McIntosh Owners & Discussion Thread

[Be Quiet...Listen]

Just procured my personal first McIntosh pieces, two vintage C8's mono preamps. Both have valve regulated power supplies. 

Simply beautiful looking gear!

[astormsau]

Welcome to the club

[muriwai]

Photos please

[Volunteer]

Whelp... The MA352 has gone to live with @chirockr now (welcome to the club) and I have transitioned to an Arcam pre (with Dirac Live Bass Control) and a pair of McIntosh MC830 monos.

 

Delicious

 

 

Same great McIntosh house-sound with plenty of poke at 300w into 8 ohms each.

[Godot]

McIntosh trade up program:

 

https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/brand/news/2023-trade-up?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tradeupannouncement

[Pio]

Hi

I am currently using a McIntosh MA7000 and am thoroughly satisfied with its performance. What I particularly value is its smooth sound signature, which makes lengthy music sessions enjoyable without any listening fatigue. Despite my positive experience, I've encountered a range of opinions online regarding this amplifier and others equipped with autoformers. While these differing views don't significantly impact my satisfaction with the MA7000, and I have no intention of replacing it, my curiosity is piqued about the origin of such criticisms. In my personal experience, having compared it in listening tests with several contemporary devices, the MA7000 outperformed them. This leads me to question: why is there such criticism of this type of equipment?

 

[Godot]

23 hours ago, Pio said:

Hi

I am currently using a McIntosh MA7000 and am thoroughly satisfied with its performance. What I particularly value is its smooth sound signature, which makes lengthy music sessions enjoyable without any listening fatigue. Despite my positive experience, I've encountered a range of opinions online regarding this amplifier and others equipped with autoformers. While these differing views don't significantly impact my satisfaction with the MA7000, and I have no intention of replacing it, my curiosity is piqued about the origin of such criticisms. In my personal experience, having compared it in listening tests with several contemporary devices, the MA7000 outperformed them. This leads me to question: why is there such criticism of this type of equipment?

 

Congratulations on acquiring such a beautiful classic. Your positive experience is what is important. For every one keyboard warrior dissing McIntosh’s design approach with autoformers, there are many more who have actually heard them and love them. Some may have actually heard them and not liked the sound. Fair enough. The reasons behind the negative post range from differences in design beliefs, arrogance in presuming adults can’t choose how to spend their own money, HiFi snobbery, perception around what is really “high end” and many more complex and varied reasons. It would be a boring world if we all liked exactly the same things/ sound etc. 

Enjoy your new amplifier, may it bring you many years of music listening pleasure. 

[Godot]

Interesting (well, to me anyway), the things that make unexpected differences. I just replaced the stock power valves in my Mc1502 with a new set of Gold Lions, same valve type (KT88). For 2 channel the subs (REL S/812s), are connected to the Mc1502 with the high level input. I haven’t listened yet, the difference happened with my subs. I leave them on standby, but actually manually turn them on each day, so that they don’t turn on and off themselves if I’m changing between HT and 2 channel, a lot of YouTube has no bass and I don’t like my subs turning on and off. 
Anyway, with the stock tubes in the Mc1502 the subs stayed off when the amp powered up, no signal being sent to amp. With the new tubes, after the Mc1502 powered up, it then sent enough of a signal to the subs to turn them on. 
I would love to know what this actually means in terms of the differences between the valves and the way they operate. 

[Godot]

Hi @Miu Miu, this is the “McIntosh Owners” thread/sub forum. Happy reading. The MA12000 looks amazing, enjoy!