Krell KPS-20I
A reference CD player that a reviewer once paired with a $90,000 amplifier and didn't get laughed out of the room.
Overview
The KPS-20I occupies a strange and specific place in Krell's catalog: it's the digital front end that people who owned the company's monster amplifiers actually used. The period documentation tells the story better than any spec sheet could. In a 1995 Audio listening session, the KPS-20i was fed into an Audio Note Ongaku integrated amplifier — a piece listed at $90,000 — and run against Wilson X-1s and Krell KAS amplifiers. The listener's verdict was that the source wasn't embarrassed by the company it was keeping, noting only that it ran a bit shy in the upper bass. That's the KPS-20I in a nutshell: a CD player treated as a serious component, not an accessory.
Audio (September 1995, p.78) reviewed the KPS-20i under Anthony H. Cordesman's byline, and the review calls out the transport's machined table — built to improve servo tracking — and a magnetic clamp. It also singles out the suspension system in the transport mechanism as outstanding, with the caveat that a properly sited KPS-20i needs a stable platform to do its best work. That's a real-world detail worth internalizing: this is a player whose mechanical design rewards attention to placement.
The connectivity is where the KPS-20I reveals its ambition. The review notes EIAJ and ST (AT&T) optical outputs, plus an AT&T "sync" output intended to provide time synchronization with the Krell Reference 64 D/A converter to minimize jitter. That sync output is the tell — Krell built the KPS-20I expecting owners to pair it with the Reference 64, and Audio (September 1995, p.82) reports that feeding the transport outputs of the KPS-20i into the Reference 64 produced a sound far more competitive with the standalone KPS-20i than using the internal converter alone. In other words, the KPS-20I works as a complete player, but it was designed to be the transport half of a two-box Krell digital front end.
The green LED detail is the kind of thing that separates collectors from casual listeners. Krell documents a row of ten green LEDs on each side of the disc compartment — the company's own version of the green-paint-on-the-disc-edge tweak, applied as a built-in design feature rather than an aftermarket hack. Whether or not one buys the theory behind it, the fact that Krell engineered the treatment into the machine says something about how seriously the company took the optical read path.
By 1997 the KPS-20I had become a fixture in serious systems. Audio (January 1997, p.34) lists the KPS-20i/1 CD player as the digital source in Ken Kessler's reference system, paired with the Krell Reference 64 converter. That's a useful data point for anyone wondering whether the player held up: a reviewer building a reference rig around it two years after introduction is a stronger endorsement than any single review verdict.
Collectors should note that the KPS-20I is a two-box concept in a one-box chassis — it will satisfy on its own, but its full potential is unlocked with the Reference 64. The AT&T sync output is the physical evidence of that design intent, and it's the first thing to check when evaluating a used example. The machined transport table and magnetic clamp are the mechanical features to inspect for wear, and the suspension is the system that determines how much of the player's potential you actually hear. Production years are not documented in available sources and should be verified before any purchase; a manufacturer document excerpt lists the price at $10,000.
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