Why do no audio enthusiasts use McIntosh?

Recently, I stopped in to listen to the McIntosh MA2275 Integrated at a local dealer. It was thrilling! Some forty years has passed since I last listened to tubes – a product of a home brewing friend of my father’s. In that instant, I knew what had been lost (at least, for me) over all those years to solid state “cleanliness” and digital “convenience”.

To be sure, this Mac incorporates elements of all three in its presentation, but its output is pure, warm analogue. At $6200, it comes in at five times what I can afford, but that McIntosh audition sure pointed the way for me in a quest for affordable tube audio. Mac is back – and back as a class act.

Earlier this year, I attended a weekend AudioFest which was hosted by another audio organization in the Detroit area. There were close to two dozen “listening rooms” where dealers showcased their wares. McIntosh had two of them.

In the online afterglow of the event, someone asked what was their favorite listening experience of the Fest. After a pregnant pause of several hours where there was a reluctance to take the plunge, I posted that McIntosh, which included their 7-foot speaker array panels in the experience got my vote. This opened a floodgate of postings where McIntosh was at, or near the top, in many of them.

It would be divisive to name other competitors here. Suffice to say, that a lot of the high-end audio dealers weren’t represented and that this audio group, though worldwide now, has its roots in the rustbelt Midwest with a “pull-up-the-bootstrap” ethic that sees many recapping old Scott tube receivers and trumpeting thrift store finds of Rectilinear “Lowboys”. Nevertheless, this unscientific poll, may speak to McIntosh’s power to still enthrall even those who could never afford one – to put down that soldering iron for a moment and “have a chew”, as Boa2 put it.