Costing a cool £10,998 per pair, this is an extremely expensive standmount speaker.

As soon as you touch it, you can see why. It sports a braced T6 aircraft-grade aluminium enclosure, beryllium dome tweeter and carbon Nanographene cone – that's a lot of trick technology and/or just plain expensive parts. The metal cabinet makes it heavier to pick up than you'd think because its walls are pretty thick. It has an anodised brushed finish which wasn't entirely to my taste, but there's no denying how classy it looks. Magico says it's heavily braced and damped; I can confirm that it's very inert and has a sort of metal ingot like character when you rap it with your knuckles.

A pure Beryllium tweeter is not something you see every day, not least because it's expensive and difficult to manufacture. This element is, of course, the lightest stable metal in the Periodic Table; Lithium is lighter still but tends to catch fire when exposed to air! Beryllium is way lighter than the traditional metals used in tweeter production – even Magnesium, while Aluminium is heavier still. Here it comes in 28mm dome form and is said to be based on Magico's reference M- Series tweeter. It sports a neodymium motor system and special damping, the company says.

Continuing the exotic drive unit materials theme, the 165mm mid/bass driver uses a multi-wall carbon fibre cone with a layer of XG Nanographene, which is said to provide optimal stiffness-to-weight ratio and an ideal damping factor. It's fitted into a robust frame with a motor system using extra-large magnets to ensure a stabilised magnetic field in the pure titanium voice coil. Unlike so many other such designs on the market these days, it is not reflex loaded – which is to say that the A1 is an infinite baffle design. The result is a smallish speaker measuring 396x305x216mm [HxWxD] that's unexpectedly heavy at 22kg apiece.

As you'd expect for a compact sealed box speaker, sensitivity isn't great at 84dB, while nominal impedance is a low 4 ohms – something that will sort out the men from the boys, as far as the amplifier driving it is concerned! Magico quotes a frequency response of 35Hz to 50kHz, but with no cutoff points given. All of which means the A1 needs a muscle amp to drive it with conviction and grip – something like the Krell K-300i, you might say!

THE LISTENING

For me, this combo ticks all the right boxes as far as a relatively compact, high-end hi-fi system is concerned. It offers a sound that's way better than most things on sale today, but not perhaps in the way that you might think. The K-300i/A1 pairing isn't showy, pushy, forward, or brash – and nor does it shake the room in the way that many less expensive systems can do when running larger floorstanding speakers. What it does do, however, is – to all intents and purposes – get out of the way. It steps aside and allows the listener to focus not on the technical and/or 'hi-fi' aspects of the sound but on the actual music. That's the trick it pulls off, and it does so with true elan…

Before I elaborate on this, let's 'unpack' what each of the two products is doing respectively. Taken on its own, driving my reference Yamaha NS-1000M loudspeakers, the Krell K-300i was, of course, highly impressive. It is a feisty, gutsy performer with lots of power and punch, as per Krell tradition. I do feel, however, that it's more subtle than some earlier designs from this stable; it's tonally a little more neutral and has less of a Rottweiler quality. It isn't quite the full Bryan Ferry, but it's certainly no Joey Ramone!

This amplifier's fundamental clarity and resolution is ideal for the Magico A1, which is a highly revealing loudspeaker and not one that embellishes the sound. You could almost call it matter-of-fact sounding with some equipment – although it really wakes up and sparkles when fed with front ends that suit it. The K-300i is one such example, and together the tonal balance was just a fraction on the 'well-lit' side in my far-from-perfect listening room. Yet this is nothing that sympathetic speaker positioning and/or careful cable matching can't accommodate; I also found that just one LP side along from the Krell being switched on, and both amplifier and speakers had warmed up and sweetened up to give a really pleasing tonal balance.

