Why so little love for McIntosh?

[blakey72]

I've been a member here for many years and seem to nearly live on here. Throughout that time I have rarely seen anyone talk about/recommend and McIntosh gear. 

 

Is it just too expensive? Are you just paying for the name? Is it poor value for money?

 

Does anyone know or have an educated opinion? I'm quite interested to know.

 

Blake.

[zippi]

Maybe I'm talking out of turn here as it's not my price bracket. However I find they just try too hard with the visuals and branding to the point that I wouldn't like owning their gear even if I found it very affordable.

 

It kinda screams "yuppie" to me. And those blue led VU's just don't quit.

 

It may (and probably does) sound great, but I prefer a somewhat understated design.

[audiofeline]

I'm with @zippi on this.  Haven't been able to afford their gear.  I was interested in an early amp once but was beaten on the sale. 

 

I really dislike how they feature that ugly Gothic-font logo in green so prominently on their gear.  Every time I see it it seems to yell "bad taste" to me.  If it was sized/positioned like most other audio manufacturers, I wouldn't have a problem with it.  I also find the VU meters too dominant, but appreciate that's their corporate style.

 

Otherwise, their gear probably sounds good, but I've never had the opportunity to give it a serious listen. 

 

There is one other aspect about McIntosh that gets little love - and a complete lack of corporate credibility - in my eyes.  Several years ago they produced a "chronulator" - a clock that displays the time by the positions of VU meters, emulating their amps.  Nothing wrong with that, except that they charged US$1800 for it.  A few years ago there was a chronulator kit being sold with all the electronics and meters for $50 .  Even allowing for a glass front and large meters, the McIntosh pricing is clearly price-gouging!  I guess if you can afford their amps you can afford their clock.  They have since continued this price-gouging trend by offering an internally-lit mantelpiece box with their logo on a glass front.  As if the logo wasn't prominent enough on their gear. 

[MattyW]

Me, it's WAY out of my price range and frankly I don't like their aesthetics. McIntosh just draws too much attention to itself. Where possible I'll turn off all lights on my gear so it doesn't distract from the music. I love black face gear with silver knobs. Think old Sansui.

 

My Pass Aleph-M. Nice and understated with metallic gunmetal grey automotive paint on the front and top. The rest is left unpainted. Tasteful without too much bling. My DACGEAR LDR Pre Mk2 is the same aesthetic with silver buttons and knobs and the screen turns off after 30 seconds 

 

Basically I stick with amps built around circuits well over 10 years old so they're public domain so Pass Labs circuit amps, the darTZeel NHB108B etc. It sounds great and better fits my budget and with a little paint like this one looks lovely too. I really should have dusted this off before the photo 

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by MattyW

[ikhuong]

because people cannot afford them when comparing apple to apple on a given budget and tend to pick value for money things, that is quite natural, I also tend to decide in similar ways.

 

But Mcintosh makes fine gears on the high end side. Their amps and preamps are always a benchmark in the industry regardless of brands/ price brackets.  People usually assume Mcintosh on its reliability or house sound but do not favor its performance /value for money.... until you own one and start to get it,

 

Their latest SS amps are neutral but still retain musical impact and details. Mc autotransformer is quite unique in the industry and it enables you to drive many stubborn speakers with nasty impedance curve.  Many audio design engineers/hifi brands criticize MC’s outputtransformers as useless and only add distortion but that is Mcintosh’s secret sauce, adding distortion in a good way.  Most recordings processed in studios are chopped off or cleaned up ambient or natural noise of music which human hears in real life.  The distortion added by tubes or Autotransformer is to compensate those missing ambient noise, hence Mcintosh gears rarely give listening fatigue and clinical sounds,

 

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by ikhuong

[tubularbells]

I own a McIntosh C22 pre (2015 re-issue I believe) and love the functionality it offers as well as the way it sounds. I also happen to like most of the brands aesthetics but can see why people might be put off by it.

 

One thing no one can argue about the brand is it's high resale value. For whatever reason ive noticed Mcintosh seems to retain value unlike some other boutique high end gear. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the brand has a rich history and like others of that ilk (such as JBL) seems to be trusted more than some others on the market.

 

[Dolphy]

I must be the only one that likes their look. For me they are simply out of my price range. 

 

I had a chance to listen to a top the line setup at Lifestyle Parramatta. It was the best sounding system I have ever heard. They were installing dashcam in my car, and the guy doing the installation came to see me and apologised for the delay. I told him "take you time". It was the only time I didn't mind waiting.

Edited February 24, 2021 by dolphy

[Itsmoi]

I love Mcintosh, combined with some JBL's or Altecs 

 Mmmmmmm......

 

Love the look and sound, it was ubiquitous even in the pubs in the 70's as a young lad growing up in the Netherlands.

