McIntosh never does things by halves, but even by its standards, the MX124 is quite an AV receiver. Its 13.4-channel arrangement means it can connect to four subwoofers at once. This thing is not meant for your spare room.

Rather it's aimed at "today's most advanced home cinema systems", whether that's a pro-level viewing room setup or whole home entertainment system.

Support for 8K video comes as standard, and it's compatible with room correction software to optimise the sound to your environment.

Inside is updated processing architecture, promising advanced audio and video processing.

Its 13 audio channels support speaker configurations up to 7.4.6 or 9.4.4. And its four subwoofer outputs is twice as many as its predecessor, to support more sophisticated system layouts and more precise bass management.

McIntosh is positioning the MX124 as a way to extend the lifespan of your home cinema setup. That's thanks to its support for immersive audio formats like Dolby Atmos, DTS:X Pro, Sony 360 Reality Audio and MPEG-H Audio, as well as its versatility in outputs and next-gen processing architecture.

With nine 32-bit digital-to-analogue converters, it promises "exceptional detail, dynamic range, and sonic accuracy", and it has bass and treble controls for tweaking the sound to your liking.

Room optimisation smarts comes courtesy of not only Dirac Live, but Dirac Live Bass Control and Audyssey MultEQ XT32. So it should sound its best in pretty much any room, with optimised bass performance, imaging, tonal balance, speaker integration and overall clarity, and all while preserving McIntosh's signature musicality.

On the video front, you get seven HDMI inputs and three HDMI outputs, one of which has eARC. They all support 4K/120Hz (and 8K/60Hz) as well as Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG and IMAX Enhanced. Gamers will enjoy the addition of ALLM and VRR.

Streaming? You got it. As well as Apple AirPlay and Bluetooth, it supports Qobuz Connect, Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, and Roon Ready, with support for high-resolution streaming up to 32-bit/192kHz.

You also get four digital audio inputs, one balanced and eight unbalanced analogue stereo inputs, component and composite video inputs, dual analogue stereo outputs for two additional listening zones, and support for Bluetooth headphones.

And if you're looking to install it professionally with custom integration, you'll welcome the web-based configuration, pre-configuration and file upload capabilities, back-up and restore support, RS232 and IP control, and certification for Control4 Simple Device Discovery Protocol (SDDP) integration.

The McIntosh MX124 is out now, and costs £16,900 (around $23,000 / AU$32,000).

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Vacuum tube amplifiers have long been central to McIntosh's approach to high-end audio, but it hasn't launched an integrated model in over a decade. Until now – meet the MA2375, a vacuum tube integrated amp fit for the modern day.

It combines a fully analogue vacuum tube preamplifier and power amplifier in a single component, and offers 75 watts per channel. Along with McIntosh Unity Coupled Circuit Output Transformers, it's capable of providing consistent performance across a range of 4-, 8- or 16-ohm speakers.

You know it's a McIntosh just from looking at it, thanks to the polished stainless steel chassis, visible tube illumination and of course those signature blue watt meters. (The fact it bears a striking McIntosh logo in the company's green also helps.)

The built-in Power Guard Screen Grid Sensor (SGS) tech and Sentry Monitor fuse-less protection should ensure it runs for years to come. And its range of analogue and digital ports (including a configurable phono input, subwoofer and preamplifier outputs, Data Ports and an RS232 control port) means it'll play nice with both traditional and modern setups alike.

The MA2375 also has a 5-band analogue equaliser, four KT88 output tubes and four 12AT7 driver tubes, and two 12AX7A and two 12AT7 preamp tubes. The speaker binding posts are gold-plated Solid Cinch, while the Headphone Crossfeed Director (HXD) helps it drive more demanding headphones.

The MA2375 is out now, and costs £16,900 (around $23,000 / AU$32,000).

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It’s the pulsating heart of your hi-fi system and, as anyone who’s read this publication knows, to ignore its sonic relevance in your setup would be foolish in the extreme.

Several long-established and highly revered audio firms started out when one or two individuals shared a common goal: to release a decent stereo amplifier – something better than whatever was currently powering their system.

We have seen and tested many (though not all) of these amplifiers and their successors over the 50-year history of What Hi-Fi?, and here we’ve picked out nine of the very best, in our humble collective opinion.

These little powerhouses have left indelible marks on hi-fi history, paving the way not just for the brands that blossomed in their wake, but for the agile, transparent and joyous music systems we enjoy today.

Naim NAP 200 (1973)

Julian Vereker’s shift from building cars to designing amplifiers and loudspeakers (for London’s Capital Radio, no less) led to the founding of Naim Audio in 1973.

With both Julian and his co-founder Shirley Clarke as directors, their shop in the centre of Salisbury, England, was the birthplace in that same year of the company's first consumer product: the NAP 200 power amplifier.

Vereker originally designed the NAP 200 in 1971 and, although its descendants differ greatly – the line continues to evolve with products like the excellent NAP 100 to this day – Naim still shoots for the same performance goals of pace, rhythm and timing.

Cyrus One (1984) 

The Mission Cyrus One – back when Cyrus was a part of Mission – was a piece of kit very much aimed at audiophiles, despite its budget-friendly price tag.

It had no tone or balance controls and carried plenty of inputs for sources. Early examples had a plastic case to eliminate the distortion effects of eddy current, but later versions switched to a cast metal case – sophisticated for a budget amp.

In the What Hi-Fi? review, we concluded that the inaugural One communicated a precise soundstage, but it was also capable of handling low-level details that other amplifiers "repressed or simply rendered messy".

Combine that sound with the superb build quality, and you had an amp whose performance could rival pricier options.

• Old amplifier vs new amplifier: which is better?

Cambridge Audio P40 (1968) 

Cambridge Audio's first ever product, the P40 integrated amplifier, was also the first ever amp to use a toroidal transformer – a significant innovation at the time.

These days, it's a standard component inside high-end amps; a sure sign that what the firm tried back in 1968 worked out really rather well.

The follow up to the P40 arrived just a few years later in 1970 with the P50, a much more powerful amplifier with a unique active volume control.

However, one glance at the lines and craftsmanship on the P40 is to know that this is a stunning debut amp.

A&R A60 (1976)

Amplification & Recording Cambridge was founded back in 1976. Now known by a far snappier moniker, Arcam (see what they did there?), the company’s success was built on its first amplifier, the A60.

Pictured above is our review from August 1981, though the product was launched five years earlier.

Back in the early 1980s, this slimline integrated amp would set you back £190 and was considered the go-to middle-market amplifier, comparable to the Crimson 510/520 pre/power combination (remember that?). It proved the ideal upgrade from budget champions such as NAD’s original 3020 (which we will get to shortly).

It was a functional unit with a decent array of line-level inputs plus a capable moving-magnet phono stage – hardly a surprise considering vinyl was still the dominant media of the day.

The tone controls were subtle in their action and as such could, on occasion, prove useful when any recording or partnering kit wasn’t quite balanced.

The A60 also had a filter switch which progressively rolled off frequencies above 7.5kHz in a bid to reduce hiss from a tuner or the impact of a pop from vinyl.

NAD 3020 (1978)

A power output of 20W per channel was hardly earth-shattering but, at £85, the 3020 could drive speakers better than pretty much any of its rivals. The 3020 amplifier put NAD on the map, such was its impact.

The story goes that when NAD’s managing director, Marty Borish, hired a quiet audio engineer called Bjorn Erik Edvardsen, the pair noted a space in the market. Edvardsen got the bit between his teeth.

Initially headquartered in London, NAD’s growing team, led by Edvardsen, obsessively experimented and refined the electronic designs, seeking a eureka moment. When it finally came, NAD delivered perhaps the best-selling hi-fi amplifier in history.

The original NAD 3020 had a balance that was smooth and full-bodied, delivering a good, coherent sound which worked well with the some of the less–refined budget kit of the time.

The cult-like following generated by the 3020 was so great that NAD would have been foolish to shelve it. In 2013, some 35 years after its initial release, we gave the latest NAD D 3020 iteration a coveted five-star review and a What Hi-Fi? Award.

Burmester 777 (1977) 

As a musician, Dieter Burmester (founder of Burmester Audiosysteme) always wanted to make his sound system reproduce music as naturally and purely as possible, and it was the malfunction of his preamp that led to him fashioning the first Burmester product.

Preamps on the market couldn’t satisfy Dieter Burmester’s high demands, so he built his own from parts of medical machines – the Burmester 777.

According to the firm, the 777 – so named because it was released in the seventh month in the year 1977 – remains a core element of Burmester's products today.

In 2007, Burmester even released a 30th anniversary update in its honour, a preamp called the Burmester 077. Did we like it? You could say that. In our review, we concluded, "If you can afford it, buy it right now."

McIntosh 50W-1 (1949) 

Before you write in, the amp pictured is the 50W2 (two pieces, which form one 50W-per-channel mono amp), McIntosh's fourth amplifier, circa 1951 – think Elvis and Frank Sinatra territory.

Why are we not showing you the original 50W-1? Well, photographs of hi-fi separates from 71 years ago are quite hard to come by, it turns out.

In 1946 Frank McIntosh, a design consultant for broadcast and TV stations, hired Gordon Gow to help him design a high power, low distortion amplifier for his clients. This amplifier would be the 50W-1.

It included McIntosh’s first patented circuit, the Unity Coupled Circuit – still used in the company's current products.

Musical Fidelity Dr. Thomas Power Amplifier (1982)

Musical Fidelity chose to keep the naming of its inaugural product simple with The Preamp. It was released in 1982 and quickly racked up rave reviews.

Evidently, the designer of its shoebox-style power partner, Dr. Martin Vincent Thomas, didn't like the idea of designing 'The Power Amp', and chose to take matters into his own hands when it came to establishing a moniker for Musical Fidelity's first power amplifier. Thus, the Dr. Thomas was born.

With its black acrylic casework and name (what a name!) illuminated in red on the fascia, the 100W+ Dr. Thomas power amplifier cut a fine figure – a great visual match for the similarly-styled Preamp.

It was also surprisingly powerful. Sadly, this casework design was dropped quite quickly – but what a lovely-looking setup it must have been.

Audiolab 8000A (1983)

Audiolab's 8000A caused quite a stir in the early 1980s thanks to its "superb finish and styling" – just take a look at our review (below).

Admittedly, today it looks a lot like a grey-tinged box with lots of dials, but it offered excellent sound and features, including bass and treble controls, a stereo balance control and a separate record selector, so you could "listen to one source while taping another". And the sound was smooth with "plenty of presence and detail".

Audiolab was formed in 1983 by Philip Swift and Derek Scotland, quickly earning worldwide acclaim in that same year with the 8000A – an integrated stereo amp that was both a natural ‘step-up’ from budget models of the time and, latterly, a classic hi-fi component.

Thanks to its fine build and features, the 8000A was great value for money too.

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Wow. So that’s what it feels like to fly an F18 Super Hornet. No, I haven’t just passed my training and gone for a quick spin around the block. I have actually just finished watching the training mission scene from Top Gun: Maverick.

