is McIntosh known for good dynamics?

@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.)