Charles, good post. Your entusiasm for McIntosh is not without merit. McIntosh makes very well engineered products. You may not find all the “boutique and exotic parts” inside them like you will with some other brands but McIntosh sticks to the reliable, proven and easily sourced parts as well as obviously making their own. Not to mention many innovative and truly useful features and circuit protection designs. The here today, gone tomorrow source of boutique caps, resistors, etc is just not smart for a company the size of McIntosh.
The audiophile nervosa may say I want those (insert your favorite caps, resistors,etc) and it often easily wins. One can appreciate the “different” presentation of many other amps but one has to notice the fact that McIntosh owners tend to hold onto their gear for years and even decades while many other amps come and go with often the speed of a revolving door.
It is often the case of stereotypes and group bias confirmation, echoing the opinions of others without having sat down and deeply listening without prejudice. That’s what the audiophiles in the video did and it was refreshing.
Having said that, it is still personal preference of the individual writing the not so insignificant check for a system and we all have our preference and ideas of what would be best for our own system.
One thing I may disagree on is the actual benefit of chasing lofty cables and power conditioners.
Autoformers are a very, very, long strand of not so audiophile piece of wire.
The hundred feet or so of the autoformer wire will not be enhanced by the last 8 feet of a very expensive speaker cable. You just need to be sure the speaker cable is not worse than the autoformer wire itself.
Audio Signal is also an alternating current waveform so it will travel back and forth through your speaker, cables and autoformer with disregard as to the price of them.
Yes, I’ve rolled cables to no end. My McIntosh monoblocks had zero objections to $125 speaker cables as well as $12,000.
Not much gain there.
It buys a peace of mind though.