Such was the impact of the action as it unfolded in front of me, it felt as though I was actually sitting on the lap of everyone’s favourite five foot seven inch fighter pilot, soaking it all up from the front seat.

I’ve got a ridiculously capable six-figure home cinema system to thank for that. Its location? The House of Sound, an incredible six-floor townhouse tucked away in New York’s Chelsea district.

It’s an incredible building, used by the McIntosh Group (now owned by Bose, following a 2024 takeover), the parent company of high-end audio brands McIntosh, Sonus Faber and Sumiko, to showcase their impressive wares to dealers, clients and enthusiasts alike.

Once owned by Lady Gaga, the building is spread over six floors and contains some of the most expensive hi-fi systems I have ever had the pleasure of listening to.

I’ll bring you more of that experience in an upcoming feature, but first I thought I’d share something on the dedicated home theatre, which is located on the ground floor.

As I walk through the door, I’m greeted by a monstrous 204-inch projector screen which is displaying the menu system to a Kaleidescape movie player.

Also catching my eye is a glowing tower of blue in the corner of the room. It looks like the kind of light arrangement that could be used to guide a jetliner to the runway on its approach to land, but it’s actually the huge stack of McIntosh amplification used to drive this mega home cinema system and custom install speakers, which come from Sonus Faber’s Arena line.

And when I say mega that’s exactly what I mean. The specifications are hugely impressive: 29 channels powered by 19 amplifiers capable of outputting 22,400W of power. The speakers and amplifiers cost $550,000 alone and that’s before you factor in the stunning $88,000 Sony GTZ380 projector and the other electronics used.

Out of those 29 channels, 16 (!) are Sonus Faber Arena S15 subwoofers – ten can be found under the screen with the remaining six at the back of the room. They each use four six-and-a-half-inch drivers arranged in two horizontally opposed pairs.

Sonus Faber claims that going down this route, instead of having just one, say, 15-inch driver in each box, allows it to move just as much air but better enables it to match the movements of the other drivers in the system. This makes for improved integration and more precise deployment of those low-frequency effects.

Now I’ve seen and heard Top Gun: Maverick on a wide variety of TVs, speaker systems and soundbars, but nothing quite prepared me for the adrenaline rush that I felt watching Mav fire up his afterburners and weave his way through a canyon against the clock.

Now I understand why Mark Weingarten, who was the actual production sound mixer for the movie, which also won an Oscar for best movie sound, found the experience particularly exhilarating when he attended an exclusive press screening at the venue.

Ricky Miranda, the Audio Experience Manager at House of Sound recalls, “he put his Oscar on the table and watched Maverick with the press and us, and I have not seen a bigger smile in this house since then. He told us that, outside of the mastering studio, this was the best place he’d watched his movie.”

Ricky has had an interesting route in to this industry himself. He’s worked in hi-fi for about a decade – but, ironically, started out as fighter jet mechanic. Having worked a few other roles, he got into hi-fi via Sennheiser, then Bang & Olufsen and has been with McIntosh for five years.

He sums up the listening space quite nicely, “This room is really special – I tend to refer to it more as a cinema than home theatre – it really is that next level of experience. It’s like a fine-dining meal; once you’ve experienced it, you can’t go back.”

It’s difficult not to agree. While you would expect it to go big and go loud, it’s the way the system communicates movement, combining an unbelievable level of detail and dynamics which impresses and syncs up perfectly with all the on-screen action.

As Maverick grabs the controls and weaves the plane through the canyon, you can almost feel each input, and how much effort he’s putting in to get the plane to do his bidding. The sense of drama that oozes out of the scene is almost tangible.

The rumbles coming through the system were enough to make my seat shake, but it’s not all about the amount of bass. It was also ridiculously tightly defined, with not an ounce of fat. Fitting, then, given the movie we were watching, that it was deployed with the precision of a laser-guided bomb.

What’s even more impressive is that I was sitting in the back corner of the room, next to all the McIntosh electronics. You wouldn’t expect this to be the sweet spot for all the action, but to its huge credit, the system still made me feel fully immersed in the action, which was a testament to how the guys had the speaker system configured.

It’s the kind of place you could lose yourself for not just a couple of hours but a whole evening and well into the early hours, which is exactly what one musical celebrity has done “Questlove, the drummer from the Roots, has rented us out twice for the SuperBowl and once for The Oscars,” says Ricky. Not a bad way to spend an evening, I think you’ll agree.

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Happy Monday and welcome to the latest entry into our weekly Rewind hi-fi and home cinema news digest.

With the Apple launch event happening and Bristol Hi-Fi Show rapidly approaching it was a busy week for our team of hi-fi and home cinema experts. We saw everything from surprise launches from hi-fi heavyweights to a new own-brand TV from Sky.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Esoteric low-powered amp cast a spell on our reviewers

Last week our reviewers had the pleasure of reviewing the Esoteric F-01/PS-01F, which is an incredibly interesting beast, offering 30-watt-per-channel despite costing £22,000 / $18,000 / AU$30,000. But there’s actually a good reason for this, with Esoteric having designed the Class A circuit this way to avoid overheating, and holistically improve audio quality.

Running the unit with our standard reference set-up the move clearly paid off with the Esoteric F-01 amplifier and PS-01F outboard power supply combining to deliver excellent detail resolution, class-leading refinement and wonderfully expressive dynamics regardless of which test track we threw at it.

Read our full Esoteric F-01/PS-01F review

TEAC’s new power amp packs a lot of sonic punch into a tiny package

Last week TEAC launched its new AP-507 power amplifier. The unit is the latest entry into the firm’s Reference 500 series, following the HA-507 analogue headphone amp/preamplifier and UD-507 DAC/preamp.

The main selling point is that it packs a lot of power and features into its tiny frame. Highlights include a new-generation Hypex NCOREx power amplifier module that has been custom-tuned by TEAC's engineers, and a fully balanced circuit. The latter features TEAC's proprietary 'dual-mono buffer amplifier' which aims to lower distortion and improve efficiency.

Read the full story: TEAC's premium power amplifier boasts high performance and flexible modes from a letter-sized footprint

We had an opening play with Sky’s new TV

Last week our home cinema editor, Tom Parsons, fought past the crowds to get an opening look and listen to the new Sky Glass Gen 2 TV. The TV’s an interesting beast as it features a basic QLED panel, rather than a Mini LED, as had been expected. Most of the improvements focus on its 3.1.2 Dolby Atmos sound system, which Sky claims “removes the need for a soundbar”.

Read our Sky Glass Gen 2 hands-on

McIntosh launched an “audiophile-grade” streaming DAC

McIntosh aimed to let hi-fi buyers have their cake and eat it, launching its new DS2000 Streaming DAC last week. The firm claims the unit will offer audiophiles who already have decent power amplifiers and preamplifiers the high-end streaming component they need to complete the set-up. As well as support for all the streaming platforms you’d expect, the unit has some pretty impressive hardware. This is headlined by a quad balanced 8-channel, 32-bit Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC). McIntosh claims the DAC will offer a wealth of benefits when streaming, including "huge dynamic range" and “superior sound reproduction."

Read the full story: McIntosh's new streaming DAC promises audiophile performance with wireless convenience

Apple is set to launch new product

Apple confirmed an event set to take place this Thursday where it will unveil "a new member of the family" to fans. While we'd love to see a new HomePod 3 or HomePod Mini, all signs currently suggest it will be a new iPhone SE 4 that launches at the event.

Read the full story: Apple's next cheap iPhone could launch this week according to new rumours

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What do you prioritise: sound quality or convenience? It's a question you have to ask yourself before you go about buying any sound system. McIntosh claims that now you can have both, thanks to the launch of its DS200 streaming DAC.

It's aimed at users who already have decent power amplifiers and preamplifiers and just need a high-end streaming component to complete the setup. For them, the DS200 is the final link in the chain.

It works with all the major streaming apps and technologies, like Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth and Google Cast. Ethernet is also onboard for a wired connection, and it can be voice controlled via Google Assistant (as long as you have another Google Assistant-compatible device on the same network). It's Roon Ready and has Roon Tested certification, too.

So what about this quality that McIntosh promises? Inside is a quad balanced 8-channel, 32-bit Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) which McIntosh claims delivers a "huge dynamic range and low distortion", aiming to deliver "superior sound reproduction" from your digital music library.

Streaming aside, it has eight digital audio inputs that support hi-res audio including DSD512 and DXD up to 384kHz via USB, and 24-bit/192kHz via coax and optical inputs. The HDMI ARC socket converts your TV's Dolby and DTS multi-channel audio into two-channel audio.

There are also balanced and unbalanced analogue inputs, allowing for seamless integration with an existing audio setup. And while it's factory-set in fixed output mode, it can be switched to variable output for connecting directly to a power amplifier, in order to control the volume in a digital audio setup.

And from a design perspective, it's instantly recognisable as a McIntosh product, thanks to its black glass front face plate, rotary control knobs, illuminated logo and custom-machined aluminium end caps.

The McIntosh DS200 Streaming DAC will cost £5890 / $4000 / €5990 (around AU$11,700) and it goes on sale in March.

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McIntosh has unveiled its latest AV processor, the MX200, which promises to deliver a potent combination of high-end audio processing and room correction technology for discerning home cinema enthusiasts.

Set to hit authorised McIntosh dealers this month with a price tag of $6,000 (UK prices have yet to be released), the MX200 can process up to 11.2 channels of audio, making it suitable for a wide range of surround sound set-ups – from basic 5.1 configurations to more elaborate 7.2.4 Dolby Atmos arrangements, if that’s more your jam.

On the video front, the processor supports 8K/60fps and 4K/120fps passthrough, along with a smattering of HDR formats including Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and HLG. This futureproofs it for compatibility with the latest 8K TVs and next-gen gaming consoles, while rec.2020 colour space support should ensure vibrant, true-to-life visuals.

One of the MX200's standout features is the inclusion of Dirac Live Full Bandwidth room correction software – a notable upgrade from the Audyssey MultEQ XT32 found in its predecessor, the MX100. Dirac’s advanced audio processing tool analyses room acoustics and adjusts the audio output accordingly, promising clearer and more accurate sound reproduction, regardless of room characteristics. It’s a big selling point for those who want to squeeze the absolute best possible sound from their set-up, with as little hassle as possible. 

Under the hood, audiophiles will also appreciate the presence of seven discrete 32-bit DACs, which should ensure pristine audio quality for both stereo and multichannel content. The processor also supports immersive audio formats in the form of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, for a more immersive listening experience.

Connectivity-wise, the MX200 offers four HDMI inputs and one output with eARC support – a configuration that, while sufficient for most set-ups, might feel a tad limited for users with multiple source devices. On the plus side, it does include a range of analogue and digital inputs, including a dedicated phono input for turntable enthusiasts.

Aesthetically, the MX200 maintains McIntosh's signature design DNA, featuring an aluminium and glass front panel adorned with two silver-ringed control knobs. Its 2U rack-mountable form factor should appeal to custom installers, while built-in support for Control4 and Crestron systems makes it a versatile option for smart home integration.

