is McIntosh known for good dynamics?

Why not visit a McIntosh dealer with your favorite Classical music and judge for yourself?

Having owned MC501 monoblocks for 18 months, I would say bass weight and and a smooth, musical presentation were more characteristic than micro- or macro-dynamics. But I’d hazard to say this is not necessarily true of all Mac amps.

@magon ,

Mac is a respected brand. I have not had the pleasure of owning any of their equipment. 

That being said, I think you should be considering what speaker you are pairing with. Some speakers need gobs of power, like MBL, some need less. Some amps work better with certain brands of speakers. I own Vandersteens, and Ayre seems to work extremely well.

Long story short, much depends upon the whole system, rather than just one component.

HTH

Bob

I’m just trying to get a sense of what might be wrong (if anything) with the MHA200 headphone amplifier I just picked up from a private seller. It’s very flat dynamically and I’m wondering if it needs new tubes, needs to burn in, or whether this is just the McIntosh sound. There's not much headphone activity here so I thought it would helpful to get a sense of the McIntosh signature sound overall.

@wrm57 

+1 Correct. 

Mac is highly regarded. Their house sound is very midrange and bass heavy. Just great for rock and roll. But not know for nuanced sound, certainly not microdynamics and detailed. Without well balanced top end, then it might seem to lack dynamics. 

Also, matching headphones to all but the very best headphone amps can be at least as hard as doing so with speakers. The requirements vary very widely among headphones, 

I have continuously had high end headphone systems for most of the last fifty years. I cannot recommend Woo headphone amps enough. I have imported headphone amps from Germany, and tried a bunch of different kinds to get enough current to satisfy the more demanding headphones. My search stopped dead in its tracks when I bought a Woo WA5. It took control of every headphone I own (Senheiser 800, Focal Utopia, etc.). The power, nuance and dynamics as well as rhythm an pace is incredible., 

My McIntosh MC462 amp matches well with my Backert Labs Rhythm preamp and Focal Sopra 2 speakers. 

@ghdprentice 

I've only owned a few headphone amps and stupidly sold one of the best. All my amps have been custom modified by Igor Kuznetsoff of the New Jersey Audio Society, who does great dynamics, high-end extension, musical detail, and other things.

The one I sold was a modified Woo WA6SE. It was good but I wanted to downsize. Now my main amp broke. I decided I want to get an unmodified amp so it's easier to have someone repair it. I have a Woo WA7 + tp here right now and the sound is indeed dynamics and extended. Only problem is that it's rough and high noise floor, which I attribute to the DAC being literally inside the amplifier case spewing RFI.

Good news is a friend is going to give me an (unmodified) Woo WA6SE, so I'll get a chance to try that again.

It seems unlikely I'll ever be happy with the McIntosh. The dynamics and texture delineation are as flat as a pancake.

@ghdprentice Note I'm using a Gustard R26 DAC and the amp only section of the WA7, I'm just saying as far as I know the DAC inside the amp is generating radio frequencies.

I have had MC 501s driving 3.6 Maggies via a C220 tube pre amp for almost 10 years.  I traded gear all the time prior to discovering this combination.  It is all about synergy among your components IMHO.

Everyone has their own journey, as well as taste in sound and primary genre of music.  My path works for me and I love skilled musicianship that shines in the detail I find in my setup.  Eva Cassidy, Dave Brubeck and Duane Allman all get plenty of play in my listening room.

Agree with @stereo5; find a demo that reveals what you are looking for. I have a McIntosh MA352 IA paired with Dynaudio Contour 20s playing mostly Jazz, Classic Rock, R&B, Pop and Classical.

I find that the system adapts nicely to genre, but room dynamics and speaker placement all apply so best the check out live demo systems and see for yourself.  Especially optimal if you can arrange a home demo.

@magon 'Dynamics' is a tricky word. Most of the time audiophiles use it when they are talking about distortion which can cause things to sound more dynamic; IOW if you replace the word 'dynamics' with 'distortion' in audiophile conversations the meaning of the conversation is usually unchanged.

Actual musical dynamic contrast comes from the signal itself. The amp should have nothing to do with it. You'll find that SET owners talk about the amazing dynamics of their SETs but what they are really talking about is distortion (SETs make a lot of that).

So to answer you're question, its no worries insofar as Mac is concerned!

OP,

Good to hear your comments on a WA7. I’ve never heard one. Sounds like venturing into a DAC was not a great idea for them.

Just a note. I own an WA6 and a WA6 SE as well as a WA5 LE. The WA6 and WA6 SE are very good natural sounding, musical, low powered headphone amps. But are nothing like the monster WA5 LE. Not in performance, power, size and weight or cost. The WA 5 is what I am talking about. With some awesome Takasuki 300B tubes it is a religious experience.

@ghdprentice Yes I understand you were describing the WA5 LE and I went and looked it up on Woo’s site. It is clearly enormous, requires a lot of tubes (which can get pricy if you use NOS), etc.

