Mcintosh Amps w/ B&W 801'S

It seems that people are of two camps when it comes to McIntosh amps. When I mentioned to some dealers that I was considering a Mac amp they chuckled. I assume you are thinking about the MC602. I auditioned this amp at home over a long weekend driving my Thiel CS7.2s off the 4 ohm taps and found the Mac to be very powerful and uncongested sounding, and even more at ease then my Bryston 7B ST monoblocks playing large scale symphonic music at loud playback volumes. Tonally the Mac sounds very natural, strings never get edgy, thin sounding, or steely like most of the other amps I have tried, and there is tonal color and harmonic richness present that is lacking in some of the current high tech designs. It also sounds very delicate for a big amp. It never seems to get physically very warm, has no mechanical hum, and is dead quiet. On the down side its bass is not quite as impactful or as subterranian as some of the current high tech designs. The Mac also doesn't have the same razor sharp resolution, although it sorts out detail very well and never sounds homogenized. I also wouldn't go as far to say the Mac is totally neutral, I thought the treble was slightly 'off the mark' sounding on some CDs. I am still considering this amp. To my wife's ear this is the best amp I have auditioned to date (other amps auditioned ML No. 336, Classe CAM 350, and Krell FPB300). I did encounter a severe ground loop hum when I turned on my Bryston 5B ST for HT. If I can't get past this issue I'll have to eliminate the Mac from my short list. Oh yeah, the big blue meters are pretty cool to watch as well, but really not necessary. The meters indicated that I needed about 60 continuous watts to maintain a pretty good playback volume on my Thiels.