While the $6,000 price point positions the MX200 firmly in higher-than-entry-level territory, it represents a compelling option for home cinema aficionados seeking top-tier audio processing and room correction capabilities in one package. The MX200 is set to land at McIntosh dealers later this month, with specific UK pricing and release dates to be confirmed.

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McIntosh has launched a Bluetooth hi-fi device positioned as the choice for audiophiles.

The McIntosh MB25 "Bluetooth Transceiver" costs £850 / $600 / AU$TBC, so it certainly has an audiophile-grade price tag. It promises to add Bluetooth to "virtually any high-end audio system from any era", thanks to its versatile range of physical connections. These include balanced and unbalanced stereo inputs and outputs, and digital coaxial and optical inputs and outputs.

That means you can stream your vinyl and CDs to your classic speakers positioned throughout the home, and play music wirelessly from a phone or tablet over Bluetooth. 

It follows the MB20 from 2021, and adds an illuminated front glass panel, the ability to select the desired input in transmit mode, and power controls so it can turn on or off with the rest of a McIntosh audio system.

The Bluetooth 5.0 onboard isn't the latest version of the technology, but it does support high-fidelity codecs like AAC and aptX HD. And it's equipped with a high-performance 32-bit DAC for receiver mode and a premium Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) for transmitter mode.

There's no getting around that price. Just last week, FiiO launched a similar device (with added full wireless streaming) for under £100 / $100. Though if you have a classic system, and McIntosh's sound quality is as good as it promises, you might find the MB25 Bluetooth transmitter/receiver worth the extra outlay.

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Find out how to add a streamer to your hi-fi system

Sydney's premier hi-fi and video show is now over for 2025, brought to you by Australian Hi-Fi, What Hi-Fi? and Sound+Image magazines. Dates for the 2025 Show were:
Friday 4 April 2025, 2:00pm - 8:00pm
Saturday 5 April 2025, 10:00am - 6:00pm
Sunday 6 April 2025, 10:00am - 4:00pm

Every ticket purchased also got a free copy of Australian Hi-Fi's latest print issue including the full Show Guide, on arrival at the Show while stocks lasted. For best advance ticket prices:

VENUE: the Sydney Central Hotel managed by Ascott – a 4.5-star boutique Sydney hotel in Thomas St, Haymarket, a short walk from Central Station in an easily accessible CBD location right in the heart of the city.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS: Here you can see the pre-show showcase of (nearly!) everything at the 2025 Show – the latest and greatest in hi-fi and AV, giving visitors the opportunity to see and hear a range of products from all around the world, the world's most renowned hi-fi and AV brands including high-end audio, TVs, projectors, headphones, home theatre systems, amplifiers, streamers, wireless and Bluetooth speakers and everything in between!

Check back to the Show's dedicated webpage for all the latest information and news... or follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

PRIZES: Head here for details of prizes that could be won at the Show, using the competition card received on arrival! Winners will be posted here once contacted. Prizes included Onkyo's brilliant new Hi-Fi Network Stereo Receiver, a Polk Audio soundbar system, Denon wireless earbuds, and in one of Yamaha's rooms a chance to win the award-winning R-N1000A hi-fi amplifier.

Confirmed 2025 Show Rooms...

GROUND FLOOR

SYNERGY AUDIO VISUAL
Ground Floor, Elizabeth Bay Room
Last year’s show winner for Best Sound is back in the same spot, bringing the best of the Melbourne distributor’s brands, which include McIntosh, Sonus Faber, Rega, REL, Ruark, Advance Paris, Chord Company, Quadraspire and more. While featuring Synergy’s full demo kit list would fill a whole page here, highlights from this kit-brimming room include Audio Research’s new REF 300M monoblocks, Rega’s Naia turntable, Sonus Faber’s II Cremonese Ex3me, Aurender’s N30SA streamer/server and Sugden’s LA-4, PA-4 and SPA-4 amplification.

NAIM & FOCAL
Ground Floor, Watson's Bay Room
Westan Australia and Melbourne's Premium Sound store will be bringing the incredible Focal Diva Utopia speakers to the Australian Hi-Fi Show – floorstanders which combine the wisdoms and technologies of both Naim and Focal together in a pair of wireless connected active loudspeakers

The Focal Divas have inputs including HDMI eARC, optical USB, and RCA analogue, and they use the latest UWB technology to achieve a wireless lossless 96kHz/24-bit resolution wireless connection between the two loudspeakers (or 192kHz/24bits with a supplied cable link).

Naim's Pulse Platform for active systems links this full connectivity with impressive power upgradeability capacity, easy to control with the dedicated app, remote control, or Google/Apple voice assistants.

Elegant and modern, the Focal Divas represent the future of high-end sound – beautiful, and yet simple. Don't miss this room at the show!

YAMAHA MUSIC
Ground floor, Lavender Bay Room
Completing what will be an utterly unmissable floor at the Australian Hi-Fi Show 2025 is Yamaha, which will come armed with its latest loudspeakers – the NS-2000A, NS-800A and NS-600A – driven by the range's matching R-N2000A and R-N1000A streaming amplifiers, including a special competition! Yamaha tells us to expect a general music – not just hi-fi – room theme that features instruments as well as one of its self-playing Clavinova electronic pianos in the foyer outside. Yamaha’s head-fi prowess will also be showcased in a separate room on the ninth floor.

LEVEL 1

VIVID AUDIO & HALCRO
Level 1, Port Jackson Room
Avation is bringing the incredible Vivid Audio speakers to the Sydney Show: witness Laurence Dickie's legendary designs including the GIYA G1 Spirit, the ultimate Giya, with its peerless pedigree, irreproachable technology, and spectacular sound quality.

You'll hear the music from the top of the stairs: don't miss Avation and Vivid Audio!

MARCH AUDIO
Level 1, Farm Cove Room
Western Australia's March Audio has been in the top 3 Best Sounding Rooms two years in a row – despite its system being a fraction of the price of some other systems. They will be back for 2025 with their latest speakers, amplifiers and cables, all proudly hand-built in Albany, WA, delivering “superb technical performance and sound at modest prices”. And for 2025 they're moving up to one of the big ballrooms on ticketing level 1, so we can hear what March can do in an even larger space!

• Get your early-bird tickets for the Australian Hi-Fi Show in Sydney 2025 now!

WAVETRAIN CINEMAS with BenQ
Level 1, Bennelong Point Room
After 2024's incredible demonstration of home cinema image and sound quality, Wavetrain is returning to one of the big rooms on the entry ticketing level, promising to up the stakes still more of the very latest developments in Elementi digital active speakers, plus BenQ projection. Whether you're a hi-fi or an AV fan, we're confident that the sound in this demonstration will blow you away!

BEYERDYNAMIC HEADPHONES (Synchronised Technology)
Level 1, Concourse east side
beyerdynamic’s Australian distributor Synchronised Technology will be at the Show loaded with fine headphones from the German brand's diverse, budget-spanning catalogue. Hear the sounds and discover the reason that professionals choose beydynamic for Broadcast, Film and Stage applications, and how those technologies transfer into stunning consumer headphones for home and away.

BOOMERANG RECORDS BRINGS THE VINYL!
Level 1, Concourse: Sunday only!
While you're enjoying the stunning sounds of the Show, you're sure to be inspired to take home a little black magic of your own by riffling through the racks of Boomerang Records' extensive record fair on the Level 1 Concourse near the Show Entry.

They have everything on offer from high-quality secondhanders to audiophile Half Speed Master recordings - and as you can see, everything from ABBA through to Metal!

Chat to the Boomerang team while you're browsing – they're a font of vinyl pressing wisdom and experience!

PLEASE NOTE: Boomerang Records will be at the Show on Sunday, but not on Friday or Saturday, owing to a prior commitment.

LOWER GROUND

LEICA CAMERA AUSTRALIA
Lower Ground Level, Spring Cove Room
It's movie time! The Leica Cine Play leverages the German company's world-leading imaging skills for this state-of-the-art, compact, and versatile smart mini projector "designed for Premium Enthusiasts and Tech Pursuers"!. Combining timeless design, superior optical performance, integrated powerful sound, and user-friendly operation, it offers a high-quality cinema experience for home and outdoor entertainment without permanent installations. Its innovative features, including a Full Auto Alignment system, VIDAA smart operation, and a unique Leica Summicron zoom lens, ensure hassle-free setup, flexible positioning, and exceptional 4K resolution.

It's excellence in portable cinema – head down in the lifts to the Lower Ground for your Leica experience!.

LEVEL 9

SECRET CHORD ANALOGUE
Level 9, Room 1
"As our name suggests, we’re about analogue sound," says Secret Chord Analogue, returning to the Show after delivering one of the busiest rooms at the 2024 show, featuring not only "the world’s finest vinyl record cleaning method", Record Restore, but also the new, Elekit TU-888860 Watts-per-channel tube monoblock amplifier.

This analogue sound path is perfectly served by its high sensitivity, single driver loudspeakers: the new SCA Wollemi will this year be heard beside the magnificent open-baffle Confluence loudspeaker system. This year there will also be a full Secret Chord Analogue system, fully installed. And for those serious about protecting their record collections, come and see Vinyl Storage Solutions' impressive portfolio of record covers and sleeves, now available in Australia from Secret Chord Analogue.

AUDIO MARKETING / LEN WALLIS AUDIO
Level 9, Room 2
Following a fabulous system performance at last year’s show with Musical Fidelity at the core, you can expect another perfectly matched and tuned system from the teams at Len Wallis Audio and Audio Marketing. There will be a particular focus on Triangle’s gorgeous and versatile Capella active speaker system, as well as Musical Fidelity’s all-new M6xTT turntable, which brings the high-end engineering DNA and multi-acrylic structure of the majestic M8xTT model to a more accommodating form and price point.

MICROPHASE AUDIO DESIGN
Level 9, Room 3
"Crafted in Australia with French flair, our core design forte is in small speakers crafted to sound incredibly good on their own and have a reputation to have one of the best midrange in the World. They reproduce instruments timbres with accuracy and speed, thanks to their very inert marine grade birch plywood cabinet and bespoke drivers mostly sourced from famous French manufacturer Audax.

It was case proven at the 2024 Show with the latest Tower 4 design, so what M.A.D. wonders will arrive in 2025? More news as it comes..

MASIMO CONSUMER AUSTRALIA
Level 9, Rooms 4, 5 & 6
With the promise of exciting new and current favourite products on demonstration from Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Marantz, Polk and Classé, no wonder Masimo is taking three rooms on the ninth floor to demonstrate its many hi-fi and AV sensations!

Naturally, Bowers’ iconic 800 Series Signature loudspeakers will be present, as will Marantz’s brand-new Model 10 amplifier, the first available component in its latest reference Model 10 Series and, says the maker, “the most powerful one-box amplifier Marantz has ever made”.

Always bringing something special to the show, Masimo's team delivers not only top-sounding rooms but also their enthusiasm, expertise and depth of knowledge that allow showgoers to get all their hi-fi questions answered, while soaking in stunning tunes.

