I have seen some Interesting comments about Mcintosh lately

tubegroover---I didn’t make my point very well. The McIntosh tube electronics of the 50’s and 60’s were unquestionably among the best available at the time, and found in true audiophile systems. And Frank and Gordon were creative, inventive, excellent design engineers. But they were also conservative, putting reliability above all else (as does Roger Modjeski of Music Reference now)---not a bad thing! Sound quality was important, but was not the MOST important consideration in their designs. Long, trouble-free operation was, glamorous aesthetics (the Mac backlit faceplate is still my favorite look in Hi-Fi) being very important as well. They designed McIntosh products to appeal to, as I have said before, the "Carriage Trade" (an old term)---Professionals who wanted "the best". The readers of Playboy, say. Amongst hardcore audiophiles, however, Marantz tube electronics were more respected and lusted after. When Bill Johnson introduced his Audio Research SP-2 pre-amp and Dual 50 and 100 amps in 1970, they replaced Marantz 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s in audiophile systems, not Macs. Then there were the small companies making extremely high-performance products for fanatics, like Futterman. Trouble free operation was obviously not a high priority for Julius! The absolute best sound possible was, damn everything else. A degree of reliability would be gladly sacrificed to eek the last iota of SQ out of a design.

When they switched to solid state, McIntosh’s standing in the audiophile community dropped drastically. That’s when McIntosh really became about well built "lifestyle" products, not high-performance Hi-Fi.

In the very early 70’s I had a McIntosh C26 pre and 2100 power amp. Then Audio Research came to town, and their SP3 and D75 made the Mac’s sound decidedly average. Still beautiful to look at (to my taste), and probable STILL working fine, but nothing special sound wise.

Of course, that was a long time ago. Brooks Berdan, a very critical and picky listener, took on the line, selling it alongside Jadis and VTL, Wilson and Vandersteen. Brooks didn’t carry a line just because he could make money on it---it also had to sound good to him. So I assume the current stuff does.