Krell intros the KID -- another expensive iPod dock you'll never buy

"Hey man, check out my $4000 combo iPod dock / Class A amp playing a 128kbps MP3 file! Listen to that brittle high-end... it's like you're in the room with the computer that compressed this file!"

[Via Crave; Image courtesy Audio Junkies]

[EricR @ Jul 7th 2008 5:13PM]

I love the sarcasm.

[Homeboy @ Jul 7th 2008 5:16PM]

Best part is that you'll have to drop another $2000 on speakers and $150 on quality speaker cables to take full advantage of the amplifier's awesome sound reproduction.

[Charlie Calhoun @ Jul 7th 2008 6:34PM]

Correction: Quality speaker cable is inexpensive and called "Coat Hanger".

[fhlh @ Jul 8th 2008 8:24AM]

Indeed... all that high dollar equipment to play the crappy mp3 digital format...
I'll pass

[Magallanes @ Jul 8th 2008 10:24AM]

lol, about the coat hanger is true but still i have some fond on golden connector.

[John Bailey @ Jul 8th 2008 10:36AM]

Don't worry.. I'm sure Apple will bring out their own brand of cable.. the iHanger perhaps.

This is truly a ground breaking product. A fusion of Apple RDS and Audophile grade snake oil.

[JeffM @ Jul 8th 2008 11:48AM]

$2K speakers would not be a match for Krell equipment generally.

Keep heading upmarket. :P

[adrian @ Jul 8th 2008 5:58PM]

Has anybody listened to it yet?. I know it sounds silly, but maybe they should try it first, even with a 128kbps track.

[Taylor @ Jul 7th 2008 5:18PM]

Hah, nice.
-Taylor

[Shane @ Jul 7th 2008 5:45PM]

I also find this nice.

-Shane

[yode @ Jul 7th 2008 5:50PM]

Yes, great.
-yode

[Evan @ Jul 7th 2008 5:55PM]

hrm, *golf clap.
-eeevan

[andres @ Jul 7th 2008 6:00PM]

fantastic
-andres

[fs @ Jul 7th 2008 6:19PM]

Hm, I see what you all did there.
-fsx

[deyanimay @ Jul 7th 2008 6:41PM]

Amazing

-your mother

[Benson @ Jul 7th 2008 7:31PM]

Cool

-Benson

[Chris Macdonald @ Jul 7th 2008 9:06PM]

I love you engadget

-chris

[Jherez @ Jul 7th 2008 9:18PM]

Indeed (British Voice)

A Dissected goat.

[Andrew Borem @ Jul 8th 2008 8:11AM]

C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!

[Chris @ Jul 7th 2008 5:18PM]

Hoohooooo, burn - Mr. Krell's not gonna like reading that 4-second review.

[OfflinePK @ Jul 7th 2008 5:18PM]

Theory:

As long as people will overpay for their mp3 player they will also probably over pay for its docking station.

[DonJose @ Jul 8th 2008 6:13AM]

There is no Mr Krell. The designer's name is Dan D' Agostino.

[OfflinePK @ Jul 7th 2008 5:19PM]

Theory behind this product*

[acutusnothus @ Jul 7th 2008 5:19PM]

I'll bet a shiny Susan B. the subjectivist, high-end audio rags like Stereophile and The Absolute Sound will be fawing all over it.

[THJ @ Jul 7th 2008 11:14PM]

A subjectawhat? Is that an SAT word for douche bag?

[Josh L @ Jul 7th 2008 5:19PM]

Who is these sorts of high-end docks targeted to?

Anybody who would spend four grand on a piece of sound equipment will also spend more than $200 on your piddly little music player. In fact, they probably eschew digital storage altogether.

[OfflinePK @ Jul 7th 2008 5:24PM]

You know that guy that rips around your town in a Porsche?

That guy...

[balding. @ Jul 8th 2008 5:35PM]

YOUR MOM!!

[Reader @ Jul 7th 2008 6:14PM]

This would be more akin to putting a Civic's engine into a Ferrari. Sure the Ferrari /could/ take a corner at how many ever Gs but the engine would never get it up to that speed.

[Daniel Wharton @ Jul 7th 2008 6:16PM]

Actually hard drives and other digital media (not optical) are shaping up to be the best storage devices for music.

http://www.wavelengthaudio.com/usbdac.html
http://www.scott-nixon.com/dac.htm

I use a DAC I built based on scott nixion's design for use with my PowerMac and Tube amplifier. Its really sweet.