AUDIO MAGIC & KRISPY AUDIO
Level 9, Room 8
At the last Sydney show, Audio Magic and Krispy Audio delivered one of our very favourite-sounding rooms (shown above) with the cunningly chamfered Kudos Audio Titan 808 speakers effortlessly rolling out the tunes under the command of Copland’s CTA407 integrated tube amplifier, almost invisible in black at the top of one rack, while a VPI Scout turntable topped the other, above the very new Manley Oasis phono stage from California, which replaces the highly regarded Chinook. Digital tunes came from the versatile Lumin P1 streamer, DAC and pre-amplifier. Glorious.

So what wonders will they bring in 2025? While their plans are still being finalised, in them so far is an Esoteric SACD player, plus WBT connectors, Little Fwend tonearm lifters and Vermouth Audio cables. Elite or what!

HEY NOW HI-FI
Level 9, Room 9
Geoff Haynes’ hi-fi store in St Kilda, Melbourne, which has been purpose-designed as a contemporary apartment incorporating a media room and home theatre to enable realistic and comfortable demonstrations in a typical domestic setting, is relocating to the Sydney Show armed with a diverse selection of speakers, electronics and accessories that will no doubt appeal to a wide audience.

Hey Now Hi-Fi stocks a wide variety of brands, with wares including Fischer & Fischer loudspeakers, Aspire Audio Racks and Ypsilon amplifiers, plus kit from Sutherland, Airtight, Metronome, Dohmann, Mutech and Supertrac.

Head to room nine to discover what Haynes has in store for you.

RICHTER
Level 9, Room 11
The legendary Australian speaker marque will be showing off its highly acclaimed S6plus models for those who have read the reviews and are eagerly awaiting to hear the speakers in action, or are interested in a repeat demonstration. Richter will also be blessing show attendees with a sneak-peek special treat: a near-final prototype of the first model in its forthcoming premium Series 7 Special Edition range, the Dragon S7SE. The Dragon will be accompanied by the Wizard S7SE and Excalibur S7SE when the range goes on sale later this year, with the final production speakers featuring an upgraded cabinet design and some very minor crossover tweaks over the pair you will see in room 11.

SERHAN SWIFT
Level 9, Room 10
The Australian speaker gurus always deliver one of the Show's best sounds, and we await word of their plans for 2025 will breaths bated! Pictured are the mµ3F floorstanders, which will be alongside the award-winning mµ2 MkII standmount, under the total control of the brilliant Boulder 866 integrated amplifier with DAC, providing Roon-ready streaming. Don't miss this room!

MAXMEDIA
Level 9, Room 16
Maxmedia returns to the Australian Hi-Fi Show with a room highlighting "what we call a modest system for Audiophiles, but what we think is Audio Heaven for many"! There will be two sets of speakers, the standmount Piega Coax 411 from Switzerland, and the Diamond 30Mk2 floorstanders from Pylon Audio's award-winning range from Poland, a perfect fusion of technical expertise and passion for music. The source will be Innuos, with the new Zen Next Gen Server and Streamer, and power for the system provided by the Fezz Audio Olympia, an incredible $11,999 amplifier featuring upgradeable card slots and tubes, together with the partnering Equinox Prestige DAC – all linked together with Viablue cabling solutions. Don't miss this European audio feast in the Corridor of Sound!

SENNHEISER
Level 9, Room 18
Sennheiser’s headphone haven is giving visitors the opportunity to temporarily isolate themselves from the buzz of floor nine and bask in the musical playback of one (or more!) of the many reputable brand’s many over-ear and in-ear treasures. The 500, 600 and 800 Series home headphones reliably deliver competitive sound and benchmark value, and we for one will be lining up to hear its latest HD 505 (pictured above) and HD 620S models.

PANTHEONE AUDIO
Level 9, Room 19
A late entry at number 19, head to the left in the Corridor of Sound to meet Pantheone Audio's uniquely-crafted high-end wireless speakers – 'part sculpture, all sound!', as the Australian company says, presenting these luxury sculptural speakers which redefine luxury audio. Hand-crafted in resin, Pantheone's wireless speakers epitomise the company's philosophy of ART + FORM + SOUND. Don't miss this room!

MAGENTA AUDIO
Level 9, Room 20
Dutch & Dutch's groundbreaking 8c active speakers, which we called "phenomenally good" in our Australian Hi-Fi magazine review, are just one example of the many jewels in Magenta Audio's crown. The distributor is no stranger to discerning high-end hi-fi, with the likes of Lindemann, Halcro, PS Audio, Engstrom Sound and Moonriver Audio under its umbrella, plus US manufacturer Bricasti, who it took on earlier this year.

YAMAHA MUSIC AUSTRALIA
Level 9, Room 21
We’re delighted that Yamaha is taking an additional room at the show specifically to highlight its headphone expertise in a unique preview of a new addition to the Yamaha Head-Fi range too. The Show will be the first chance for people worldwide to experience these new headphones from Yamaha. But other than the teaser picture above, it's all under top secret wraps until just before the Show, so there’s only one way to find out...

DANA ELECTRO ACOUSTICS
Level 9, Rooms 22 & 23
New South Wales’ Dana Electro Acoustics specialises in active loudspeakers, vibration isolation supports, interconnect cables and more. Its [act:eve] range of active speakers have the quirky model names to match – such as [zen:ter]! – and comprise pairs that use vacuum tube amplifiers for the main driver while others use only solid-state devices. Its [iso:form] isolation platform comes in two forms (carbon fibre and wood composite) and three sizes, while its OPEN interconnects, designed for reference stereo and AV setups, marry pure silver conductance with Teflon insulation.

SPECTRAFLORA AUSTRALIA
Level 9, Room 24
SpectraFlora's loudspeakers are handcrafted in Victoria, Australia using sustainably sourced Australian timber, and precision design using technologies that promise a uniquely open and transparent sound.

The lastest design, Celata 88 by SpectraFlora, has cabinets of hoop pine plywood, a native Australian species sustainably grown in Queensland plantations, while the horns – which combine the powerful dynamics of a horn with the even horizontal dispersion and transparency of a waveguide – are available in either hoop pine plywood or solid timber which is plantation-grown or salvaged, such as plantation-grown Northern Silky Oak, Southern Silky Oak salvaged from Melbourne's eastern suburbs, and red ironbark salvaged from a former RAAF base in Dubbo.

Using a crossover design perfected through 11 months of measurements, modelling and listening tests, and twin horizontally-opposed slot-loaded subwoofers in the cabinet base, these are new speakers not to be missed.

Put them on your tour of Australia's best, at the Sydney show!

PLENTY MORE TO COME
Come back soon to check the latest room additions for the 2025 Show!
Check the Show's dedicated webpage for all the latest information and news... or follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

• All the news on the Australian Hi-Fi Show Sydney 2025 is here!

• Check out our Australian What Hi-Fi? homepage for everything Australian Hi-fi and Sound+Image

Our thanks to all who voted via their competition cards at the Australian Hi-Fi Show 2024 in Sydney, the three-day celebration of hi-fi and home cinema brought to you by Australian Hi-Fi, What Hi-Fi? and Sound+Image magazines, by Future Publishing.

You showed your discernment and discrimination when voting, too. It's very common for most votes for Best Sound to go to the biggest rooms with the biggest kit. But voters here also highlighted the value of rooms that hosted more affordable hi-fi, showing that it's also about bang for your buck, as well as just bucks.

Enough preamble – who got the votes? Here are the top scoring rooms.

1: WINNER: Synergy Audio Visual – McIntosh & Sonus faber

Sonus faber’s Stradivari sequel, aptly paired with McIntosh’s MC1.25KW monos, 1200 Series digital components and MT5 turntable, as well as Aurender’s N20 streamer and REL’s massive No.32 subs. That was the formula for the room voted No. 1 at the Show – courtesy of distributor Synergy Audio. 

The room seemed permanently packaged with listeners throughout the Show, listening to the enthralling music being produced from the Sonus fabers, of which the company's chief of design, Livio Cucuzza, says: "We wanted to ensure that the new Stradivari represented all the advancements Sonus faber has made in sound technology to date, while still keeping the brand’s classic external look and feel." Mission accomplished, we reckon.

But it was not only this high-end system which drew the vote. The Synergy room had a second more ‘real-world’ system with Advance Paris (a French brand new to Australia) paired with Mo-Fi source point 10 speakers also landed key votes which saw this room rise to the top. The high-end and the real world together in one room was the perfect equation – congratulations to Synergy for bringing top performance from its top brands.

JOINT SECOND: PuraSound – AlsyVox & Aries Cerat

Up in the Corridor of Sound on the Show's 9th floor, Room 922 won the second-highest collection of votes, for PuraSound's demonstration of the bewitching AlsyVox full-range ribbon loudspeakers from Italy, backed by the Aries Cerat Aperio integrated amplifier and huge Ithaka ladder DACs, and tunes from Pink Faun's 2.16 Ultra digital server/streamer.

This sound was one of the biggest buzzes around showgoers, and we absolutely agree: the sound was thrilling. Congrats on a spectacular second place to PuraSound.

JOINT SECOND: Richter 

Richter's system was a fraction of the price of most systems at the show – yet showgoers were savvy enough to vote up its performance, precisely for making such thrilling sounds at such relatively affordable prices. The latest Wizard S6 Plus floorstanders were sounding wonderful, despite being priced at AU$2899, among the least expensive floorstanders at the show. They ran from a Bluesound streamer with Musical Fidelity amplification. 

But equally intriguing was the demonstration of the new Unicorn centre speaker, or rather LCR speaker, since it can be configured for left or right or vertical use. Its tone was such a perfect match for the Wizards that it may herald a new age of AV as well as hi-fi stereo performance for the Australian brand. Top work on a top room.

JOINT FOURTH: March Audio

March Audio was another room where sound quality was paired with affordable performance. In their ground floor suite the March Audio Ukkonen AWG floorstanders and Sointuva WG standmounters were driven by the new Pre1 preamp and flagship P801 power amp, providing an oasis of calm and beautiful music – just the thing the March team needed after transport issues left them driving their gear over from Western Australia, emu incident included. 

Their reward is their recognition here: the speakers are $10,000 the pair, the power amps $3300 each, yet the room drew showgoers' votes over systems costing 10 times as much.  

JOINT FOURTH: Yamaha 5000 Series

Yamaha had two rooms on the 9th floor, and both rooms received votes, but it was the furthest room featuring the 5000 Series hi-fi system which gathered enough to put Yamaha into fourth place – even though the AU$13k 'Giant & Tremendous' GT-5000 turntable arrived late, so that on the Friday the 5000 Series pre-power and speakers were fed from a Tidal stream, before the system returned to all-analogue activities led by the vastly vinyl spinner. 

Congrats on a great pair of rooms to Yamaha – with showgoers further attracted by the biggest prize on offer at the Show, a pair of Yamaha's YH-5000SE orthodynamic headphones, valued at $7499!

