This new McIntosh integrated looks like a winner


For $6500 you get what looks to be a really nice unit. Tube pre section, blue Meters and tone controls. I’m looking forward tovreviews
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/products/integrated-amplifiers/MA352



aberyclark

Showing 1 response by speedbump6

Just ordered one today. I went to hear and likely purchase  the Primaluna Evo 400, also listened to an Octave, which I had never heard of, but the 352 was so much clearer, and detailed. Listened to it on a set of Sonus Faber stand mounts ( the sound great) which were not efficient at 85, and then a set of Klipsch Hersey which another customer had come to hear. The Primaluna just seemed more dull, less detailed. I was REALLY expecting to love it. No sense of spaciousness or holographic image that I had read about, thought the sound did seem to come from a somewhat wide area, not holographic at all, just spread out?. The Octave seemed to project the sound more onto a flat plane about the face of the speaker, and I did seem to like that presentation surprisingly. Still, not quite the sound I was expecting from a tube amp. I have never owned an audio tube amp, but I play the guitar and do have a large number of tube amps. I guess I was expecting something more along that line, but wasn’t what I heard, and certainly wasn’t giving me any reason to spend just to say I had a tube amp. It may have been just by comparison to the other two, but the 352 had a sense of easy power behind it, a strength to the sound with no strain, clarity and detail that seemed to be better than some very high end and fine solid state amps I’ve owned over the years. Because of the tube preamp section? I don’t know, but it sounded good. I really had no intention of looking at a mac, in my search, but as happened to me years ago when I ended up with Vandersteen speakers over all others I heard at the time, I let my ears have the final say.