i have 2 krell amps and a krell processor powering my living room system, each channel is rated for 250w at 8ohm and 500w at 4 ohm... m60's and a vp150
did it make the system sound "better"? hrm. not really.... but they take balanced inputs from my processor, so there is ABSOLUTELY 0 hiss ever. even if the sound is turned to 0, there is no hiss. i think this is the biggest benefit of having the amps. besides the fact that they can give the speakers more power than they would EVER want. I have a Marantz mm9000 in my bedroom right now, and that amp uses RCA inputs, and i do get some hiss though that amp depending on the source. I use the cable music channels quite a bit, and in the living room with the Krells, there is no hiss, the audio is cleaned up by the processor and then fed to the amps.. in my bed room i have a NAD processor, and with the Marantz amp, i will get some hiss on the exact same channel.
i got my krell gear used, 2k$ for the processor ht 7.1 and about 1500$ each for the amps. the amps i got are the KAV 250a and the KAV 250a/3
i don't know how you feel about buying pre-owned stuff, but both of my amps were recently serviced and had the documentation to show what was done, and how many transistors were replaced.
another options is the Marantz MM9000 it does 160W X5 i've had mine for almost 6 years now, and still use it almost on a daily basis..
hope some of my rambling helps.