6: MAXMEDIA with Avantgarde Acoustics, Innuos, Leica, Piega & more

MaxMedia had one of the Show's top spots, right at the top of the entrance stairs, the perfect place to wow the punters with the giant orange horns of the all-new Mezzo G3 active loudspeaker system flown in from Germany. But this was a cleverly organised space with multiple systems, and the alternate system of InnuOS Pulse player, Fezz Audio’s tube Equinox DAC and Titania stereo amp driving Piega loudspeakers also gathered votes from impressed showgoers, while Leica's Cine 1 'Cinema TV' impressed the eyes as well as the ears.

A great room, well-organised and chosen by many as their Sound of the Show. 

ALSO HIGH IN THE VOTES...

Masimo Consumer had three rooms at the Show, and all three gained votes (if we combined them, Masimo would rise up the rankings, but the choice is for Best Sounding Room, so we don't do that!). While the Denon-Polk system and the 9th floor Bowers & Wilkins 702 S3 Signature speakers both got votes, it was unsurprisingly the B&W 800 Series demonstration pictured above, with Classé amplification, that received the most cards voting it Best Sounding Room. 

Wavetrain Cinemas' astonishing home cinema demonstration also scored highly for the combination of BenQ projection and Elementi Audio sound through three clips: Barbie, Bond and The Greatest Showman. It's often hard for cinema rooms to get votes against hi-fi systems, so additional kudos to this top demonstration.

With Duntech's latest Princess speakers, legendary Halcro amplification, and the unimpeachable  source of a Döhmann Helix turntable, we would have been surprised indeed if the all-Aussie supersystem on Level 1 did not appear high on the voting lists. Some showgoers returned time and again to experience more tunes through this system, and the Princesses proved themselves a stunning new design.

Indie Hi-Fi's single-seat demonstration on the Lower Ground also pulled in a wodge of voting cards, with much mention of the Wilson Audio SabrinaX speakers under the control of AGD Productions’ Andante DAC/preamp and Audion mono amps, with tunes from Grimm Audio's MU1 streamer (and Roon server).

Editors' Choice

All the Best Sounding Rooms above were chosen by public vote using the Competition Cards which are given to each Show visitor. We also asked our Editors to make their pick, a choice which always sets them squirming – but once duress was applied, they supplied the following...

Australian Hi-Fi Editor Becky Roberts chose PuraSound, Room 922:
"Please forgive the cliché but the clarity and texture of the violin that came out of the Alsyvox ribbon speakers when I visited Purasound's room really did, it seemed, resemble a violinist playing live in the room. Thinking about it, considering each speaker's size, I can't be sure there wasn't one hiding behind it! Unsurprisingly then, vocal delivery through the system (which also featured Aries Cerat and Pink Faun electronics) proved equally absorbing."

Sound+Image Editor Jez Ford chose Wavetrain Cinemas, on Level 1:
"I'm choosing here entirely on goosebumps, which swept across me during the third of three excellently chosen demo excerpts here, and did so on both my visits. The first clip was from 'Barbie' – primarily to show the colour palette of the BenQ W5800 laser projector. The second was from a Bond film, demonstrating the Elementi audio system's ability to immerse and slam with enormous force. The third clip was the song 'Never Enough' from 'The Great Showman', and here the Elementis revealed themselves as great hi-fi speakers as well as great home cinema, with a vast open and thrilling sound, and clearly headroom still to spare. Best home cinema demo I've ever heard outside of a dedicated room. And I've heard a few."  

Our congratulations not only to those who received the most votes, but also to all the other exhibitors as well. We have rarely experienced a Show where so many rooms were on song, and in which so much time could be spent sinking into the wonderful music being delivered by the systems presented. We thank you all. 

Stay tuned for news of next year's Show!

Canadian audio manufacturer Classé has unveiled its latest high-end preamplifier. The new Classé Delta Pre MK II builds on the groundwork laid by its predecessor, the Delta MK I, and introduces an "extensively upgraded digital front-end" which aims to bring "imperceptible levels of distortion and truly world-class performance".

Central to the MK II is the multiroom streaming platform HEOS, a service already used by the likes of Marantz and Denon. The HEOS platform gives access to audio streaming from Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer, while the new preamp can also find and play files stored on your local network, such as from a NAS drive. Fear not; AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect are also built-in and ready to go.

The supported file format list is extensive, with the MK II capable of handling WAV, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, DSD and even MQA. The range of inputs is just as impressive, including dual XLR, twin RCA and dual phono inputs (MM/MC), five XLR and five RCA outputs, two USB, three coaxial and three optical digital inputs. There's also an ethernet port for wired internet connectivity and a headphone output for plugging in your favourite cans, plus two subwoofer outputs. If you desire TV connectivity, you can upgrade your preamp for an additional cost, adding an optional 4K board with four HDMI inputs and a single HDMI output.

The twin hearts of the machine are the dual 32-bit/384kHz AKM DACs, with the Delta MK II capable of giving hi-res support for files up to PCM 384kHz/32-bit, DSD512 and, as mentioned above, MQA. 

If you already own an original Delta Pre and you're jealous that you might be missing out on the fancy new second-gen model, you can modify your existing unit via the separately available Upgrade Kit (£2600 / €3000 / $3000) which elevates your module to the new MK II specification. 

If you're simply keen to buy a brand new preamplifier, the Classé Delta Pre MK II is available now from selected retailers, priced at £11,000 / $12,000 / €12,000.

MORE:

McIntosh wants you to achieve "audio nirvana" with its "masterpiece" preamps

Our guide to the best stereo amplifiers you can buy 

Best phono preamps: budget to high-end phono stages tried and tested

High-end audio manufacturer McIntosh has announced the launch of two new preamplifiers which, to use its own words, are the company's "latest masterpieces". The C55 solid-state preamp arrives alongside the C2800 vacuum tube preamp, with both units aimed at "the most discerning audiophiles" by combining "cutting-edge technology with timeless design".

Each model comes equipped with a pretty whopping 16 inputs made up of seven at line level (including three balanced XLR), two phono and seven digital connections. The C55 and C2800 can both accommodate almost any source you can think of, including a turntable via their adjustable phono inputs, with both offering HDMI, twin optical and coax, USB, Mcintosh's proprietary MCT connection and an ethernet port, not to mention low pass and subwoofer outputs.

The C55 and C2800 naturally provide serious flexibility for connecting to compatible power amplifiers, offering three sets of stereo balanced and unbalanced outputs. Both have been designed to allow for bi-amping, while a "processor loop" lets you seamlessly integrate an external processor if you so choose. Premium-grade DAC technology, meanwhile, promises "exquisite digital audio conversion" no matter the source played.

In addition to the on-unit front controls and the provided remote, you can connect the C2800 or the C55 to your home network and control your high-end preamp via the onboard McIntosh Connect app, compatible with Android and Apple devices. Using the app, you'll be able to receive firmware updates, access key functionalities and personalise your listening experience from a single platform.

Distinct from the C2800, the new C55 has been designed specifically for the high-end audiophile audience and takes on the mantle of its predecessor, the C53. Boasting McIntosh's precision engineering, the C55 features an 8-band analogue equaliser for greater musical precision for creating a personalised audio experience.

The C2800 vacuum tube model, meanwhile, is described by McIntosh as embodying "a fusion of audio passion and engineering precision" that has been "crafted to delight even the most discerning music lovers".  At the heart of the C2800 is its vacuum tube circuitry, developed to reduce noise and distortion as much as possible. The unit's vacuum tubes offer a listening experience that "exceeds expectations", whereas electronic bass and treble circuits let users adjust the volume of high and low frequencies in 1dB increments. 

The C55 solid state preamplifier and the C2800 vacuum tube preamplifier are available via authorised McIntosh dealers, retailing at £11,995 / €11,990 / $9000.

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McIntosh's 75th-anniversary monoblock amp aims to set a new industry standard for power

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McIntosh is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion the US audio brand has revealed what it claims is one of its most powerful amplifiers to date. The new MC2.1KW Monoblock Power Amplifier has a tri-chassis construction, a whopping great £59,995 / €64.990 / $50,000 price tag and boasts 2000 watts of power to give what McIntosh teases will be "a new industry standard for power and amplification".

The McIntosh power amp is a three-box setup: the audio circuitry is split between two boxes, while the third (the one with the blue meter) houses the single-ended RCA and balanced XLR inputs and speaker outputs. The multiple speaker outputs are not for tri-wiring; they are marked 2 ohms, 4 ohms and 8 ohms, so owners can plug their speakers into the one closest to the given nominal impedance values of the speakers.

Building on the legacy of 2005's MC2KW, this powerful new monoblock promises serious sonic upgrades which aim to push the boundaries of what a model at this level can do. This latest amp offers a large-capacity power supply for better performance of low-end frequencies and improved dynamic headroom, while four bespoke McIntosh heatsinks on each power module ensure efficient heat dissipation for more consistent audio quality.   

Further enhanced circuit designs with upgraded modern components and shorter signal paths should also aid sonic performance, as should the MC2.1KW's updated electrical wiring and interconnect cables.

McIntosh bills the MC2.1KW, crafted using a stainless-steel chassis with a mirrored finish alongside striking metal casework, as a "visual masterpiece". It sports black glass front panels, illuminated logos and sleek aluminium handles; there is even a beautiful blue watt meter to give the McIntosh that classic aesthetic.

Because the MC2.1KW is commemorating McIntosh's 75 years in the business, the first 75 units sold in 2024 to each country in which the brand is distributed will include special anniversary badging with "75 Years" engraved in the handles and a special logo stamped on the top. 

McIntosh president Charlie Randall says: “The MC2.1KW is the pinnacle of audio amplification and a testament to the brand’s unwavering commitment to sonic perfection. The MC2.1KW is the embodiment of our passion and invites audio enthusiasts to embark on an extraordinary journey through sound with one of our most powerful amplifiers yet.”

The MC2.1KW will be available from January 2024 at authorised dealers for a retail price of £59,995 / €64,990 / $50,000.

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McIntosh's bassy PS2K powered sub is a mammoth unit with an equally mammoth price tag

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No room is ever perfect acoustically, especially at home. Even with sophisticated treatment, most living spaces could benefit from a little help at times. 

With this in mind, McIntosh has introduced a new analogue eight-band stereo equaliser designed to target specific frequencies when the room’s acoustics are off, or a recording sounds flat which can be the case with some older classics. 

The MQ112 Environmental Equalizer allows users to take control over eight crucial frequency bands between 25Hz and 10kHz, offering 12dB of boost or cut. 

It also features a Tilt knob which boosts or cuts treble or bass across the entire frequency range by 6dB. To the left of this, there is an EQ Control to bypass the unit for a quick way to compare your current settings with the unaltered audio signal.

The equaliser features both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs and it seems it will be a versatile piece of kit able to integrate into a variety of setups. 

An additional set of outputs allows for even further flexibility, such as connection to separate stereo systems or bi-amping with a single pair of speakers – handy if you have different amplifiers you like A-B’ing between.