  A number of pubs I frequented (the ones catering to the longhaired etc etc clientele if you know what I mean) ran the McIntosh tube power amp with a Quad 303 preamp into Altecs with a variety of turntables. Most common was the Philips turntable with the 3 electronic green touch buttons for 45 Stop 33 , forgot the exact model name, but i had the same one at home when they came out early to mid 70's. Was a decent one 

[Rockford]

Where would people put them in comparison to Accuphase?

[Guest Eggcup the Dafter]

I auditioned, and was faced with, various McIntosh products recently.
I didn't get along with the SACD players. Neither the look or the ergonomics matched rival products and I would say that CD sound was also a step behind when it came to separation of instruments/voices. (It's difficult to really assess products in a shop sometimes so take this as more anecdotal than usual!) I could have lived with one.
The look of the amps is polarising. I noticed as well when faced with a couple of systems with big power amps that the orchestral sound was very bad - blurred or unfocussed may be good descriptions, while individual/solo instruments would stand out clearly making the effect even more jarring.

I don't blame the amps, I suspect that the autoformers mean they need some care in setup. I'm told that they don't act like valve amp output transformers, so that using the tap marked for nominal speaker impedence is often the wrong choice, for example, and dealers often seem not to use classical or orchestral music when setting up their systems. With simpler recordings, they just sound warm (perhaps warmer than they should) -  so  this is prbably a setup problem that doesn't get picked up immediately. The meters on the big power amps appear to lag and I found myself getting very annoyed with them, as well. 

I'd rank Accuphase disc players as a bit better all round. The look is understated compared to McIntosh as well, but a bit bling when compared to other brands. I can't speak to the amps.

In the end I bought Marantz, though, so you can probably disregard my views on proper audiophile brands!

 

[blakey72]

That is really interesting. I kinda thought McIntosh was the 'pinnacle' of hifi gear. The too expensive is something I expected however the dislike for the looks isn't really. I can't decide myself, it is very yuppie looking I guess. It screams 'look at me', though I can't decide if that's a bad thing. Pride of ownership must come into it but is it just showing off? Just thinking brands like Luxman, Accuphase and Audio Research also would have pride of ownership but probably don't scream as loud. 

 

Then there is sound. are they thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worth of sound equivalent to the brands above. Or are you mainly paying for the show off looks factor. Next time I'min Melbourne I may pop into Klapp and audition one to find out for myself. I'm on the fence atm....

[mattd2308]

I remember seeing Mac gear at one of the hifi shows, probably 8-10 years ago, partnered with some big Usher speakers. Looked  and sounded the business with the racks of gear, however, as everyone has mentioned, way out of my price bracket. I'd only buy one, to say, look at my new amp!  OOOh, VU meters!! 

Also, they had that VU meter clock device, and remember the price for it was ridiculous, well over 1-1.5k.

[pezzy]

28 minutes ago, blakey72 said:

I can't decide myself, it is very yuppie looking I guess. It screams 'look at me', though I can't decide if that's a bad thing.

i think its never a bad thing if you like the look of it. i feel that it's part of the overall experience when listening to music, and might dare say affects how much we enjoy the music.

[Guest Eggcup the Dafter]

50 minutes ago, blakey72 said:

That is really interesting. I kinda thought McIntosh was the 'pinnacle' of hifi gear. The too expensive is something I expected however the dislike for the looks isn't really. I can't decide myself, it is very yuppie looking I guess. It screams 'look at me', though I can't decide if that's a bad thing. Pride of ownership must come into it but is it just showing off? Just thinking brands like Luxman, Accuphase and Audio Research also would have pride of ownership but probably don't scream as loud. 

 

Then there is sound. are they thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worth of sound equivalent to the brands above. Or are you mainly paying for the show off looks factor. Next time I'min Melbourne I may pop into Klapp and audition one to find out for myself. I'm on the fence atm....

This is in part about the state of the hifi industry. When I first started listening back in 1980, certain products were clearly "better" than others and you paid more for them. In some ways this still holds. Mechanical engineering is expensive, whether a speaker driver, turntable bearing or a CD player mechanism, so good ones will cost more and result in better sound. Whether that really holds for everything these days is harder to tell, though. To give an example, the actual differences between the sound of amplifiers at different prices, with an appropriate source and speakers, are rather small these days. And that holds across well designed amplifiers no matter what technology is in use. So now, if three amplifiers sound almost the same and one is different, my starting assumption is that the different one is wrong, where the opposite may have held in the more distant past.

Given that convergence, at least among the larger manufactures and products not designed for a "heritage sound"/an update to an older design, how can McIntosh or Marantz or Accuphase stand out?
 

