Pass X350.5 or Krell 302e?

I have owned a Pass x250 and a Krell 402e; which I suppose is fairly close to the comparison you mention. I can say after owning the Pass x250; which the 350.5 is supposed to be a much smoother amp than the 250, is an amp I thoroughly enjoyed. I think I may have had a preamp mismatch (Audio Research LS15) at the time; so it sounded a bit lean. However the frequency extremes were outstanding; that is to say the bass and treble were great. The midrange on some recordings; although fleshed out, simply did not have bloom.

On the other hand, the Krell 402e did not have the slam the Pass amp had; the midrange was a tad more liquid, but still lacking something. Perhaps I expected a little more neutral presentation, but both amps for me erred on the side of cool sounding. You can't go wrong with either of your choices, but system matching with SS it a little more critical than with valves; which has been my experience. I would opt for the Pass x350.5; using a tube preamp and Cardas type cables. HTH

Thanks for a great post. I am surprised to hear the Pass had more bass slam. Anyhow, thank you.

To supplement Ff116's comment. There's quite a bit of difference between the X.5 and the non .5 version of the Pass amps. I own the X350.5. Prior to purchasing it, I had the opportunity to hear it compare side-by-side with X350 at a friend's house as he was debating which one to buy. The preamp was the ARC Ref 2 Mk I. All four of us at the shoot-out all were a bit surprised how lean and solid-state like the X350 sounded. The X350.5 exhibited more of what you would expect from Pass with the warm and tube-like midrange and excellent control on both ends. The bass control was just superb. We all thought the difference justifies much more than just an ".5" upgrade status.

I am running mine with an ARC LS-25 Mk I (with Reference level mod by GNSC).

FrankC

@ Ff116, Thats an interesting post about the evoltion E stereo amp and the Passlabs amp, I was told by Krell and other x krell employees, that the Evolution E amps was different than my modded totally renewed by Krell 700cx, the difference is my amp by far has extrodinary slam!, I would like to compaire this Krell 700 cx to eany passlabs amp as far as the slam department goes, Passlabs is a great product, we all know that, but if you know the history of Krell, each and every model line has had a different sound from one to the other, like the Krell Kas model line, and so fourth, really, the older Krell models are better to me, cheers.

The 0.5 series are superior to the earlier X series. To be unnest the older ones I did not find that impressive. What kind of speakers do you use? Wenn you want the best in 3-dimensional image. The Pass Labs does a better job. There are only a few older Krell amps which sound I loved. But these days I am only interested in the best level in 3-dimensional image. Because this is the key to the absolute sound. Krell is not capable of giving the wide and deep stage as Pass Labs can give. Pass labs is also capable of letting you hear the difference between 2 acoustic guitars with ease in the same recording.