Pre/Power Amplifiers

After three decades with Krell Industries, 2011 saw high-end designer Dan D’Agostino start a new company from scratch, under his own name, and introducing a major shift in style. The Master Audio Systems aesthetic is so different from Krell’s that one can only speculate if, by way of prescience, Dan had kept some of his best ideas for a rainy day. Ideas so personal that now he puts his name on the front and a signature on the meter(s). Unfortunate things have a way of happening for a good reason. Revisions and refinements occur in every artist’s process. But Dan changed his style beyond recognition, although he kept the substance and did not renounce power as the foundation of good sound. For someone who designed the 350kg Master Reference Mono Amplifier for the biggest, ‘baddest’ guy on the block, Dan has become surprisingly sensitive to the so-called ‘wife acceptance factor’. Which is no bad thing if it helps sell the idea of high-end audio to the better half of humanity.