KR AUDIO
ELECTRONICS COMPANY HISTORY1

"We place quality above quantity."

-- Thomas Masaryk to Karl Capek

KR Audio Electronics sro was founded by Dr. Riccardo Kron, who received his
professional formation as an award winning designer for an Italian electronics
company in the Val di Susa (Piedmont) outside of Turin in the 1960's.  This company called Magnadyne,
founded in 1923, was a luxury manufacturer of "hi-end" radios and
then televisions with an in-house tube division.  The company was privately owned and was
noted for its fine quality and reliability.

Given
that the mass produced tubes did not create the warmth and richness of real
music he heard as a child when listening to his father practicing on his
violin, Riccardo Kron was
interested in developing a tube that would create a unique sound, but could
find neither the right men nor the place for the necessary research.

Some
time after the Berlin Wall fell, he saw a Czech gentleman selling N.O.S. tubes
at a flea market in central Italy.

He began to speak with him and
found out that this man with a few skilled craftsmen could make Marconi tubes
(blowing the glass individually and assembling the internal systems by hand),
but had no market for these collector's tubes.  Dr. Kron
insisted that if he would provide the money for the R&D, they could make an
audio tube (not a transmitting tube used for audio) which would revolutionize
current sound reproduction for high quality tube amplifiers.

In the early
1990’s, Dr. Kron's team, consisting of
engineers, glass artisans, chemists, vacuum technicians, and mechanical
specialists succeeded in developing the first new audio tube in 54 years. There
had been no new audio tubes designed and produced since the 1950's.

Because
it may not be possible to visit our factory to see the full extend of our
craftsmanship, a high technology item is considered hand-crafted when it made
with tools by hand, that is someone's
hand 'touched it'.   In
the case of KR glass envelopes, an artisan actually forms the molten glass into
the bulb by blowing a bubble in the middle of the molten glass while rotating
the glass and heating it at the same time.
Similar feats of artistry and science occur at each stage of the KR
process.

At
KR people are doing everything. The tube is not created on a big assembly line
with machines doing everything. If we use molds for an item, it's a hand
process with someone filling the mold and checking it for conformity. All the
polishing and finishing is done by hand. So when you look at a KR you might
notice that each piece is a little different than another. This is not a flaw;
it is uniqueness. Every piece is a unique art object even though we pride
ourselves in being a technological manufacturer.

The
KR tubes are hand-crafted using our design for a higher vacuum, less grid
emission and consequently longer life. This creates a very natural sound giving
the listener greater dynamics, more clarity (hearing more detail in recordings)
and a more perfect time alignment that accurately preserves the spatial
separation and sound stage of the original recording.

As
a concrete example of how our technology creates a unique sound, I will use
this as an illustration.  More often
than not, a two-channel stereo is not connected to a home theater set-up.  Many years ago, KR had an audition in Asia with a Home Theatre demo. They were playing a James
Bond movie. The telephone rang in the film and 15 people went to their pockets
because the sound was so real.

Now
to get back to our story:

It
took two years plus a sizeable capital investment to be able to come to the
Milan Top Audio hi-fi fair in 1994 with two pieces of 300B type tubes.

They
were substituted in an Audio Note amplifier and the results were very good.

The
factory was assured success in that the product was innovative and the
listening results were optimal.
Since that time, KR has gone on to develop a regular tube line along
with custom tubes such as the KR T-100, the KR 842, the KR 300BXLS and the
double triode, known as the KR T-1610, the largest audio tube in the world.

KR
has also created a line of amplifiers to demonstrate what type of sound
reproduction you obtain when our tubes are applied to a circuit. Auditioning a
KR (be it tubes or the completed amplifier) creates a very natural way of
hearing sound reproduced with very little distortion and as close to being in a
concert hall as you can get while remaining at home.

KR
Audio Electronics is a leader in its field and has been in business for since
1992 exhibiting at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas since 1995
as well as many other national and international high fidelity audio shows
around the world

The company has won awards for
its tubes and amplifiers and has earned excellent reviews in the various trade
publications, both foreign and American.

Although
Dr. Kron passed away in 2002, the work he started is
being continued by his team with exciting projects/designs for audio such as
the Antares stereo integrated VA340, the Antares stereo integrated VA 350 and the series of 'X' Kronzilla amplifiers of 50 (SX and SXI, SXI with by-pass)
and 100 (DX monoblocks) Watts which represent
something of a engineering miracle from an
output of only 2 audio tubes.

We
are known as the tube-specialists by the audio industry and our amplifiers are
considered precision instruments for their sound quality.

We
hope to be here for many more years to give the consumer a concrete sense of
what Dr. Kron’s idea was concerning 2 channel
stereo and what you can experience by entering his world of very neutral sound
reproduction.

KR Audio Electronics sro,

Nademlejnska 1/600,

198 00 Prague 9,

Hloubetin,

Czech Republic

www.kraudio.cz

1 – KR audio gratefully acknowledges the efforts
of Cor Dekker, Rick Becker, and Bradley Smith, who
teamed up to make this document commensurate with the history and genius of our
founder Dr. Riccardo Kron.

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