Well, they can design in hints of their 'heritage sound". Not too much, or those little measurement columns in some magazine reviews will put people off by raising doubts. Or they can use marketing speak - "Marantz Music Mastering" "Ultra AL32 processing", etc. They can use a different technology, that may or may not change or "improve" the sound. As it happens, whether you trust the product, like the look or how it works, will actually improve your appreciation and trust of a product, and affect what you hear. 

 

That's whythe weapon of choice right now is brand identity. There's a rulebook here and you can see so many manufactueres following it. Stress history (or newness), make sure you have design elements in your product that are unique to your brand (and sometimes use them in a way that goes beyond extreme), often deriving them from a once iconic and original design, stress that your lower end products are derived from your more unique higher end reference items, and so on.

 

The thing is - none of that counts for anything if the product sounds truly awful, is a pig to use or too many people are put off by the looks. But that's no longer so bad - for looks, where a system would be in a living room in the past, now it's as likely to be in its own room by the time you reach McIntosh prices, so the designers can go further because the equipment will determine the look of the room, rather than the other way round. If you are stuck in a bedroom-and-a bit unit, like me, that type of design won't work, but I'm not really part of this market sector, I guess.

How you control it is often via a tablet or phone these days, and the sound will sit between a house sound and neutral in most cases, and will be at least palatable. What's more, it can be hard to directly compare two high end brands when they sell through different stores that have different rooms, other components will be different, and you can't truly remember the performance of one brand when you get to the other store maybe weeks later, regardless.

And the pinnacle? There isn't really one, except when you see a REALLY high price, because that's how we seem to judge it at the end of the day. As we work up the scale, we challenge our prejudices, I think, as much as follow them. I'm not sure this branding approach really meshes with how we choose what to buy, either. Maybe it works better on "normal people" than "audiophiles"?

 

[Hydrology]

Really not a fan of their look and certainly not a fan of how much product (and how often) they have in the marketplace at any one time. But McIntosh wont care what I think - they sell loads of it so they have their fans.

I would love to see them bring out some product that really goes a VERY different direction visually. I mean, The Gryphon have done that recently with their Essence Series - far less industrial looking than the traditional range, but yet still captures the "essence' of the brand.

[blakey72]

3 hours ago, Eggcup the Dafter said:

 Mechanical engineering is expensive, whether a speaker driver, turntable bearing or a CD player mechanism, so good ones will cost more and result in better sound.

Now this is a very interesting point that I often think about and has partly led me to making the decision to buy a $4k Rega P8 over say a $15k smaller, less known brand. Surely Rega have more $$$ to put into research, development and engineering than a smaller boutique company. And surely having those specialty machines that make the turntables  means that in the end you will get a more accurate, better sounding product for cheaper??

 

If it cost  so much to buy the machines that make the products how can these smaller companies keep up with the big fish ie. Rega, Pro-ject and Technics. Then there's the 'we have more money and a bigger factory to buy more basic material in bulk to make the product and we can mass produce it'which means a cheaper price in the end. How does that sit with you? Is my thinking really off track?

[Honreekea]

On 23/02/2021 at 11:45 AM, blakey72 said:

I've been a member here for many years and seem to nearly live on here. Throughout that time I have rarely seen anyone talk about/recommend and McIntosh gear. 

 

Is it just too expensive? Are you just paying for the name? Is it poor value for money?

 

Does anyone know or have an educated opinion? I'm quite interested to know.

 

Blake.

have you heard the new models?  i have......it's a no go imho

[Rosco8]

On 25/02/2021 at 9:45 AM, Rockford said:

Where would people put them in comparison to Accuphase?

I have a part comparison, Supratek DHT and Accuphase A70 on my nos 1 system and Mc C22 and 2x MC75's on my nos 2 system.   Sources feed an Accuphase DC37 DAC across both systems, RCA to the Supratek and XLR to the Mc C22.  I like Class A amps, i had Sudgen and now Accuphase and they have a very open sound stage which i prefer over the Mc's.  I have run quite a few different sets of speakers across both systems and all work a little better on the Supratek/Accuphase system.  However in saying that the McIntosh system is no sleaze, its a very nice system and i play it regularly, I did swap out the  factory valves on the pre and once they were bedded had an improvement.   I just got a set of GE 6550A's so eventually will try them in the MC75's. My C22 and MC75's (iii) are essentially reissues of classic Mc gear which show how well they have stood the test of time and second hand i think they are a good buy.

 

I upgraded to the McIntosh system from a Parasound pre/power and AR pre/Bryston 4bsst which may put it in perspective.

 

I took advice from another member on not using an Accuphase pre with my A70 who had a similar setup, he recommended using a good valve amp in front of the A series.   I initially used my Ayon pre which was great but had a yearning to try a Supratek DHT, which is definitely a nice improvement.

