Core Audio Technology Kratos ll

Core Audio Kratos ll in great condition. All Digital amp that is unmatched in sound quality. 

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  Review

  
  

  While some circles in the audiophile community stubbornly refuse to embrace the sonic and convenience benefits of digital music, others are on the front lines of the movement. There are a growing number of high-end companies starting to design digital components to please the next generation of Audiophile. Core Audio Technology is one of those companies. Their products seem to dance the line between what I would call “high-end” and “esoteric”. You won’t find stupid expensive gear like an $80,000 record player or single driver “full-range” speaker with a higher MSRP than a Porsche 911. But the gear isn’t entry level either, ranging from about $600 to $19,000. I might summarize Core Audio Technology as a company who offers many of the design elements, look and feel of ultra-expensive gear with one less digit on the price tag.

  
  

  Straddling that line between high-end and esoteric is the Kratos MKII fully digital amplifier, the replacement for their original Kratos MKI. It’s rated at 100wpc into 8ohms and 200wpc into 4ohms at .1% THD. We're not sure if the power rating was taken with a 1kHz tone or 20-20kHz full bandwidth test.  Reported dynamic range is 140dB. The Kratos MKII weighs in at 22lbs, which would be poultry for a traditional class A or A/B amplifier, but weight doesn’t tell you much about an amp of this design.

  
  

  At this point, it’s important to clarify what “amp of this design” actually means. I’d suspect that many readers are unfamiliar with what a fully digital amplifier actually is. A quick glance at the back panel will tell you that this isn’t a typical amp. The back panel sports the expected two sets of speaker binding posts, but it also has a 2 digital optical and 2 digital coax inputs that can handle 24 bit/192kHz native. On the front you will find a volume/Input control and LED display. It also comes with an IR remote. It’s similar to traditional integrated amp in terms of functionality, but with a few very important differences.

  The Kratos is designed to have no “digital to analog conversion, no analog to digital conversion, no analog to triangle wave conversion, no analog to pwm conversion, no DSP, no sample rate conversion, and no switching power supplies.” It does not accept analog inputs of any kind; instead, everything is done in the digital domain and ONLY digital inputs are accepted. The logic is that no DAC is better than even the best DAC. The amp takes a PCM digital input, amplifies it, then the signal is demodulated to drive the speaker directly. One of the added benefits is also that THD does not change with power output. Ultimately, the goal of this design is to achieve better sound quality by eliminating unnecessary conversions, cables and circuitry.

  Conclusion I think we will start to see more fully digital amps hit the market in the coming years. The product class offers a way for audiophiles to embrace the world of high-end digital audio while holding true to principles like simple, clean signal paths. For those who are particularly enticed by the Kratos, Core Audio Technology also offers package deals where they will pimp out a Mac Mini to make it a lean-mean-music-serving-machine and give you a few hundred bucks off of the combo. For those looking for the fewest pieces and least conversions possible in the pursuit of digital audio nirvana, the Kratos MKII can surely help out.