100W, 200W, or 300W?

So... after tons of continued research, I think I’m honing in on a game plan.


First, to address my power concern: 100W is fine. Doing the math, 2m listening distance, at 88.4 dB (measured on stereophile) sensitivity, with a desired volume of 102 dB (loud! I’m not actually going to go near this high) needs 92W. At 100 dB target, drops that to 58W. And that’s not counting amplifier headroom so I think I’m ok with any choice.

I expect the room treatment to have a drastic impact on sound, but I don’t expect it to change the math behind the power needs. That’s because I suspect my room is echoing and magnifying the sound currently which is why I play at lower volumes. Once treated, I suspect that the volume dial is going to go up (which aligns to what others have said in this thread) because I’ll lose the freebie (but poor quality) amplification from the room so that’s what it’ll take to hit the same volume level. That’s why the calculations above are important - that’s direct volume so those are worst case numbers. The volume knob only goes down from there.

I think I’m going to go the organic route and grow into this - as mentioned I’m new to this, so need to temper what I do with whatever little level of restraint that I have. As I just bought a new house and with the economic uncertainty of the zombie apocalypse in play it would probably be prudent to exercise at least some semblance of restraint on my part! Ha ha

That said, I’m heavily leaning towards the MA5300 route right now. Still considering Luxman, but I think the value proposition may be higher on the Mac side (for me).

What’s attracting me to Mac are a few things: they look nice (glass w blue meters!), 1.8 dB headroom leaves plenty of power, the high resale value makes it easier to do the organic jump if an upgrade comes later, and the value proposition - the MA gets me a new amp, has a pre, and also comes with the DA1 which is a decent DAC. Throw in $1k later, and I can jump to the DA2 DAC. I also like the Roon ready capability since I’ve drunk the Roon Kool-aid.

The next thing I had to work out was autoformer vs no autoformer and that discussion seems to lead to a holy war on the forums. Both have their merits, but after listening to a ton of videos and doing a lot more research it appears to be a wash to me... it’s just preference... one choice is not inherently better than the other. My take on it is that it seems to give a more tube like presentation at the cost of bass control and possible some accuracy - I think that’s why the Luxman videos were really shining on me. Digging through the Mac specs it appears that their own direct coupled design has 5 times the damping factor of the autoformer design. While it seems debatable if damping factor beyond 250 has real-world gain, these values seem to be within the “it might matter” range since they’re within the 0-250 range. No single amp design is perfect - you need to make your trades.

That said, that’s why the MA5300 is looking interesting to me. It has the wattage needed for my small room (it’s my home office), has all the toys so I upgrade everything at once, has some growth potential, Roon ready, looks nice, good resale if I change my mind or want to upgrade, and because it’s directly coupled should have performance closer to the Luxman side of the house sonically.

I’m not sure if it’ll sound as nice as a Luxman, but I need to see where things land when I make my trades. The 509 and 507 are really nice! In the end, I don’t think I want to deal with the high power consumption (heat!) of class A, so the 590 is out.

If my room was larger, my sitting distance would increase and that would change everything. During my research, I found the math for dB reduction as a factor of distance and it’s very significant. Just my 2m distance comes at a cost of around 6 dB! That’s huge!

One other factor that I’ve taken into consideration is that my speakers also don’t have crazy bass as they’re 2-ways and they’re size limited. The frequency response bottoms out at 42 Hz. All of the sub options I’m looking at for future growth have built-in class D amps so they’re not affected by what I choose here.

So I guess my saving grace is that my home office isn’t very big! :)

Any ways, just thought I’d share my thoughts so far!

I just looked at the MA5300, I think you are making a wise choice. I don’t know anything about digital beyond CD’s, so I have no idea what it doesn’t have, but the MA352 appealed to me when I saw it’s a tube/ss hybrid, remote control, still has blue meters for you, additional power, (for the future, I agree with you, 100 watts are enough)

I don’t know the price of either one. Buy a used one? McIntosh comes with 3 year warranty, is it transferable? In any case, they are essentially bullet proof, so if you find a good deal on one you can return, or, one you can buy an extended warranty, i.e. square trade, I would go for that.

You didn’t mention, but both of these have MM Phono Input, you will get there some day!

I didn’t see a remote control for MA5300 (many OEM’s forget to show or mention them), MA352 has one, I would want remote volume, and remote balance to improve imaging of CD’s and LP’s, some of which are not quite spot on. A very slight balance adjustment can make a surprising difference.

My office, I went Vintage: some nice 2 way bookshelf speakers from B&W, and a self powered Velodyne sub, a Carver Cube Amp, Reel to Reel, TT, and my computer sound for YouTube, Pandora, CD, DVD, ... Monitor dead center, wonderful imaging, audio or audio/video. I control inputs, volume, balance via my Chase Remote Line Controller, RLC-1, I would never live without one, that solves any amp/preamp with no remote control.

and have set myself up with a perfect equilateral triangle listening spot, wow, terrific. I had to rebuild my office bookcases and desk to make that happen, so glad I did.

Adjustable Crossover, external or built in the sub like mine is, removes low bass before the bookshelf speakers, so they don’t try to make bass they cannot do without distortion and poor volume levels. That helps them shine. Sub just to add a bit, not too much, not aware of it unless I turn it off. Same thing with the sub in the home theater, primarily there for Jurassic Park Dinosaur Stomp.

Digging through the Mac specs it appears that their own direct coupled design has 5 times the damping factor of the autoformer design. While it seems debatable if damping factor beyond 250 has real-world gain, these values seem to be within the “it might matter” range since they’re within the 0-250 range.

@eisenb11 It might interest you to know that no speaker made needs more than 20:1 damping factor and many sound better with less! So more damping factor, if that is the only metric, totally does not matter. Damping factor looks better on paper than it sounds in real life- again, given that such is the only metric. Distortion is far more important, both the distortion that an amp makes and also that which it does not. In general with most amps these days higher distortion is often a sign of lower ordered harmonics to which the ear is relatively insensitive. OTHO very low distortion might only be higher ordered harmonics and the ear is keenly sensitive to those and interprets them as brightness and harshness.

@eisenb11

I recently purchase Sonus Faber Sonetto Vs.  I really like them and they are a significant upgrade from my Sonus Faber Venere 3.0s

Hi all, latest update:

The amp I ended up buying was... none on my list! I bought a McIntosh MC152. 150W/Ch w 2 dB headroom so no power concerns and also has the autoformers. Nice and laid back, seems to have tamed my tweeters a bit. Only had a chance to play around with them a couple of hours. Those meters are really fun to watch - better than staring at the wall while the song is playing.

Wasn’t in a big hurry to pick something, but a deal dropped in my lap that was way too good to pass up.