Do true audiophiles own Mcintosh gear

Dave b, you need your ears cleaned out, maybe lay off the funny cigarettes,the hard cold truth is that the Krell 400Xi Integrated with their SACD Standard has PALE compared to Mac's C-200 and ANY new Mac amp such as the entry level 252 all driven by a Mac 861 or 871, not even close my friend. Even a Mac integrated SMOKES that Krell, I KNOW for a fact haveing had your Krell pieces here at the same time for months. The Krell gear is not bad, but sounds thin, strained, shouty, full of glare and grit...very HiFi'ish sounding, not relaxed liquid musical clear and 3 dimensional like Mac gear does. Very few can afford to compare gear at home side by side, the BS stops here.
I'd take Mac over ANY supposed high end gear, you name it, I've had it here.

Mr. Splittie:

From your description, I have indeed guessed that you and i share the same profession: 'Dictators' of the household! But at only 2 hours per day, you are still in training by my standards!

Seriously, though, kudos to you for focusing on the enjoyment of music. That is my goal, as well.

Hifizgreat, sorry friend but I just cleaned my ears and now my stuff sounds even better! Look, I've owned most of the Levinson, BAT, ARC, Krell lineup and the odd piece from CJ plus various budget lines like NAD, Rotel etc... Speakers have been Totem Wind/Forest, Wilson WP 6's, Magnapan 3.6R, B&W 801N, Martin Logan, Dynaudio C6, Krell Res 2's plus...all musical great gear. Cables have been about every major brand available i.e. Transparent, MIT, Siltech, Nordost, Cardas, Straightwire, Monster Sigma, the list goes on. My current 400xi/sacd combo with $20k worth of MIT Oracle Dot 2 cabling and Transparent MM PC's delivers an extremely musical presentation, not unlike that which one experiences in a great hall such as the BSO! This is a secondary system (I have had 4 400xi's over the years for various duties around my house which were eventually gifted or sold. As I said before, Mcintosh is good gear...it just aint GREAT GEAR...GET IT!! You need to sell Mc stuff, that's fine. I can buy anything I want. Right now I have an inexpensive system set up while I decide what's next...but it's gonna be very difficult to better my Krell system at any price. I would not trust your ears based on the nonsense you have spewed forth regarding the Krell combo. My system is open for demo...by the way, you must truly appreciate live music in order to converse properly or understand what music reproduction should deliver at home. Any Harbison, shostakovich, Bantok, Rochberg, Carter or Corigliano cued up for a listen when comparing gear? I thought not. By the way, I owned the MC501's, C46 and C200. In addition, I recently owned the krell evo 402, 222 nd 525 followed by the ARC HD220 and Ref 3...I like the 400xi/sacd combo better! But what do Martin Colloms and I know, we have only been around this high end scene for 35 plus years.

FYI, my response to Hifizgreat is predicated on the fact that the Krell 400xi/sacd standard are being run balanced. Removing the standard and or switching to single ended connections would null my opinion, even though the pair would still be competitive with a wide array of other high end equipment.

I own McIntosh and I am an audiophile . It's the only brand you buy and hate to sell