The MQ112 is distinctly McIntosh, sporting the company’s classic green and black design, and it features an illuminated logo along with aluminium-capped rotary knobs.

The MQ112 Environmental Equalizer will be available later this month for £3745 / €3990 / $3000.

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What Hi-Fi? Awards 2023 winners revealed!

McIntosh's House of Sound NYC townhouse is the AV pad of our dreams

Don't ignore high-end hi-fi; we all own it in the end

Welcome to the house of fun. Hi-fi company McIntosh has opened the doors to the House of Sound, a New York City townhouse showcasing the group's audio-visual brands in a suitably luxurious setting.

It brings together some of the group's best products, including McIntosh amplifiers, Sonus Faber speakers, Pro-Ject turntables and classic Rotel electronics. There's even a Jeep Grand Wagoneer, tricked out with the McIntosh MX1375 entertainment system.

But McIntosh isn't just showcasing its own products. It's also teamed up with other leading brands in their field to show off pieces by Baxter, USM, Alpange, Sony, Kaleidescape, ScreenResearch, RoonLabs, Abyss, HRS, and Audioquest.

The 11,000 square feet townhouse is located in Chelsea, NYC, and is separated into different areas like a home cinema room, an extensive vinyl library, two intimate listening rooms, two open reference listening areas, two terraces, and a rooftop. "Each space is meticulously designed to ignite a symphonic journey of uncompromising and precisely calibrated sound," according to McIntosh.

The townhouse features Italian furniture from luxury firm Baxter throughout, custom cabinetry by USM, an Alpine digital piano, Sony projectors, a movie player from Kaleidescape, and a screen made by ScreenResearch. Abyss Headphones are on-hand for those looking to escape into a world of their own, while the audio stands are made by HRS.

The House of Sound opens today, and is located at 357 West 17th Street, New York, NY10011.

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High-end audio manufacturer McIntosh has announced the launch of a new PS2K powered subwoofer. 

It's a chunky unit with a huge tower design complete with four 33cm woofers, which McIntosh claims will "create new depths of low frequency" for "an unprecedented listening experience".

The large woofers are placed alongside massive magnets at the subwoofer's core, with the speaker incorporating McIntosh's Low Distortion High Performance (LD/HP) magnetic circuit design. This aims to reduce distortion while also increasing power and efficiency. 

Each of the four woofers is driven by a dedicated 500W Class D amp, bringing together 2000W of total power output. The amps themselves are specifically calibrated to reduce distortion and elicit a clear, tight bass with minimised sound distortion. McIntosh claims this means the PS2K is appropriate for music and home cinema usage. 

It's not all about the bass, though. The PS2K subwoofer improves sound elsewhere with the use of multi-layer carbon fibre cones. Previously, carbon fibre cones were made from a single layer of the material that could flex, something which could negatively impact sound. The new multi-layered carbon fibre cones are now integrated into a joint with a strengthened voice coil to create extreme rigidity that prevents unwanted flexing.

In addition to those reduced bass tones, the PS2K makes use of multi-layer carbon fibre cones which, when layered together, reduce unwanted flexibility and enhance the strength and rigidity of the units for a less distorted or warped sound. 

Away from driver design, the new subwoofer features a variety of connectivity options. Whether you have a two-channel stereo system or a multi-channel home theatre setup, the PS2K is equipped with balanced and unbalanced stereo inputs and outputs, plus balanced and unbalanced subwoofer inputs and outputs. You can also daisy chain for further connectivity for users who prefer to use more than one PS2K in a singular system.

Further, the PS2K is kitted out with McIntosh's own protection technologies for a more consistent, reliable sound. The American brand's patented Power Guard tech monitors the input signal entering the amps to make "near-speed of light adjustments to prevent harsh sounding clipping in real-time, according to McIntosh. Something called "Sentry Monitor", meanwhile, acts as a fuse-less short-circuit protection that clears the amp's output stage before the current exceeds safe operating levels and automatically resets when operating conditions go back to normal.

Unveiled at this week's CEDIA Expo in sunny Denver, Colorado, the PS2K sports a black gloss finish with a carbon trim and aluminium base, alongside glide feet for hard floors and spikes for carpets. 

The PS2K Powered Subwoofer will be available at Authorised McIntosh Dealers for £52,000 / €60,000 / $50,000.

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While old and new may blend wonderfully when it comes to renovated barn conversions and Lucy Dracus covering Carole King, it doesn’t always in the case of hi-fi system aesthetics. This writer should know – on their rack is an old-school, dial-heavy Marantz integrated sitting below a sleek, minimalist Cambridge Audio streamer – and, to make it worse, one’s silver and one’s black. The company badges don’t remotely line up. Visually, they are as compatible as wedding invitations and the Goosebumps font.

On the flip side, there are likely very few things more beautiful to the eye of a hi-fi enthusiast than a handsome rack of matching separates. Naim’s streamlined black-punched-with-illuminated-green, Salisbury heavy metal components spring to mind, as do the attractive tiers of blue glow that come from the marriage of multiple McIntosh electronics. You can probably picture those, but if the image of a Chord Electronics source stack is beyond your mental conjuring, just take a look at that beauty below and try not to drool. The uniformity an army lieutenant would be proud of.

But while aesthetics are important – more so to some people than others, naturally – and the most obvious advantage to keeping it in the family when it comes to building a system of separates, it shouldn’t be what first and foremost determines your system. There are other things to take into consideration, starting with component compatibility…

Strong sonic synergy

For one, there is the unquestionable appeal of 'designed with the same ears' engineering. More than one of our recommended separates systems contains two components (often a source feeding an amplifier) from the same brand and, more specifically, product line. It’s pretty sensible really, as engineers will settle on a sound and try to keep it consistent across a product range and perhaps even a whole catalogue. Products from the same line will be tuned together and, more than any other circumstance, be specifically designed to perform well together.

Essentially, a well-designed duo (or trio) of electronics from one brand will negate the need to find sonic synergy, which is perhaps the most crucial element of system matching. For the record, combining two or more components with the same kind of sonic character is usually a recipe for disaster, so it’s better to pair, say, a bright-sounding source with a warmish amp and speakers, enabling you to get a more 'liveable-with' sonic balance. Partner rich-sounding kit together and you’ll end up with a kind of sonic soup.

Complete electrical compatibility

Electrical compatibility used to be something you needed to pay great attention to when system building, though it’s much less of an issue nowadays as the majority of kit on the market is generally electrically compliant and tolerant of one another.

Nearly everything goes with nearly everything in the sense that they will work. You can use just about any source with any amplifier, and more or less any amp to drive any speakers. OK so amp/speaker matching isn’t quite as hands-off as that, but so long as the amp is at least as powerful as the speakers' minimum rated power, albeit not more powerful than the speakers’ maximum rated power, all should be well.

Obviously, as with sonic affinity, electrical compatibility won’t be an issue if you stick with the same brand and line. Again, products in the same range have been designed to work together and will connect and feed power to or receive power from one another just fine.

One remote to rule them all

On practical grounds, there is one significant technical appeal – single-handset remote control. Having just one remote to power on your CD player and amplifier, for example, is neat and efficient. And means there’s one less thing to lose down the sofa.

You might have picked up a hi-fi component’s handset before and realised that a quarter of its buttons are dedicated to the control of another ‘matching’ component in the family – futile if you don’t own it, but handy if you do!

Benefit from proprietary technology and integration

It’s pretty niche, but some hi-fi manufacturers have proprietary technology that works only within their own products and is not brand-agnostic. For example, McIntosh has its digital MCT connector that allows its SACD player to connect to a compatible McIntosh preamplifier or integrated (via a specific McIntosh-designed cable) for the playback of SACD discs’ high-res audio in supposedly optimum sound quality.

And then, to aid system integration, Cyrus has its MC-Bus connections, allowing unified control of Cyrus products that are all connected this way. So, for example, if a DAC is connected to a Cyrus CD player and amplifier via MC-Bus, they can all power on/off together from the latter's buttons or remote, or the DAC could, say, be set to automatically switch on when the CD input is selected on the amp.

While such family-exclusive features are far less universal than one-remote-fits-all control, they can bring neat enhancements to a system's user experience.

BUT, is it the best you can get?

Obviously, sticking with one brand doesn’t leave you with much choice, as you’re likely going to pair components that are within one, or across two, ranges, likely giving you the choice between only a few boxes. Obviously, you can be limited by the brand not even having matching electronics in the first place! While all of the above may well apply, you might not be getting the best performance-per-pound quality you possibly could be, or the feature set that’s best for you, if you branched out and considered the wider hi-fi market. Like I said in the ‘sonic synergy’ section, more than one of our recommended separates systems contains two components (often a source feeding an amplifier) from the same brand (this five-star system comprising Cambridge Audio’s CXN V2 music streamer and its CXA61 amp, feeding Bowers & Wilkins speakers, is one great example). But most of them do not.

While it’s true that simply picking two What Hi-Fi? Award winners and hoping for the best doesn’t always result in sonic harmony, there are many instances when they do; when pairing the best-performing amplifier at a certain price point with the best-performing source at a certain price point does result in something sonically compatible. This makes sense really as few companies specialise in multiple categories to class-leading levels, even if their catalogues have everything from turntables to amplification.

As it is often the case, then, that something from brand X complements something from brand Y even better than the alternative from brand Y, this is where a spot of judicious mixing and matching can pay off. And if such a multi-brand system looks smarter than the black-meets-silver, new-meets-old mess that some amp and source pairs do, bonus!

The bottom line

Ultimately, if there is a component pairing from one brand that you’re tempted by, try them together at your local dealer, and then swap in their suggested alternatives to see if you prefer the delivery from a different combination. As is always the case, listening to kit yourself and either following advice from your dealer or following our tried-and-tested system recommendations will prove invaluable.

A single-brand system can offer the ultimate in sound and practicality, but only go down that route if it gives you exactly the sound you're after, and not because it all visually matches or can be driven from a single handset, appealing though those aspects may appear. Mixing and matching brands may require more effort than sticking with one brand, but in more cases than not it will deliver the best results.

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US audio brand McIntosh has revealed its new TradeUP program which lets customers trade in hi-fi products, regardless of brand or manufacturer, to receive money towards the purchase of a new McIntosh product. 

McIntosh promises that qualifying customers could receive up to the total original retail price for any home audio electronics they own when they trade it in against a new McIntosh product from any authorised McIntosh UK dealer. That’s quite the incentive to swap out some of your old audio gear.

Potential customers should be aware, however, that the purchase price of the new McIntosh product must be more than double the value of the product being traded in. So let’s say you’re looking to switch out an old integrated amplifier with an original retail value of £1000, the McIntosh model you're interested in must be worth £2000 or more in order to qualify.

Also, the scheme only applies to the trade-in and purchase of hi-fi equipment, listed by McIntosh as including “stereo power amps, preamps, integrated amps, phono stages, turntables, CD players/DACs, streamers/music servers, tuners, headphone amplifiers and receivers.”  

AV and home cinema products, though, are not part of the TradeUP program and won’t be accepted for trade-in. Monoblock amplifiers are eligible, but only when traded in and sold in pairs.

