Mcintosh sound

I always wanted some Mc stuff, but have never taken the plunge until recently. I picked up a MAC 4100 receiver the other day locally on Craigslist, for 500 bucks. They go on ebay and here for 800-900, so a pretty good deal. The tuner needs some alignment and adjusting, but the unit is really clean and sounds great, no switching noise or hums. This is like a 4th system for me--I sure didn't need it! I am using it as a garage system for now, and am using old crappy speakers, and it sounds great, much more powerful than a typical receiver. The build quality is unreal. Sure, its not the most refined sound, but it's a lot of fun to play around with. A warm, solid, and authoritative sound is an accurate description (previous post above) for sure. Probably not the most transparent you've experienced. Good stuff, try it out and the resale is rock solid. Foreign collectors really seem to love McIntosh stuff. Have fun!

IMHO, I would say McIntosh does not have a lot of PRAT (now that I read your post above) so their products may not meet your sonic goals.

I actually at one time had the Kappa 7's and when the time came for me to switch from a Yamaha amp to Mcintosh I could only afford a MC7205. It sounded better and brought out what I thought was lacking in mid's. Then I bought a MC352 with autoformers and since the Kappas had a reputation for being hard to drive, I feel the autoformer solved that. At that point I had new speakers, the Kappa's had never sounded better. It allowed me to keep them longer than I had expected to. I really belive that McIntosh Amps are under rated. In the sense of power a 350 watt rating is conservative as to what it really can deliver. I have coined the phrase that when the watts can't do it McIntosh torque kicks in and gets the job done seamlessly. As mentioned if you are not happy you shouldn't have any trouble selling it. But I really doubt that we will see it listed.

I recently auditioned these amps and was very impressed. The 6300 and 7000 integrated amps I listened to are finely designed and, to my ears, offer a more neutral solid state sound versus a traditional warm and tubey sound that McIntosh was known for in the past.

They throw a wonderful sound stage and can play quiet or loud with a wide variety of speakers. I personally like them with DeVore 8s and 9s and ATC 7 and 11s, which match well with your music tastes. Because they are more neutral than warm, you want a more precise or smooth sounding speaker.

They have a wonderfully quiet and high quality built-in MM phono stage (sounds great with the Clearaudio Maestro series of MM cartridge), a better than average headphone jack (try these with good headphones), and offer more line stages than you can attach potential devices to. Build is rugged. The 7000 allows you to adjust the frequency range tonalities so you can better match a "desired sound" against poorly recorded material. As Theo says above, their resell is second to none.

My father had the legendary 275 amp for 40 years with no problems. The company has a tremendous pedigree, that was almost lost thru a series of bad buyouts starting two decades ago. The current Japanese capital group, plus their US engineering talent, has brought them back to their original audiophile roots and the new products are brilliant for their pure musicality. I would say that only Luxman out of Japan can match their integrated amps around similar dimensions.

Tone Audio, an online journal, has written several recent reviews, as well as www.sonicflair.com.

Bongofury rightly mentions that Macs newer stuff is much more neutral than past gear. I would classify it as neutral with a natural warmth and slightly rolled off at the extreemes. I don't think you will get "Krell-like" bass slam, but you "should" get a very enjoyable and musical presentation.

Brian