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Typical Characteristics of a McIntosh / B&W system

I've owned high end McIntosh (always receivers, not separates) and B&W speakers before. Sold my last setup 4 years ago when I moved to a small apartment.

I'm finally in a place where I have a listening room, so I recently bought the McIntosh 6700 receiver and B&W PM1's. It sounded great in the store, but sounds mostly like crap at my place. It's WAY too bright. Sounds decent at low volumes, but if I turn up to normal listening levels or, heaven forbid I go to 11, it becomes unlistenable.

I'm sure my room plays some factor as I haven't treated it yet, but my $450 AudioEngine's sound amazing in the room and this $12K+ setup sounds like crap.

I will say that when I auditioned the McIntosh/B&W's in the store, I realize in hindsight that I listened to a lot of acoustic-y music. Even at home, the set up does ok with that style. But everything else sounds pretty crappy.

Perhaps my ears have gotten overly sensitive to music on the brighter side. Or maybe this receiver or McIntosh in general are skewing their sound to be overly bright/revealing/clean etc.

Any opinions on this? Are McIntosh/B&W setups known to be overly bright?
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Showing 1 response by audioquest4life

audioquest4life
721 posts
 
The typical listening environment is not conducive for critical listening. For general music, yes; however, if you want to obtain absolute clarity without speaker-room interaction anomalies, then you must treat the room. Unless you treat the room, your apt not to hear the true benefits of your system, no matter what the components are. Having experienced a fair share of speakers and amps over 35 plus years; I learned from trial and error that most of the time the smallest amount of room treatment and proper placement of speakers allowed for an ideal listening session. Of course, some components will consistently portray a unique trait that is hard to mitigate due to individual sensitivities and listening tastes.

I have used B&W's for the last 15 years and have not had the purported listening anomalies that some people claim due to me using proper speaker placement and using room treatment. The new P1's due to their smaller size and accurate tweeter are apt to beam, that is why you are hearing the sound portrayed the way you describe. It is possible that the listening room at the demonstration studio was treated or had furnishing, carpet, curtains, etc., that may have influenced the sound.

I personally believe that once you do at least minimal room treatments, you will find almost any speaker to sound better, pending your own personal listening tastes.

Ciao,
Audioquest4life
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