Quote:
Originally Posted by PHC1
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.  |
Serge, I agree with many of your observations. I think current quality more important than cables and that's the reason I like the Niagara 5000 because of their huge current reservoir and the 7000 because of their isolation transformers.
Here's a point about cables and IC's. They are audible. They have a sound. Once the signal leaves the amp, regardless of whether it has a transformer or autoformer, or is OTL, the cable and its quality affects the sound.
The resolution and refinement of the sound, for example, is enhanced by very high quality silver. Mac solid state thrives on silver because of their tube like quality of providing less edge at the expense of ultimate detail. Silver allows me to wring out every last bit of resolution from my Mac's, both amp, pre, and source, whatever their ultimate resolution, refinement, and sound stage is. You are making the assumption that copper wire inside an autoformer negates the quality of the speaker cable. I haven't found this to be true. I can't speak for others.
If you compare the electrical properties of copper and silver, I think copper would equal silver, yet they sound different. The autoformer can't affect this difference because it occurs after the autoformer does its magic.
Is the expense of this difference worth it? For me, definitely. After having experienced a solid silver WEL Signature system from input to output and the improvement it makes in the Mac sound, its worth the expense.
Best
Charles