 

So I would rank the Mc's 2nd to my half Accuphase system but my valve Mc's are a wonderful product which is why i still have them.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Rosco8

[blakey72]

2 hours ago, Honreekea said:

have you heard the new models?  i have......it's a no go imho

No mate, never heard any McIntosh what so ever. I guess that's partly where the interest comes from. I wanted to get a general consensus before having a listen. Doing a search on here doesn't bring much up and I was wondering why the lack of interest. It seems to be a mix of too expensive and just don't like it. 

[RankStranger]

Their whole deal is just so... American 

 

I like the look and sound of the MC75 but not enough for the prices they command now. Nostalgia is a powerful market force and the guys who grew up lusting after these all have access to their super now. 
 

You’ve got to give them credit for sticking to their aesthetic but the stuff they have released in the modern era is, I feel, a bit cack. It’s like they design something to the point where it’s just right and then they go ahead and keep on designing it right up until they ship it, just for funsies. Reminds me of the modern Camaro. Someone in the design team just kept yelling ”MORE!” until they ran out of time. ”MORE LIGHTS! MORE NOSTALGIA! MORE DESIIIIIGN!"

 

just my 2c ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Bunno77]

3 hours ago, Hydrology said:

Really not a fan of their look and certainly not a fan of how much product (and how often) they have in the marketplace at any one time. But McIntosh wont care what I think - they sell loads of it so they have their fans.

I would love to see them bring out some product that really goes a VERY different direction visually. I mean, The Gryphon have done that recently with their Essence Series - far less industrial looking than the traditional range, but yet still captures the "essence' of the brand.

They sort of have 3 very distinct aesthetics. Pretty impressive as most have only one but then I guess we get bombarded with pics so it grows tiresome. Get your point though and I would like to see something different too.

 

The standard blue metre, green gothic logo

The variations of the MC275 that have a few new products

Then there is the classic style C22

[Bunno77]

21 minutes ago, blakey72 said:

No mate, never heard any McIntosh what so ever. I guess that's partly where the interest comes from. I wanted to get a general consensus before having a listen. Doing a search on here doesn't bring much up and I was wondering why the lack of interest. It seems to be a mix of too expensive and just don't like it. 

I have one Mac item and have spent a lot of time with others.

Yes in Australia especially it is expensive to buy new which makes competition difficult and aesthetically they are very different which is polarising but I find it a welcome change from everything else. Nobody seems to complain about Luxmans blue meters....

Some products I think are overpriced, some under-perform, others are fantastic and then there is some that are truly exciting engineering like the MC901 even if I think it is a bit ugly and I'll never outlay that much for it. I also find them very enjoyable to listen to for long periods which is very important for me. I wouldn't say that they make bad recordings good but they are definitely more listenable than some other brands and most music is pretty poorly recorded and produced.

 

They have a bit of a reputation from long ago but the older products use quality parts, are still alive or serviceable and the company still supports all/a lot their older gear even to the point of manufacturing new parts for stuff that is decades old. On facebook pages there is a lot more chatter especially from the Americans.

 

Recently compared the internal DAC of a McIntosh C47 preamp to a Chord Hugo TT2 DAC with Mscaler. There was very little in it sound wise and no clear winner but at almost half the price with a proper preamp I would chose the McIntosh so it can be good value comparatively at times.

Good to have variety and don't see them going anywhere soon

 

[Hi-Fi Whipped]

Not that I have ever been in a position to buy McIntosh gear, the esthetic is so powerful that I feel like it's an all or nothing proposition, assuming you love the sound of it.

 

This photo taken from thier "World of Mcintosh" in NY, generates drool from me as a lover of audio products that I love to look at as much as hear, but if I could only afford one of them..... I might be less likely to buy something that looks "cool" with awesome blue VU meters, when my other gear looks black and drab in comparison.

 

That said , if I could only afford one, it would be front and centre, with everything else behind a cupboard door, because I think the theatre of owning their gear would add to the feeling I'd get from turning it on and listening to music. Much like the feeling vinyl guys get from throwing on an LP and watching it go around!

 

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by Hi-Fi Whipped

[Dolphy]

This is the system from Lifestyle Parratta

[MattyW]

If budget allowed, I'd be more inclined to go with Accuphase over McIntosh..... I hate to say it but the primary consideration there would be aesthetics irrespective of actual sound. If paying that much for a product, it must both sound and look fantastic.

 

To be fair if you're running all McIntosh gear it looks great though how many people do that?

 

Every component in my system comes from a different company and the reason has generally revolved around performance and cost for the given level of performance. Aesthetics also play a part. At least two of my components have either been repainted or had faceplate and knob changes to fit my overall system aesthetic.

Edited February 25, 2021 by MattyW