Whatever source you select, they make great music together. The Magico speaker really appreciates watts per channel, and the Krell is happy to supply these in prolific quantities. The latter appears excellent at putting plenty of current into the speakers that it's driving – which also benefits the outcome. The result is an expansive and expressive sounding system, one that cuts to the musical chase so to speak. Yet it doesn't suffer from the pitfalls of much high-end hi-fi, falling over itself to analyse and/or deconstruct what's on the original recording. Instead, you find yourself swept along by the drama of the musical occasion – taking in the glory of the events unfolding around you.

Take The Doors' classic Riders on the Storm via LP, for example. It's a song that many of us know and love – and rightly so. It's not the world's best audiophile recording – far from it – but can sound great when the system is communicating the brooding intensity of the music. This is the sort of thing that the Krell/Magico combo excels at. I've heard speakers with more extended bass, or, indeed, a more airy treble – yet who cares when the A1s dissolved into a vast soundstage and let the flavour of this epic recording flood out?

Tonally the Magico A1 is lovely; its two drive units seem to marry up to one another very well. There's no sense of hearing two speakers in one; instead, the sound is seamless, with a really delicate and subtle tonality. It's super fast, too; the sound of the cymbals being struck with wooden drumsticks was lovely to hear – really natural and fast, without a hint of brightness. At the other end of the frequency spectrum, that walking bassline was super-satisfying; it was musically supple and articulate yet had no hint of bass boom. In the middle, the electric piano sounded amazingly natural – fast, sparkling with harmonics and haunting in the way it played.

Move to a totally different sort of track though, and it's as if you're transported to another place and time. Such is the transparency of the Krell/Magico combo that it steps out of the way to play whatever you want in an unfailingly natural way. Junior's early eighties Britfunk hit, Mama Used to Say, was a riot! Most impressive was the purity and clarity of his voice, something I hadn't noticed when playing through lesser systems. It had a special combination of velvety tonality and a kind of aggressive, expressive edge when he cranked it up. Set to that classic disco-funk backing, it was quite a thing to experience.

Yet I wasn't thinking in hi-fi terms for long; soon, I found myself becoming immersed in the song's huge groove and really enjoying the syncopation between Junior's vocals and the backing percussion. It wasn't just his silky tones that were making the song special; it was also his vocal phrasing, I deduced. Again, this system let this all shine through like it was sitting in broad daylight before me – whereas for so many years this particular facet of the song had eluded me.

If I wanted further proof of this system's ability to realistically recreate a recording before the listener's very ears, then it came with Kate Bush's masterful Running Up That Hill. This Krell/Magico combo really soared. Again, this recording has a very different tonality to the previous ones I've mentioned, and again the A1 loudspeakers were able to accurately signpost this. But hi-fi considerations were quickly brushed aside as the percussion started to hammer the musical message home alongside Kate's icy but ethereal vocals. Again, this system moved aside, enabling an unfettered delivery of a hugely rousing rendition of this song, and the effect was quite lovely.

Overall, the K-300i/A1 pairing proved really hard to fault; I came away extremely impressed by the Magico speakers, but had to remind myself that this was only because the quality of the Krell amplifier was such that the A1s could do their thing. Both of these products are ultra-capable, yet are relatively compact compared to ultra high-end 'super-fi', which requires a cavernous room to house all of its boxes and wires – and doesn't necessarily sound any better. That's the secret sauce of this particular pairing – it connects you directly to the music yet has vast reserves of power and dynamics, a svelte tonality, great detail retrieval – and all from a system of relatively diminutive dimensions.

THE VERDICT

Rather than being randomly thrown together because UK distributor Absolute Sounds happens to deal with both Krell and Magico, this particular pairing was personally put together by Ricardo Franassovici because of the synergy between the amp and speakers. It's clear to me that he obviously spent a good amount of time listening to it because it works exceedingly well together. Although very expensive by most people's standards at a whisker under £21,000, I've heard systems at five times the price that struggle to sound as musically involving. This goes to show the importance of synergy – and of course, actually listening to different combinations of products, too. So if you're looking out for a compact high-end system that's capable of dynamite performance, this is definitely one to hear.

Visit Krell and Magico for more information