Mcintosh - Love Em' or Hate Em' ......Why?

As I said before, I find Mc equipement wonderful. I love the look and I love the sound. I like Krell, and ML, ok but I find they have a generally dry sound compared to Mc. That said, I think dismissing a maker altogether is ridiculous.

Also, many of you just don't understand electronics. Maybe I have been dealing with it way more than most as an electronics engineer but the Mcintosh Autoformers are an incredible concept and IMO work incredibly well. Wound bifilar wire can have fantastic properties if well designed (a difficult thing to maintain excellent bandwidth) and the fact that it can be tapped for no power drop (although this is also circuit related) at any ohms is incredible! I think most "audiophiles" believe that transformers are old-fashioned (guess what your power supply is?). Well if that is the case, why are tubes still used at all? Ignorance is bliss and I will forever argue in Mcintosh's defense.

To Drrdiamond: I also find the Mc2105s as not too good but nothing is perfect - a fact to remember.

Arthur

If you want to by staus pay for MAc.If you buy with your ears you will get more soound for less $in many brands.
Classe,Sim Audio,Rogue,Sonic Frontiers.

I have always loved Mac amps but unable to afford them. Additionally they did not seem practical in a sort-of budget hometheater context. In light of this I am using Parasound amps to power McIntosh THX speakers which I fell in love with the day I heard them. Took a while to save up for them...but again, I had to have them. To me nothing else compared (at that price range).IMO

I love McIntosh!! They have really cool blue meters things that are great to look at!!

Arthur, i've found that i prefer the sound of SS amps that use minimal to no output inductance. While this can make the amp somewhat unstable into some loads ( easily compensated for ), i think that it sounds so much more "liquid". Having ALL of the signal fed through a HUGE inductor can't help matters. The fact that most speakers are not one specific impedance across the band also compounds problems somewhat. While the "Autoformer" may keep power constant from tap to tap, it can't compensate for the various current draws that occur within each tap at various impedances. Td ( Time Delay ) of a circuit like that can't be very good either.

My opinion is that large transformers should be at the beginning of the power supply chain and no where else. That includes tube amps also, as the Atma Sphere OTL ( Output Transformer-Less ) are the best that i've heard ( so far ). Sean
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