I thought about building a DAC with an ipod dock. Its a great idea. Mine would cost about $200 in parts though. : )

I don't quite understand how to get the digital signal right off the ipod. My guess is they probably mount it as usb mass storage and then do the decoding and whatnot in-device.

Assuming no processing is done inside the ipod (analog conversion, normalization, etc), and the CDs are ripped lossless with buffering, this will sound as good or better than $10,000 CD players. With that in mind, its a bargain and you don't have to get up to change CDs. : )

[Daniel Wharton @ Jul 7th 2008 6:21PM]

Actually, I take that back. Since the music is right on the ipod screen, it can't be the mass-storage approach. The ipod itself must have an interface to grab the raw digital output, otherwise this device is bunk.

If you don't like CDs and want great sound, just get an mac mini (or your favorite tiny windows/linux machine) and a scott nixon dac. For under $1000, you will have something that rivals the most expensive CD gear available.

[Benson @ Jul 7th 2008 7:34PM]

"... otherwise this device is bunk."

Yes, that pretty much covers it.

[Tombio @ Jul 8th 2008 1:38AM]

@reader

Nothing wrong with Civic engine. Mine runs smoothly.

[Adam Williamson @ Jul 7th 2008 5:24PM]

Actually, quite a lot of 'audiophiles' use iPods. iPods actually use rather good hardware - and can be modded to use really good (read: expensive) hardware quite easily (there's a little cottage industry involved in doing this). And they can store lossless audio. If you read the audio geek forums like hydrogenaudio and head-fi, you'll see many people there have iPods loaded with lossless tracks.

[Jim @ Jul 7th 2008 5:43PM]

So, what, you can get like 4 albums of lossless on an iPod Nano?

[CharlieX @ Jul 7th 2008 5:55PM]

As long as you aren't trying to feed your HiFi from the headphone jack.... But can the dock send raw data that the Krell can D/A?

[Josh @ Jul 7th 2008 6:53PM]

@Jim, don't be thick - 160GB Ipod Classic?

More than enough for over 100 lossless albums + loads of single tracks.

[mattclarkie @ Jul 8th 2008 6:12AM]

Most objective reviews(with professional sound engineers) using the same professional headphones always place the iPod low compared to Sony, Creative, Samsung, and Archos. In fact the iPod has a poor score for sound quality.

It might be fine for a crappy MP3 on the bus, but the sound quality is below many of the market rivals.

[Wolfticket @ Jul 8th 2008 8:46AM]

@Adam Williamson
Me and my wallet are sad to say that I know well these places that you speak of.

@mattclarkie

These test don't account for an ipod modded to have a proper line level audio out playing lossless audio, connected to a portable headphone amp that cost 3 times more than the ipod, in turn connected to a pair of headphone thats that cost 5 times more than the ipod.

[kal326 @ Jul 7th 2008 5:28PM]

Finally somebody has made a dock 100 times larger then the actual device its designed to support. These people are what we like to call visionaries!!!!

[warrrennnnn @ Jul 7th 2008 5:46PM]

don't you mean... hearingaries?

[Chris Macdonald @ Jul 7th 2008 9:05PM]

@warrrennnnn

i just pissed myself

[IT-Accountant @ Jul 7th 2008 5:28PM]

Can't you also put uncompressed WAV files on an ipod? at least, that's what I do with mine since my Shure E4c's cruelly point out the flaws in compressed audio.

[blevay @ Jul 7th 2008 5:31PM]

sure, but what's doing the d to a converison? the ipod or the dock? I hope it's the dock...

[Reader @ Jul 7th 2008 6:19PM]

I don't think the iPod has an unprocessed out does it? And IT-Accountant, you should Rockbox your iPod so you can use FLAC and get way more songs onto it.

[Daniel Wharton @ Jul 7th 2008 6:32PM]

sure, but why use uncompressed raw when apple lossless sounds as good at 1/4 the size? (lossless compression)

If you have a player that supports flac, that can do a little better and is open.

[JeffM @ Jul 8th 2008 11:54AM]

@ Daniel- Portability- you can't take your lossless Apple anywhere and play it on anything. My iPod is stuffed with .WAV files personally. Of course it also only has music from CDs I own too. :P

[mkim @ Jul 7th 2008 5:33PM]

Krell has been going down in quality for quite a while now. Still good stuff, but c'mon, and iPod dock?

[WhyFi @ Jul 7th 2008 5:35PM]

The KID has been out for months - it's the Papa Dock that has been recently released.

[Jake @ Jul 7th 2008 5:37PM]

But i dont rip my cd's into 128 kb/s MP3s...