Disappointing On Mcintosh......help

70% of the sound quality in any system comes first from the acoustical controls field of the room, and from the controls of the electrical grid of the house, and some part from the mechanical embeddings controls...Only 30 % comes from the amplifier and source...


This rule is valid for most mid-fi and high fi system of relatively very good quality that are all relatively equal  in this prepared and controlled audio context, despite their evident differences...


The illusion that electronic component magically create hi-fi experience out of the box for the customers is an engineered marketing illusion...Almost all relatively good audio systems will be top hifi if they are embedded rightly in the mechanical, and electrical and acoustical grids....Or will sound shitty otherwise....Even one million dollars system....

An experience by chance, in a non prepared and non controlled environment of a piece of electronic gear by the listener means nothing even for the listener himself, whether he believes the opposite or not....

Moving from my former good quality media room to my great/expensive/custom engineered designed listening room was an eye opener.  The same very good/not SOTA audio system became a fabulous sounding system, making 30 year old, very good speakers sound like high end costly speakers.  With my tweaks added, I can enjoy most recordings including early acoustic ones with only the most wretched recordings remaining unlistenable.  No tone controls or DSP, just a great room (SOTA) acoustically and good room electrically (not SOTA) providing the basis for my equipment and tweaks to perform maximally.

I am Mac lover (Mc2301, Mc452, C1100, D1100) and I have B&W signature diamond and signature 30 speaker, they are beautiful warm. clear sound. I want to say that all personal preference is different and demo systems (include cables, rooms, or speaker positions...) make huge different too. nowadays it is very hard for listen to the high end demo system sound in local dealer or retail store. sadly watching this hobby will get older and shrinking...:-(

Off topic a bit, speaking of shrinking hobby,  one trend I've paid attention to is the kids with portable devices with headphones resurrected headphones a bit and then they wanted better separate/amps for their headphones, then they started dabbling in tube/headphone amps, which then seemed to help drive a resurgence in small tube amps for headphones.  

Now some of them are buying small tube amps for home use.  Now we are seeing tube amps pop back up in the USA and of course China is cranking out tube amps like crazy.   

If you check around there are several new USA based tube amp builders popping up too, who woulda knew... found several new Co.s may not making a killing on sales but surviving.  Kinda cool to see this happening. 

was the McIntosh a tube system? If so, your listening to two different topologies, tube and solid state. no wonder you heard two different sounds. With tubes, you change the sound character by swapping out tubes. At the end of the day, get what sounds best to you. I went from transistor to tubes years ago after listening to various types of amps.