Luxman L-509Z

Have the 507ux, original version.  Much prefer it to Mc.  I find the top and mid range more musical, and excellent bass extension.   Luxman’s integrateds are known for the quality of the preamp stages, and I’m sure the 509 follows the same pattern. 

Especially in light of a speaker like Focal or say Triangle or B&W. I find the top end smoothness of the Luxman a better match for most of those speakers. 

Erik, your 507 is a long ways down the food chain from their top of the line integrated amps today. I'm not bashing on you, I'm in somewhat the same place, I wish I had bought one of the L-590AX Mark IIs before they discontinued them.

@bound4h My prior rig was some mono blocks and and a preamp and another integrated.  I must say the Luxman 509z is special.  A couple of things I noticed were that it is extremely quiet, has great articulation, provides ample current to wake up the speakers with a refined open sound.  There isn’t any glare or treble agitation.  I would say that McIntosh has a more laid back sound with perhaps some more warmth which I was not looking for.  I didn’t have an opportunity to audition before my purchase so I had to interpolate from the reviews how it would fit into the rest of my system.  I also was reading that it produced a few watts into class A which is not documented in the Luxman literature.  I contacted the U.S. distributer and they indicated that it produced 6 class A watts into an 8 ohm load and 3 watts into a 4 four ohm load.  My speakers are 4 ohm.  This translates to roughly -19 on the power meter.  Often times my average listening levels don’t exceed that rating which is in the mid 70 dB range with peaks in the upper 80’s.  This will be my last amplification purchase and I really enjoy all of it’s fexibility.