OCD mickey website and negativity.

I dont need and dont listen to many reviewers...

I dont buy and dont need to... 😊

But i like the answers of Mikepowellaudio here... I will keep his youtube as an interesting listening. I like sincerity frankness and opinions which may differ from mine if well argued for ...

Thanks to him for his answers...

I’m guessing many of you are not familiar with the hit TV series titled, "Kung Fu" that came out in 1972 to which I alluded to in my previous post. Some years back, I had a young engineer in the office that often used the term "grasshopper". One day I asked him if he knew where that term came from. He did not. So I pulled up that particular episode of Kung Fu to show him where the Kung Fu master nicknamed Caine Grasshopper. Caine as a young boy is training to be a monk. An older monk, a master who is without sight mentions to Caine that there is a grasshopper at his feet. Startled, Caine jumps and asked his master, "Old man, how could you hear the grasshopper at my feet?" To which the without sight Master replies, "Young man, how is it that you could not?"

Now isn’t that just like Audio?

The difference is that you hear the grasshooper or not....

But hearing the listener envelopment acoustic factor (LV)  in a room  with a balanced auditory source width (ASW) must be experimented and learned one step at a time. Because it is related to many parameters of frequencies, sound pressure levels and inter aural cues and correlation and other acoustics factors...Here we hear and learn to hear in an incremental controllable way...

In audio we dont buy costlier upgrade  to hear better as most do ... We learn how to hear and how to listen to begin with  to spare our money on pieces of gear BEFORE  we had  mastered acoustical,electrical and mechanical basic embeddings  workings controls of the system.

@mikepowellaudio Great post! Thanks for posting, Mike. Hopefully this clears up a few things for people.

@mikepowellaudio 

hi, sorry for misspelling your name in my initial post. They don’t let you edit the title fields on this forum, only the body of the message.

My hands don’t work very well and I have to dictate.

your Nat amplifiers with their very oversized tubes are exceptionally cool and yes Breaking them is a valid concern because they’re so big and likely very fragile. Replacing them is a concern as with any tube in an amplifier. Maybe you’ve done it but it would be nice to know what it is that makes these amplifier so good and why the $95,000 version of this is deserving of $95,000. Clearly this is not in your overpriced concerns that you have when you see other gear that’s extremely expensive.

By far and it’s not disputed, you are vastly more knowledgable and go to the effort of providing, at times, a very graphic credible critique of the inner workings of audio gear. The autopsies you have done are amazing and not done that often. Being provided a View of the inner workings of these mystery boxes we call audio gear is awesome and anyone would love to see more of this. People spending $5 to $30,000 or more for a mystery box deserve to know more about what’s going on. The producers of these products fall far short in doing this.

The Best Buy sale of audio gear via Magnolia is horrifying the way they stuff all the audio gear together in their sales rooms. And yes some of it is of cheaper Quality but still very worthwhile for many people.

Why Mcintosh hurts it’s image by being associated with Best Buy is sadly profit motivated. However, it could be a good thing since it exposes the world to better quality audio gear which is in your interests I would think.

You’re negative comments about McIntosh are very broad-based and yes certain of their products is not as good as some of their other products. You need to provide more details on why you don’t like certain of their products and maybe you do like certain of their products. I don’t like their av processor equipment, and the lack of their producing a standalone line stage tube pre-amplifier without the damn phono stage which has always been a concern. But their tube amplifiers are very good and to criticize this area doesn’t make sense unless you’re willing to explain why. And you clearly have capabilities and technical expertise to offer these insights.

Also B&w speakers, also disappointingly sold by Best Buy, is a speaker that you criticize. You did a video with a BMW 802 D3 a while back. It was in a dealer sales room which had a good amplifier connected to it as I recall, and you took a quick listen and I you recall you saying that it was deserving of more attention. Have you ever given an 800 series B&w speaker a serious listen?

You provide comparative listening on your YouTube channel quite a bit, knowing full well that most people can’t hear a damn bit of difference when they’re listening to this despite how good your microphone is. in These situations I think all viewers would love to hear your comments about what you are hearing?