Mac gear "Slow" or others "Fast"


When auditioning amps I A/B'd Mac and Classe models and noticed the Classe's were more immediate. Classe bass had more impact, but also decayed much quicker. At that time I assumed the Macs were slow and bought Cam 350's and Para S8's. Since then I've heard much of the community agrees that Mac gear is slow, however I'm now questioning that. Mac tells me others up the gain a bit to "pump-up" the sound and that they(mac)present the original track as recorded. Opinions please? I'm trying to decide on a pre-amp- MacC200 or ML320s. Great forum! Thanks
llong
They all sound the same if operating within their design limitations. I suggest a variation on double blind testing that calls for putting your head in a gunnysack with two holes of the exact same (notice the American redundancy) size for the ears. Listen to any amp, side by side, with whatever music you want for whatever period you want and then go to a mirror and try to say to yourself out loud the all have a "house sound".
You`d be slow too if you had dinosaur design autoformers (their term for output transformers).
I guess that means Porziob doesn't like tube amps nor does he appreciate the complexity of amp/speaker relationships where a transformer can greatly improve signal integrity.
hmm, I have to say that mcintosh does have a sound of its own, but it is very natural as stated, straight forward raw. But this is more attributed to their preamps in my opinion, because just about any good amp in this class hooked up behind their pre's have about the same signature even as their own amps as long as the impeadance is within range to match well. Classe I have heard only one amp I owned from them and it was good but a little dry, but it was a small power amp and not the greatest preamp hooked to it. So it all comes down to you need to listen to any choice you make and go from there, they are both very much capable companies, however I will go on to say Mcintosh is overpriced to an extent compared to competitors, but its the Harley davidson name plate that causes that, not necessarily an overrated component.

Well, Matrix, having compared, among others, Classe, McIntosh, Linn, Naim, Densen-amps, and McIntoshs, all connected to my McIntosh C200-preamp, let me tell you that every amp has its own sonic signature. Secondly, after comparison with Krell, Jeff Rowland and Mark Levinson, not to speak of the like of Halcro, I´d say that McIntosh is one of the cheapest and most price-worthy of all big highend manufacturers.