I’m glad to know that Woo’s ultimate achievement stands so high. It means their philosophy is onto something and their designers know what they are doing.

I haven’t heard the WA6 SE in ages but I am about to receive one as a gift so we’ll see if it works well with my system.

Is the WA5 a SET? I think the WA6 and WA7 are, but not entirely sure.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): This is a long description of my strange trip, and it responds to the OP only within the domain of vintage Mc tube gear. I don't expect my experience to be any kind of "guide to absolute truth", but it is one data point.

I LIKE MCINTOSH SEVERELY

I used to use Mc60 (tube) amps, and now have Mc225 and Mc275 tube amps. I rotate the 275 with four other solid state Mc amplifiers, including the revered Mc7270, so I think I understand the Mc sound. I surely agree with atmasphere, that the amplifier should have *nothing* to do with the sound one hears. However, that is an ideal which I myself have not approached. Source, Speakers, and room do have more "going on" with what I hear, but I hear the Mc power amplifier sound too. The point of this paragraph is that I am an Mc fan for sure, although I do not insist that their products are perfect.

MOST OF MY SPEAKERS ARE VINTAGE

Speakers I have used for a long time in my homes include Altec VOT (four, no less), Dahlquist, Maggies, even Bose (for a time), Electrovoice, and now, most usually, Martin-Logan electrostatics and Vandersteen 2ci. Looking back, the Altecs I had -- in a somewhat huge room -- did not provide the best experience where clarity and dynamics are concerned.

CLASSICAL IS NOT ATOP MY STACK

I do not often listen to classical orchestra music, but I do have a handful of favorites; some/most of those are pressings from 1950s recordings. Fanfare and 'Burana come to mind. My impression of classical music reproduction is that low-amplitude (that is, low SPL) passages are very usually reproduced incorrectly; that may ruin the genre for many people. On my SS Mc systems, very quiet passages seem too loud and lack tonal quality throughout the spectrum. I attribute this to a choice of design values held for the last sixty years or so at McIntosh. I'm not trying to do any bashing here -- maybe I listen with a too-low volume setting to begin with. This is my experience, and of course yours may vary a whole lot.

I remember that on a winter day maybe thirty years ago, I played classical music through the Mc60s (alas the Mc60s are now in storage) into (passive) Magneplanar MG1s. The room was maybe 16' x 24', with a cathedral ceiling and dense carpeted floor. I had one of those stopped-in-my-tracks moments that evening. The dynamics were correct. The soft passages were soft -- not crushed into grunge. No solid state amp -- Mc or other --- has come close to that experience.

My experience with "high SPL dynamics" is quite a different story. Through my Vandersteen 2cis, I hear the hardest undistorted hits and the most intense loud passages clearly when I drive them with my Krell KAV-300i. Go figure that. For high intensity, that 300i does better with the Vandersteens than my KSA-250 or my KSA-200S.

So what. Vintage Mc60s, driving vintage planar electrostatics provided the most correct dynamics -- and thus the most involving musical playback -- I've experienced, but only for one night in memory. Vintage Krell is not what the OP wanted to know about, and except for the Martin-Logans, my speakers are all very old.

I do think my equipment hygiene is good; I make distortion and power measurement tests, balance listening tests, and I've funded two excellent techs through their careers.

Enjoy the music.

@atmasphere The question is the clarity and musical impact of the dynamics. Take clarity. In a live classical concert, I can hear them varying their dynamics, even when a little bit. If they get suddenly quiet, the intensity of the passage doesn’t disappear.. it’s just as intense and compelling. If they get suddenly loud, it has startle factor.

Comparing the Mc MHA200 and my other headphone amp, a custom 12AU7/FET design, the MHA200 doesn’t render small dynamic changes with any clarify. On my other amp (and in LIVE MUSIC) I can hear small changes from phrase to phrase, a factor which is critical to the expression of the music, but they are barely audible and have no impact with the MHA200.

To render dynamics poorly is in fact a form of inaccuracy and distortion compared to live music.

Note regarding dynamics in general, I think a person's opinion on this has a lot to do with the kind of music they listen to. I get my notion of dynamic impact, PRaT and other musical factors from listening to acoustic classical music, which is a type of music that is full of both subtle and large dynamic cues and very sophisticated musical expression that requires a huge degree of accuracy to reproduce. 

I also like to listen to some rock, but never notice dynamics in the same way. 

Okay, looks like the tubes that the seller provided with the MHA200 were bad. I put a new complement of tubes in there, let it warm up, and (without burning in the tubes yet) it has dynamics. My digital front end is extremely good and now at least I'm hearing some of that quality. We'll see how it sounds after some hours on the tubes.

As an aside, the thing keeps shutting itself off if there's no signal for a time. This is annoying as I want to turn it on in the morning so it will be warmed up whenever during the day I need it (I use headphones for work, too.)

@magon,

Look in the owners manual, there may be a way to defeat it.

@magon "I’m wondering if the McIntosh signature sound is known for good dynamics and microdynamics."

