McIntosh -- good for show, not for sound, says dealer

I know much of this thread and speaking of McIntosh sound, the conversations are mostly centered around their Amps. What  about their preamps?

How do people feel newer preamps like the C52 and C53 stack up?

Perhaps because I'm old school, I like that there is some onboard sound shaping provided.  Or is that a monkey wrench with added garbage in the audio path?

I imagine there's some number of ways to look at it.

"It’s about bashing people that own McIntosh gear." Well this has to be one of the silliest comments I have come across in any fora. It is about saying that McIntosh gear does not appeal to many people because some of us believe it does not sound that good and is not value for money. End of story.

I started with Kenwood, Realistic, Yamaha. Onkyo, and Marantz ....with cheap Bose or Advent speakers.

Then I graduated to a Luxman 505 UxII and some Epos Elan speakers. The sound was not all that much superior.

I then decluttered my room and treated with GIK products.

Quite a vast change and likely the biggest improvement.

However I since have went tube gear with McIntosh C2500 and MC75 monoblocks---mated to Sonus Faber Oly 1s. I also changed my streaming products from a Node 2i to a sonore rendu, Small Green Machine Roon device and a Mytek DAC+.

Nearly everything has made an improvement. But the Luxman I still have as a backup. I will say I FAR prefer my McGear to the Luxman.

I checked out that guy’s "store". Yeah he states buyers need to convince him to sell to them. Yeah right---I did not see one thing in his place I’d want. I checked out his super room vid too. Well I’ll just say I don’t care for this Jay either that he says states his system is the best ever---much prefer the Jay that used to work with Adrian and Villup.

So far I seem to be the only thumbs down on his most recent you tubes.

LIkely wont be visiting his channel in the future,

Im not a huge fan of dealman or ask paul or darko either but these guys are saints compared to this dude, jay labs, the SR magic props Denby (whatever his nam eis--who cares) guy, and the audio circle guy (ASR-Amir?) that hates just about everything. Frankly, IMO, we need more Audiofiliac and Gene Della Sala types.