Further stipulations of the TradeUP scheme include:

• The product or products to be traded in can be from any brand, but the customer must provide proof of purchase via an original invoice or receipt.
• Traded-in products must be in “reasonable physical condition”, they must work, and they can’t have been altered or modified from the original specs or design.
• You, the customer, are responsible for ensuring that the product(s) in question arrives at the dealer safely unless you agree to alternate collection arrangements with the dealer.
• McIntosh product(s) that the customer wishes to buy must be at full original retail price and from an authorised UK McIntosh dealer only.
• Customers can only trade in a single product against the new McIntosh product they wish to buy. If you’re hoping to purchase multiple McIntosh products, the same quantity of trade-ins will be accepted in exchange.

McIntosh isn’t the only audio company offering incentives to customers as part of a drive towards sustainability. Bang & Olufsen’s recent Mozart software platform, for instance, promises to future-proof models with updates to correlate with changes or innovations in software, while Rega is offering cheaper “Green Grade” versions of its Planar 1 and Planar 1 Plus turntables using parts that are only damaged cosmetically.

From an environmental perspective, then, we hope to see more brands offering similar schemes in the name of green tech.

The McIntosh TradeUP Program ends on 30th June 2023. Full details can be found on the official McIntosh website.

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McIntosh built its first amplifier back in 1949, making it one of the longest-running audio brands in the world. Because it started well before the first commercial transistors became available (American physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs had built the first working transistor – for which they were awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1956 – only two years prior), that first amplifier necessarily used thermionic valves (aka electron tubes) as its amplifying devices.

McIntosh has been building valve amplifiers ever since, though it did also start building transistor (solid-state) amps in 1967 and today builds both solid-state and also ‘hybrid’ amps, which employ both valves and solid-state design.

Given its proven expertise in both valve and solid-state technologies, it should not come as too much of a surprise to learn that the McIntosh C12000ST preamplifier that is one of the four components reviewed here (the others being the C12000C controller and two MC3500 MkII mono power amplifiers) can operate either as a valve amp or a solid-state amp. Choosing which type you’d like to listen to is as simple as flicking a switch. According to McIntosh’s engineering team, your decision as to which to use will depend on the music being played, the audio components in the rest of your system, and your personal preferences regarding sound quality.

If you choose to use the valve option, the line-level amplification is accomplished using two 12AT7 valves and one 12AX7A valve per channel, for a total of six. If you choose to use solid-state line-level amplification, output is via a discrete balanced operational amplifier. No matter what configuration you use, the signals from your phono cartridge will be initially amplified (and RIAA equalised) by four 12AX7A valves (two per channel in a fully balanced configuration).

As for the MC3500 MkII mono power amplifier, its design is a homage to one of the most famous amps of all time, the original McIntosh MC3500, dozens of which were used to power the sound system at the most famous music festival of them all: 1969’s Woodstock. When it came time to celebrate McIntosh’s 50th anniversary, McIntosh President Charlie Randall decided his company should build a MkII version “that takes its inspiration from the original 1968–71 MC3500, and incorporates everything we have learned about vacuum tube amplifier design since the 1960s.”

Interestingly, when audio engineer Owsley Stanley built his famous ‘Wall of Sound’ stage system for the Grateful Dead, he mostly used McIntosh MC-2300 amps… 48 of them!

C12000ST preamplifier & C12000C controller

As you’ve no doubt gathered from the photos of it on these pages, the C12000 preamp/controller is not one single integrated unit but two completely physically separate components. The controller (C12000C) does exactly what you’d imagine given its name – it manages the signal path routing, input and output signal switching, volume control, format implementation, and so on. It’s essentially the ‘brains’ of the duo.

The preamplifier (C12000ST), meanwhile, is the device that does the actual amplification of the audio signal – at least up to the point where it’s able to send it on to (in the configuration supplied for this review) the two MC3500 MkII
power amplifiers – although, curiously enough, all signal connections are made on its rear panel, rather than on the rear panel of the C12000 controller as you might otherwise have expected. This means that the two units need to be linked
in some way, something that McIntosh achieves by using two multi-core umbilical cables.

As you can see, there are no controls on the C12000 preamplifier at all, so despite being two completely separate units, the two work as if they were a single unit. Internally, it’s complicated as well, because both are fully dual-mono devices with completely independent power supplies.

Up to 12 analogue sources can be connected to the rear of the C12000 – six of them via balanced inputs, and the other six via unbalanced inputs. Of the latter, two are reserved as phono inputs, each of which can be configured either as a moving-coil or a moving-magnet input, and both of which can have different settings for capacitance, resistance and gain. (Resistance loads are selectable between 25 ohm and 47k omh; capacitance loads between 50 and 400pF.)

We’ve already mentioned that you can switch between having the final amplification stage managed by valves or solid-state devices, but if you look on the rear panel of the C12000 you’ll see four outputs: a balanced valve output, a balanced solid-state, a fixed unbalanced, and a programmable unbalanced that can be either vacuum tube or solid-state. So you have a veritable smorgasbord of output options on offer.

There’s one other output we haven’t so far mentioned, which is the headphone output on the front panel. It’s driven by a ‘High Drive’ circuit that is not only high-powered but also has cross-feed circuitry that optionally ‘bleeds’ right channel signals into the left channel – and vice versa – to make your headphone listening experience more like listening to loudspeakers. McIntosh calls this a ‘Headphone Crossfeed Director Circuitry’ which it identifies by means of the registered trademark ‘HXD’. The description of what this circuit does (in McIntosh’s own words) is that it “restores the directionality component of the spatial sound stage normally heard with loudspeaker listening”.

The McIntosh C12000 certainly has more analogue inputs than you’ll likely ever need, but what it does not have are any digital inputs, nor any ability to connect to the internet via Ethernet. It’s an all-analogue component. This means that you’ll need to do digital-to-analogue conversion externally if you want to play from a CD, SACD, DVD or a streaming device. We’re all in favour of this approach because digital technologies are changing all the time, so if the C12000 did have digital inputs, it’s very likely it would not be long before they might be an ‘old’ (and very possibly even obsolete) technology. Doing it this way effectively makes the McIntosh a ‘forever’ addition to your home entertainment system.

The infra-red remote control supplied with the McIntosh C12000 is so long that one of the review team suggested it could be used to press the various buttons on the front panel from one’s listening position. It was a joke, of course... the remote isn’t quite that long, but at almost a foot it’s certainly the longest remote any of us here at Australian Hi-Fi could ever recall handling. As you’d expect, it not only controls the C12000 but also a number of McIntosh’s other products.

MC3500 MKII mono power amplifier

Since they’re the most obvious fixture on the front panels of the MC3500 MkII mono power amplifiers, we were rather dismayed to find that the power output meters on the two different amplifiers were different colours. The meter on one of our two review amplifiers was the familiar McIntosh blue – and exactly the same shade of blue as those on the C12000 – whereas the meter on the other of our review amplifiers was a much lighter shade of blue, to the point of being an almost ‘greeny-blue’.

In a phone conversation with Australia’s McIntosh distributor, Synergy Audio Visual, it transpired that the colour of McIntosh’s displays is adjustable because the company has varied the shade of the blue it uses quite a bit over the years, so that it only ‘rough-sets’ the shade at the factory. The local distributor is expected to fine-tune the colour to exactly match the display colour of any other McIntosh components the buyer might own, particularly if it’s one of the company’s older models, which used ordinary light bulbs for illumination (all the new models use LEDs, which have a different colour profile). Apparently the MC3500 MkIIs we received were rushed direct to us in order to meet the deadline and had therefore not been through Synergy’s usual set-up procedure, which would have immediately rectified the colour issue.

This colour adjustment is a task for a technician – you can’t do it yourself. The only control the end-user has over the meters is the ability to turn the blue light off completely, and to switch the ballistics of the meter from ‘Watts’ to ‘Hold’. In the Watts mode, the needle dances around showing output power from 3.5 milliwatts (–50dB) to 350 watts (0dB), whilst in the Hold mode the needle shows the most recent highest power output. In this mode, the needle is mostly so motionless that it becomes downright boring to watch. The Watts mode is so much more fun!

If you look at images of the MC3500 MkII, you might guess from the lower scale (which is gradated from 0 to 100 per cent) that the meter also shows power output in per cent. If so, you’d be wrong; this scale is designed to show the amplifier’s warm-up time.

The output valves – all eight of them! – that McIntosh uses in the MC3500 are EL509S beam pentodes, a valve that is a modified version of the original EL509 that has no top plate-cap and an 8-pin octal base. In this design they not only deliver an audio output of 350 watts into any 2-ohm, 4-ohm or 8-ohm load, but also output an incredible amount of thermal energy. We didn’t actually measure the temperature above the amp, but in an air-conditioned room, we became noticeably warmer the closer we moved to either of the two amplifiers. Because of this, we’d suggest keeping them well apart (preferably close to the speakers they’re powering) and not using the supplied valve cages.

McIntosh says it chose this particular valve type because of its similar characteristics and qualities to “the 6LQ6 sweep tubes used on the original MC3500”. The 6LQ6 was also a beam pentode, but the reason it was called a ‘sweep tube’ was because it was originally designed not for audio applications but actually for use in the horizontal output circuit of the televisions of the day, all of which used valves. They were a very sensible choice back then because they had good current and voltage ratings as well as good gain. They were also super-reliable, widely available and, because so many were manufactured for use in TVs, also relatively inexpensive (though now that valves are no longer used in TVs, this last benefit is sadly not the case anymore).

The driver section of the MC3500 MkII is more like that of the original MC3500, being fully balanced, using one 12AT7A and three 12AX7A valves. The special output transformers are also inherited from the original MC3500 and use a unique Unity Coupled design, or what inventors Frank McIntosh and Gordon Gow referred to as a “unity coupled balanced differential feed”. McIntosh managed to extend the patents on this transformer design for so long that when they finally extinguished, the transformer was too expensive for anyone who didn’t already have the winding machinery to build them. You can see a great video in which Gow himself explains how it works.

Comprehensive circuit protection for the MC3500 MkII comes via two of McIntosh’s most renowned circuits, its Power Guard Screen Grid Sensor (which monitors the screen grid current in the EL509S valves and, if it becomes excessive, attenuates the input signal to a safe level to keep the vacuum tubes operating at safe levels) and its Sentry Monitor, which monitors output current and shuts the amplifier off if it senses that a set limit has been exceeded.

Usability

User interface is an important part of customer satisfaction, and you’ll certainly be totally satisfied with the McIntosh experience. Your primary interaction will undoubtedly be via the volume control, and the one fitted to the C12000 is a beauty! It’s not an ordinary potentiometer but an optical encoder or, to be more precise, a – draws breath – Precision Balanced Digitally Controlled Attenuator System. It delivers 214 individual 0.5dB volume level steps, with 0.1dB tracking accuracy between channels at every one of these 214 levels.