Absolutely, McIntosh typically specs any of their amplifiers as having at least 1.8 dB of dynamic headroom and independent tests reveal they easily exceed that. I’ve included an excerpt of John Atkinson’s technical analysis of the McIntosh MAC7200 receiver Larry Greenhill reviewed in the December 2020 issue of Stereophile and attached the link to the article in it’s entirety for you to read if you so choose.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mcintosh-mac7200-stereo-receiver

Figs.5, 6, and 7 plot the percentage of THD+noise in the MAC7200’s speaker output from the 8 ohm tap into 8 ohms, the 4 ohm tap into 4 ohms, and the 2 ohm tap into 2 ohms. In each graph, the THD+N continues to drop as the power decreases below actual waveform clipping, due to the distortion lying beneath the noise floor and the fixed level of noise becoming an increasing percentage of the signal level. The receiver’s maximum power is specified as being at least 200W from each of the output-transformer taps. Using our definition of clipping, which is when the output’s percentage of THD+noise reaches 1%, the 8 ohm tap clipped at 255W into 8 ohms (24dBW) with both channels driven, the 4 ohm tap at 235W into 4 ohms (20.7dBW) with both channels driven, and the 2 ohm tap at 283W into 2 ohms (18.5dBW) with one channel driven. More power was available when the load impedance was lower than the nominal tap impedance. For example, with its 8 ohm tap driving 4 ohms, the McIntosh clipped at 340W into 4 ohms (22.3dBW, fig.8).

Fig.5 McIntosh MAC7200, 8 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into 8 ohms.

Fig.6 McIntosh MAC7200, 4 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into 4 ohms.

Fig.7 McIntosh MAC7200, 2 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into 2 ohms.

I measured how the MAC7200’s distortion changed with frequency at 20V output, which is equivalent to 50W into 8 ohms and 100W into 4 ohms. The THD+N percentage was very low into both loads (fig.9) and didn’t increase at the top of the audioband. As suspected from the clipping graphs, the measurement was being dominated by random noise, which can also be seen in the waveform of the THD+N spuriae (fig.10). A hint of second harmonic can be just made out in this graph, which was confirmed by spectral analysis (fig.11). Intermodulation distortion was also vanishingly low (fig.12).

Fig.9 McIntosh MAC7200, 8 ohm tap, THD+N (%) vs frequency at 20V into 8 ohms (left blue, right red) and 4 ohms (left cyan, right magenta).

Fig.10 McIntosh MAC7200, 8 ohm tap, 1kHz waveform at 100W into 8 ohms, 0.0043% THD+N (top); distortion and noise waveform with fundamental notched out (bottom, not to scale).

Fig.11 McIntosh MAC7200, 8 ohm tap, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 100W into 8 ohms (left channel blue, right red, linear frequency scale).

Fig.12 McIntosh MAC7200, 8 ohm tap, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–30kHz, 19+20kHz at 100W peak into 8 ohms (linear frequency scale).

@faustuss thanks, those look like incredible specs. 

Now that I replaced the tubes my MHA200 sounds dynamic. I didn't realize how problematic my custom 12AU7/FET headphone amp was; now I'm enjoying all sorts of less-than-pefect recordings again.

@magon 

I don't believe Mac amps are most well known for their dynamic sound.  However it depends on the component type and era.  

The newer power amplifiers are nicely dynamic if driven with a clean high gain preamp, preferably a class A triode tube pre.  

The reason is that they made an effort to increase the capacitance of the dynamic storage caps.  
My MC312 lists that as an upgrade in their product literature for example.  It is superbly fast as well as transient and macro dynamic.  

@magon Happy it's all working out for you and you enjoyed the review.  Carry on! 

@faustuss thanks, those look like incredible specs. 

Now that I replaced the tubes my MHA200 sounds dynamic. I didn't realize how problematic my custom 12AU7/FET headphone amp was; now I'm enjoying all sorts of less-than-pefect recordings again.

I like blue meters ,I have a few.agree the ss work best with mcintosh 12000 in the tube mode. I do like the Mac house sound.have many different amps.find the synergy because impedance of pre and amp and speaker matter.enjoy the science and the search.

My first high-end system was just A few years ago I chose the Macintosh MA9000 integrated with focal kanta3 speakers, Puritan power conditioner 

Shenyatta Delta speaker cables, I just had to have more and I upgrade it 

I'm glad I did. 

Macintosh has a very warm sound and it is different 

I end up getting a more higher resolution more detail stereo amplifier with preamp 

( Separates) I'm glad I did I'm not saying that the Macintosh sounded bad 

It served me well for almost 2 years I just needed something with more detail and more dynamics.

I have owned McIntosh and I felt my system had wonderful dynamics. And it certainly can present a wonderful listening experience. 

I also feel the house sound has a slight veil - in auditioning alternative options I preferred ‘house sound’ of other manufacturers. 
 

If you can listen to as many systems as you can - we are in the golden era of music reproduction.  And enjoy your journey.