Reprint - Masterlu's McIntosh Home Theater Masterpiece (Part 1 of 3)

[mchydro]

Hello AA Members,
I have recently returned home from South Florida and had the pleasure to spend some time with Masterlu and experience his McIntosh home theater masterpiece system for the second time. All I can say is... I'm speechless! Well, almost. If I can harness the power of concentration long enough, I should be able to share a bit of this pleasure with my fellow AA'ers. But it's not going to be easy. Masterlu's system is simply mesmerizing; it provides a profound sensory overload that it's sure to stun even to most avid audio and video-philes. My goal is to write another post summarizing the experience and to try and put into words the effects of the improvements he has made to the system since my last visit in August 2008.

The following story is a reprint. This shall serve as a prelude to the updates from my recent trip which I will post this weekend. Due to the 10,000 character post limit, I have broken it up into 3 parts. Enjoy!

-mchydro
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Very few times in my life have I been in absolute awe of something; Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and the Manhattan skyline are on my short list. I can now emphatically add another to that list.

For those of you lucky enough to have witnessed Mr. Ivan Messer's McIntosh home theater masterpiece, please bear with me as I attempt to share my experiences with the other members of this forum who have not. I was recently very fortunate to have visited Ivan, who graciously demoed his system for me.

This is not easy to put in words but I shall attempt to wrap a few words around an engineering marvel that simply must be seen, heard and felt to be believed. In that light, I will organize my experiences around each of these three senses by splitting them across 3 separate posts within this thread.

Let's begin with some of the sights I experienced.

When I first walked into Ivan's theater I immediately noticed its sheer museum-level beauty and its warm ambiance. The majestic mahogany entertainment cabinet and matching paneling and trim throughout the room, the burgundy colored leather theater seating, the soft glow of the recessed lighting, the felty hunter green acoustically treated walls, the immensely tall ceiling, the limited edition autographed movie posters all help serve as the backdrop for the most capable audio/video system I believe there is on planet Earth.

The solid mahogany cabinet is absolutely enormous and it is definitely the most exquisite piece of woodworking I have ever seen. It exudes strength, beauty and emits a pleasing warm glow. When Ivan first exposed a piece of McIntosh gear on one of its many shelves, the contrast of the famous shiny black glass and blue and green lights against its reddish-brown hues, struck a major chord with my brain's sense of visual appeal. This piece is truly one of a kind. It's shelves hold up massive 150+ pound amps and beefy Richard Gray components without the slightest sign of bowing. I also swear that there is not a single scratch or detectable imperfection anywhere.

The Sony G90 CRT projector system hanging from a Hollywood studio-style scissor lift is truly a sight to behold. This sucker is absolutely huge. Weighing 250 lbs and measuring 30" x 16" x 42", it's appearance suggests that this is not a consumer grade product - and indeed it isn't. Words simply cannot describe the images Ivan's video system, which incorporates a Lumagen scaler, the finest stretches of wire, a Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player, the McIntosh MVP-871, and even a HD satellite receiver is capable of displaying. I got the sense the projector wasn't even being taxed the least by it's job of casting a 100"+ image onto a massive automated Stewart screen.

Yesterday, Ivan popped in the Disney movie "Ratatouille". I saw detail in that movie that bordered on the ridiculous. Microscopic peach fuzz around the rats' ears and extremely subtle chin hair on the main character Linguine are just two examples of clearly defined details that were missed by my previous viewings of the film.

But the demo that truly blew me away was a Blu-Ray featuring two Jazz artists, whose names escape me at the moment, who were performing a vocal rendition of Brubeck's "Take Five". I swear the video was truly lifelike. No more "near lifelike", but actually spooky real. Because of Ivan's video system's ability to cast an image, so bright, so razor sharp, so palpable, you'd swear you were looking through a window.

What about the Mac gear? Well if you've never seen XRT2K speakers or it's counterpart center channel speaker, the XCS2KW in person, you're missing out. In pictures, they look very cool. But in person, you get to appreciate their ominous height and girth along with their classy luxurious looks. The shiny black gloss finishes on these speakers truly reminded me of the finest grand pianos I've seen. With the light cast from his theater lighting, there is a sheen on these speakers that accentuates the fact that these are the finest loudspeakers known to man. By the way, his new Gotham sub matches them perfectly and is a sight to behold.

As far as the amps, all I can say is, “Wow”! The triple chassis MC2KW's are gorgeous. Ivan has them cleverly flanked behind the speakers to maximize the space in his room, but still makes them visible from the seating positions. And as an owner of a pair of the massive MC1.2KW amps, I had a true appreciation for the sight to behold when Ivan unveiled a half dozen or so of them in various carefully concealed (yet totally accessible) compartments in his mahogany cabinet. The myriad of blue eyes generated with Mac's ingenious fiber optic distributed LED lighting, stuck out like blue jewels against the massive wooden cabinet.

The neatness of Ivan's installation is truly remarkable. I was hard pressed to spot a single cable. He had to shoot a flashlight in various spots for me to see the garden hose sized gold Wireworld cabling throughout his system. This is no small feat. He must have at least 60 or 70 separate chassis's with their own separate wiring needs.

And one more thing. The black levels in his theater are scary. When Ivan dims the lights, everything is black. The movie screen truly floats before you, no distractions whatsoever. These kinds of details, along with many others which I will describe later, let you escape into the movie or video like no movie theater venue can.

What was my favorite sight? The smirk on Ivan's face as I stared and listened glossy-eyed at his amazing creation which was the result of his relentless pursuit for the very best.

-end of part 1