An Audio Amateur's question about McIntosh Audio

Ha-ha. I'm not going to waste my time arguing with AI.

goodlistening64

Because the market was booming, the price per gram and overall spending varied drastically over the decade as supply chains exploded. This led to a number of untold audio enthusiasts to trade in valuable gear for an 8-ball.

You have a very fanciful imagination. That's actually a quite useful thing, if you know how to use it.

I like the looks of McIntosh gear and their vintage stuff is okay sounding to me (nothing special, but decent).  It is highly collectible so one will not lose money on a purchase.  A 19-year old young man I know is in the business of repairing and refurbish audio gear.  He has done many McIntosh pieces.  He has been finding vintage tube gear for two systems he is building for his father--one a home system, another for his office.  The home system is a McIntosh system.  The young man is a fan of "booster" amp systems that are more common in Japan.  That involves a preamp feeding an intermediate "booster" amp (amp with a 600 ohm output transformer) feeding a power amp.  For his father's system, he utilized the 600 ohm tap off the output transformer of MC 40 amps to feed MC 30 amps.  He said that his father acknowledges that the MC 30 does not sound as good as even an Eico HF 87 (one of the many amps the young man owns), but he wants a McIntosh system anyway.  The Marantz system is almost complete,  but, the amps of choice-- Model 9's--still need to be acquired; those are very pricey.

Perhaps a good way to phrase it, as opposed to casting them in a highly derogatory light. McIntosh has a very strong midrange and bass, are built like tanks, look cool, have a tremendous reputation for reliability, customer service, resale value and are astonishingly better sounding than most consumer brands. However, they lack detail and tonal balance normally associated high end products.