All I can say is that I have owned, and loved, my C220 for the past five years. It does everything I want it to, sounds excellent, and has been very reliable.
That said, I did replace the supplied tubes with Mullard reissue 12AX7s. The result was a dramatically lowered noise floor, a wider sound stage, and a bit more warmth and smoothness.
My only complaint with the current line of McIntosh preamps is the included DAC. Yes, digital technology is more mature than it was a few years ago, but I doubt we've seen the end of new formats, codecs, resolution limits, etc. So, while having a built in phono section makes perfect sense, it makes less sense, IMO, to build in a DAC section unless it is based on a FPGA so upgrades can be made in the field. But, hey, you might never want a better digital converter than the one built into the C2500, and you could still add one. But that would make the built-in one redundant.
