Quote:
Originally Posted by vjayh
I was looking at buying the MP1100 for my (almost) all Mac system to add to the C1100 and the MC2301's. I'm curious if anyone has compared the phono stage of the C1100 to the MP1100. I don't know anything about the technicalities, but did notice the C1100 uses 6 tubes in the phono stage (part of a pair of the 12AT7's in addition to the 12AX7's) vs. the MP1100 using only 4 (all 12AX7's). Anyway, just curious if anyone understood the technical differences and then if anyone had any "real world" comparisons. Thanks!
|
I'd be interested in hearing more impressions on this topic as well as I haven't had an opportunity to hear the the MP1100 but have been quite happy with the C1100 phono stage.
The specs indicate that the MP1100 has a little lower distortion but it leverages more solid state components in it's signal path to achieve those measurements as you point out.
Additionally, the C1100 is remarkably quiet (although there's more to a phono stage than it's noise levels). I was optimizing the path of my phono cable yesterday and turned the pre-amp up to 90% and even 100% volume with phono selected and was astonished at how little noise there is. Much quieter than my Shindo preamp which also has an excellent internal phono stage. I'm inclined to think that the primary advantage of the MP1100 is the flexibility it provides with so many modes and settings. Still, the fact that McIntosh went to the trouble of building a dedicated phono stage makes me curious enough to want to audition it myself.