McIntosh C48 and C50 owners-how good is the DAC?

Allen_bh,
Now that you have had your c48 for more than a 6 weeks, has it broken in nicely and the sound smoothed out. Mac takes a while to break in.

Allen, sorry to hear about the disappointment. Sounds like something to return or exchange.

Regarding the HT Bypass, what purpose would HT Bypass button serve in a use case?

One case where a button would help (on remote) is if the user wanted to have all equipment on at the same time and toggle the HT on/off switching from say HTPC/2 CH to 5.1/7.1.

The C500 (Tube) has the same function as what your talking about and I find it working pretty well. Sometimes my Classe won't power OFF the C500 (if the C500 was on prior to the Classe power ON) via voltage trigger.

What I'm getting at is just a suggestion to reconsider the HT Bypass feature set as a problem.

I have owned a c48 for about 6 weeks now. I'm a bit frustrated with the DAC performance. Its very harsh when compared to my wyred4sound DAC2. Chuck Hinton at mcintosh said the soon to be released drivers for the usb will change how it sounds. Im skeptical since I was listening to 16/44 and even tried the digital coax in and still the harshness. It may verry well be a great preamp, but its got two very serious flaws:

1. The only way to activate the HT Bypass is through a 12v trigger in. My wyred4sound DAC2 has that method in addition to a very simple "HT" button that puts it in bypass.

2. The DAC is disapointingly harsh and cloudy sounding.

I've been running the unit constantly since it arrived in hopes that its a break-in issue, but as of 6 weeks out nada, zip, no difference. I guess the wyred4sound unit is just that good, but something tells me it gets better (which is why I bought the c48 to begin with).

I haven't read up on the C48/C50's processing, but I think there's some that goes on to 'tweak' CD quality up to something closer to the DAC's capabilities. This is maybe not the same as having higher res source files, but it should sound better than a run-of-the-mill DAC with regular oversampling, etc., that's in your CD player (unless it's high end

Also, one can certainly get 24-bit 96kHz (or whatever the DAC can accept) source files to play thru this preamp, should sound even better, if the rest of the system is up to it. 24/88 or 24/96 seems to be the new high-res standard, I am sure in the near future all digital files will be available in this resolution ... IF there's a high end market left! Otherwise ... 128kbps mp3s, anyone ???!!!

I own the C48, and am totally happy with it. I was just curious what other owners might have to say about the included DAC. I didn't buy the C48 for the DAC portion, but because it had the 5-band eq, was a simple unit compared to other units in their line with seperate listen & record circuits, and had a nice remote. When switching back and forth between the RCA output and the Digital out from my cd player, I defintely hear a more open and airy sound thru the internal DAC on the C48. I am curious as to what others think.

Mcintosh says that the C48 has the Burr Brown 32 Bit DAC. I listened to a C50 at a showroom and it was fantastic, when paired with a pair of their MC2301's. The price? Is it worth spending $6500 or a little less? I don't know but I want one, although I'm not willing to pay. The fact is that when you burn your disc onto the computer your'e using a $50 CD player to transfer that digital information onto itunes. Why then do we need to spend $3000 on a 32bit DAC when my computer doesn't have one for recordings?