is McIntosh known for good dynamics?

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.

@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.

@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.

@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.)

@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.

@atmasphere 

Call it transparency or high-fidelity, but amps can be high fidelity in different ways. Some may be faithful to the timbre, others may also be faithful to the musical impact of the dynamics. The latter is what I call a dynamic amp (or speakers, or DAC, etc.) 

I call B.S. on the idea that good dynamics is a matter of distortion. Good dynamics is a form of accuracy (in acoustic classical recordings) as acoustic classical music has the best dynamics of all. A dynamic amp sounds more like live music. I call B.S. on the idea that a distortion would give the impression I'm listening live.

@atmasphere I've never encountered a discussion about dynamics that was "really" about distortion. Certainly my discussion here is not. So I have no idea what your point of posting on their thread was.

What I am discussing, and you haven't responded to my prior post on this topic, is that by good dynamics I'm referring to an accurate/transparent presentation or subjective effect of dynamics. Sudden louds should have startle factor, sudden quiets should have a compelling quality and not lose focus, and small dynamic changes should be evident and have musical impact. (By the way my reference is classical, acoustic music. Subjectively good dynamics may be described differently in rock or other kinds of music.)

Yes, the amp can affect the subjective presentation of dynamics. The signal can be getting louder and softer, of course, but that doesn't mean it will have the proper musical impact. What's going on inside the amp? I don't know. I suspect that the ability of the power supply to supply instantaneous current spikes has something to do with it. 

@atmasphere While I understand what you're saying, that distortion will make the contrast between loud and soft greater, I don't think that is likely to result in realistic dynamics.

In live music, microdynamics are particularly evident, and sudden changes are evocative. This is a perfectly accurate presentation, by which I mean the live event is the reference. 

Among my audiophile friends, we generally like live classical music, so that is our reference. When an amp can portray high dynamic resolution and startle factor, I think it makes sense that that amp is doing something right.

Maybe there are a few audiophiles somewhere who get fooled by distortion. Maybe they don't have a live reference, or they are listening to studio recorded music, maybe even highly processed music. I haven't run into them.

You seem to have something against SETs. I have listened to some good SET  headphone amps, and they had great microdynamic resolution. I didn't listen long enough to get a sense of the macrodynamics.

I think it can be a fallacy to blame "euphonic distortion." That is, someone says amp XYZ is realistic (or vinyl is realistic, digital is not, etc.) and the engineer can't explain it. All they know is that some types (some types) of distortion are higher in amp XYZ, so with no other explanation available to the engineer, they say that it's "euphonic distortion." What I think is that distortion can't explain realism. 

@atmasphere 

You don't seem to have gotten my point. TLDR; distortion can't explain realism.

Longer explanation: what I call good dynamics are also realistic dynamics when comparing the sound with live classical music, which has the greatest micro and macro dynamics of all. 

Second point: any reproduction system (including photographs, video, painting, whatever) has distortion and also can be realistic to a varying degree at the same time. We're pretty good at ignoring certain kinds of distortion. For example second harmonic distortion might be largely ignorable or have no impact on the musical presentation. Any system can also be accurate in some respects at the same time it has distortion. For instance, system A might have a non-flat frequency response and system B might be flat as a ruler, but system A might have more realistic transient reproduction. 

I find good vinyl to be more realistic than most digital. The engineer might say "vinyl has more distortion, therefore you actually are liking the distortion." But I didn't say I like vinyl, I said it's more realistic. The engineer has no explanation for that. Therefore they fall back on the euphonic distortion theory. I don't think the engineer is interested in finding out what vinyl does more realistically. Maybe its transient reproduction is more realistic. 

I found the SET amps to have realistic microdynamics. My belief is that to the extent these SETs had distortion, it's largely ignorable or doesn't affect the music. By the way I'm not making a claim about all SETs as I'm sure there are some with higher distortion, bad design, or plain don't sound good.