Opinions on McIntosh MHA200?

@magon How are you getting on with the MHA200 by now? I wanted to love that amp but felt pretty much how you described it, pretty flat sounding. Also I don't think it has enough guts for more difficult loads. It does sound pretty in a way though.

I much much prefer the big MHA100 and nearly identical MHA150. I know, very different animals as those are integrated speaker amps with onboard DAC and headphone outputs. But they do seem designed primarily with headphones in mind, and the speaker outputs are more of a bonus. Most integrated amps are the other way around. 

@magon Unfortunately I think that's just the general sound of the amp. It can be tweaked by rolling darker tubes but you'll probably never get completely free of that signature. 

I think a better fit as far as tonality would be an LCD-2 with the more rich, smooth presentation. But even so I find planar magnetic headphones like more current than the MHA200 has available, before they really "come alive". 

Hopefully you find a way to make it do what you want. If not, I guess the beauty of a McIntosh product is that you can usually resell it easily with minimal loss. 

@magon I have heard that as well from certain LCD-2 examples. Audeze always had quite a bit of unit to unit variation, more so on their older models but it continued to some degree even to the LCD-4 era. That means mine would sound very different from the set owned by a friend, even when we both purchased right around the same time. Very unpredictable. 

Have you considered trying a Sennheiser HD650 or similar? I know those are ancient now (but so is the AKG K712 which is just a K701, quite old as well), but HD650 is known for pairing well with tubes, and a lot of people find it a little dark anyway. The 300 ohm design might be a good match for the McIntosh.