To make your user interface even more satisfying, the rate of volume change is linked to the speed of the control’s rotation, further enhancing that experience. To our minds, the experience would have been even better if the volume control was a weighted flywheel type, but despite this it still felt nice under the fingertips.

Our only initial issue with the volume control is that volume level is displayed as a percentage rather than in dB, but once we became familiar with this slightly unusual concept it made a lot of sense, because identifying the output in per cent relative to the maximum output (or just as some arbitrary number) means that you know exactly how much power is remaining in reserve. So if, for example, you are listening at 10 per cent volume, you know you have 90 per cent of the amplifier’s power still available for transients.

It’s not only the volume control that is unusually implemented; the balance control is rather unconventional as well. Instead of numerals (or percentages!), channel balance is displayed as vertical rows of dots. Balance is centred when you see two vertical rows side by side. If you then rotate the balance control one click to the right, only the rightmost of the two rows will be visible. Click to the right again and two rows will appear, then three, then four and so on. To stop this from being completely unfathomable, McIntosh throws in a space after you get to five rows, so you can more easily identify the next grouping. Ultimately, you can have ten blocks of five vertical rows. It’s certainly an interesting approach to a balance display. We would have preferred a percentage indication!

Switching from one input to any other is done via digitally controlled relays (or as McIntosh prefers to call them, ‘electromagnetic switches’), so switching is totally noiseless. It’s not only noiseless, you can also trim each input to ensure the volume from your speakers (or headphones) stays the same no matter what the output level of the source component you have connected is.

The mute control works exactly as it should, which we mention because it’s so rare to find one that does! By this, we mean that if the C12000 is in its muted mode, it will automatically come out of it if you attempt to adjust the volume control either from the front panel or by using the remote control, and no matter whether you try to adjust it up or down. Although the mute button appears to be a rocker switch, it is actually a spring-loaded press-button (as are the others on the front panel too).

The meters on the C12000 are European sky-blue, which rather contrasts with the back-lighting of the McIntosh logo, which is green and calibrated in dB (not per cent!) from –60dB to +3dB. It’s interesting that the lettering for the +3dB calibration is in a much smaller type than the letters used for the other calibrations. We’re not sure of the reason for this, but we found it looked rather odd. That said, you don’t have to look at the meters at all, since you can switch them off. 

You cannot, however, switch any other display items on the front panel off; you can only adjust them between four different levels. Of these four levels, we found the brightest a little too bright and the dimmest a little too dim, but presumably these are able to be adjusted by a technician, just like the colour of the McIntosh meters.

Sound quality

The intro to Livingston Taylor’s version of Stevie Wonder’s classic song Isn’t She Lovely (written to celebrate the arrival of his daughter Aisha) always brings a smile to our eyes, not only because the subject matter is close to our hearts, but also because of that beautifully delicate and understated acoustic guitar in the background of Taylor’s tasteful whistling of the melody.

Listening to Sonus Faber’s Il Cremonese ex3me floorstanders powered by this McIntosh duo made our smile grow all the wider, because the tonality of the acoustic was absolutely spot-on, while the sound of Taylor’s whistling was as if he were right in the room with us. Then, when the bongos chime-in in the second verse, the sense of realism just became even greater. The McIntosh duo made the sense of the room’s acoustic totally palpable… we could hear not only the air but also the warmth of the bongo echo, which was admirably soft rather than hard. The ‘quietness’ in the close-out to this track was complete, too, revealing that the McIntosh electronics had no background noise whatsoever.

Moving from male vocal to female vocal, we switched to the ravishingly gorgeous voice of Sara K singing Gypsy Eyes, as recorded on her album ‘Made in the Shade’. Her very slightly breathy vocals are the highlight of this track, but the sound of the backing singers is as good as it gets, and the McIntoshes balanced the lead against the backing perfectly. The scat lines ‘oh, woe…’ integrated better than we’ve heard before, so when Sara K echoes the backing singers – and vice versa – it all made perfect musical sense.

Sticking with female vocals but revving up the pace, we next auditioned Ana Caram, as heard on her classic album ‘Maracanã’ (which we confess we often refer to as “Macarena” when recommending it to friends, not only for the joyous, playful music contained on it but also the sound quality). Listen to Maybe, for example, and you can appreciate the professionalism of her singing. Perfect diction, perfect pitching – and all done so effortlessly she makes it seem easy, which we can assure you it isn’t. Rather annoyingly, Caram is also a superb guitarist, flautist, conductor and composer, so it’s little surprise that she was mentored by none other than Antonio Carlos Jobim or that her own unique style blends Jobim’s bossa nova style with jazz.

Once again, the McIntosh duo (and the Il Cremonese Ex3me) delivered exemplary sound quality, for which you should listen particularly to the sound of the oboe, as impeccably styled by Al Hunt, who’s more usually found playing with The New York Saxophone Quartet. He also plays flutes, clarinet and English horn on various tracks of this album, but it’s his oboe sound we found most impressive. And if you’re good at word puzzles, you have probably already realised (unlike us!) that this album’s title is actually an anagram of Ana Caram. (For the record, it’s also the name of the biggest football stadium in Caram’s birth country of Brazil.)

We checked out the McIntosh’s bass delivery with the fantastic walking bass sound on Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love and found it to be precise, depthy, completely free from distortion, and with no overhang at all, plus there was a realism to the delivery that still continues to elude solid-state amplifiers, despite the leaps and bounds made in technology. No doubt this is one of the reasons McIntosh continues to build valve amplifiers. But don’t listen only to the perfect sound of the bass: also admire the crispness and snap of the percussion, and the authenticity of the hand-claps, which the McIntoshes revealed more clearly than we have ever heard previously. Notice too, that the high frequencies are balanced beautifully against the lows, particularly the shimmer of the cymbals.

Our bass evaluation continued when listening to Hector Berloiz’s Symphony Fantastique, which American conductor Leonard Bernstein once famously described as “the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature.” We suspect Bernstein’s comment might well have been influenced by the rumour that Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium, an idea that was possibly influenced by the success of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’, the idea behind which the poet claimed came as a result of a dream influenced by opiates.

As you’d expect, Symphony Fantastique uses the full force of the orchestra to grand effect, particularly the tympani, but also adds in instruments you might not expect, such as a ship’s bell in the final movement. As the occasion seemed to demand it, we wound up the volume as high as we dared at those points in the score where the orchestra is in full flight to see if we could approach the power reserves of the McIntosh MC3500 MkII pair.

After numerous attempts at approaching maximum output levels, it quickly became clear that we’d never even get close to approaching them, evidenced both by our ears and the movements of the needles on the front panel output meters. The result of these fruitless attempts is that we can confidently state that in a home hi-fi situation, even when using inefficient and/or difficult-to-drive loudspeakers, you will never need to avail yourself of the full power output of which these amplifiers are capable.

Given the duality of the nature of the pre-amp stage (it being switchable between valve and solid-state paths, and the fact that in a modern world of solid-state amplifiers with either linear or Class D output stages of one type or another, that of the McIntosh MC3500 MkII is unashamedly old-school), we knew that many readers, not content with our rather lengthy and detailed descriptions of this system’s sonic performance with a variety of different types of music, would instead want some kind of short version of our opinion and therefore ask the inevitable audiophile question: “Yes, but how does it sound?”

However, just as the designers of the supercomputer Deep Thought (see Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) were dissatisfied with its answer to their ‘Ultimate’ question (it being “the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything”), those readers wanting such a short version might be dissatisfied with our answer, which would be ‘natural’. This McIntosh system simply sounds natural. Listen to it and you’ll discover that you are listening to music – pure, simple, unadulterated music. It’s not ‘bright’ or ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ or ‘warm’ or ‘euphonic’… it’s just as you’d expect music to sound: natural.

Verdict

All told, we thoroughly enjoyed our all-too-brief sojourn with these latest additions to McIntosh’s burgeoning stable of audio offerings. We can unhesitatingly recommend them to anyone who is desirous of owning an all-analogue audio amplification system that will bring not only them but also their children and, we have no doubt at all, their grandchildren, a sense of pride in the privilege of being able to own such products – and not only every time they look in their general direction but most especially every single time they listen to it… no matter what type of music they are listening to, now or in the very far distant future. 

McIntosh Group has been acquired by Highlander Partners, a Dallas-based private investment firm that manages over $2 billion in assets.

Highlander Partners announced the news today, describing the acquisition as the basis for its new "luxury technology platform".

McIntosh Group is the parent company of McIntosh and Sonus Faber. It also distributes products for Pro-ject and Rotel, supplies high-end in-car audio solutions to the likes of Jeep and Maserati and also owns high-end distributors Sumiko and Fine Sounds UK, and Fine Sounds Benelux.

Will Highlander's investment prove a good fit? It certainly sounds promising, given the way that Highlander praises McIntosh's "dedication to quality performance, sophisticated technology, refined design, and artisan manufacturing".

"We believe there is a unique opportunity to acquire other consumer luxury technology brands and intend to stay active in the category,” noted Jeff L. Hull, Highlander's President and CEO.

Commenting on the news, Jeff Poggi and Charles Randall, co-CEOs of the McIntosh Group said: "We are thrilled to continue to pursue our growth trajectory alongside the Highlander team. Across all brands and product categories we continue to see remarkable results and an excess of opportunity; we believe Highlander’s financial approach and operational expertise can help seize these prospects."

So, it all sounds very positive... for now, at least.

In other, slightly-less-seismic McIntosh news, the company has unveiled a brilliantly retro AM/FM tuner complete with famous power meters.

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Despite the rise of music streaming, 50 million adults in the UK still to listen to the radio. In an effort to capitalise on this, McIntosh has unveiled a brand new AM/FM tuner.

The new MR89 AM/FM Tuner promises to "maximise sound quality from AM/FM broadcasts" with a slew of fine adjustments, ranging from sensitivity and separation to signal-to-noise ratio. 

Much like the current MR87, the new MR89 boasts the US hi-fi giant's proprietary radio frequency (RF) circuitry. McIntosh reckons the tech can receive ultra-strong FM signals from nearby stations – something that can overload lesser tuners. The result? Extremely low distortion.

Placement of the (wired) RAA2 AM antenna should be a doddle thanks to the advanced signal-quality monitor, which displays detailed multipath noise levels. Useful info when standing on a chair, waving the antenna around in search of that elusive 'sweet spot'.

There's no DAB here, and no option to stream internet radio stations, meaning the MR89 is strictly for the AM/FM enthusiast (in the UK, anyway). It does, however, offer the ability to store 20+ preset stations, plus the usual analogue and digital outputs.

Design-wise, it's all very McIntosh, with a black-glass front panel and a stainless steel chassis. This time around, the famous green-lit power meters have been tweaked to show the radio signal being delivered. Clever.

McIntosh has an impressive track record when it comes to tuners, making some of the best models of the 1970s, so we've high hopes for the MR89. But at £6800 (around $8300 / AU$12,000), it doesn't come cheap.

McIntosh dealers are taking pre-orders now, with shipping expected to begin later this month in the US and Canada. The rest of the world will follow "shortly thereafter".

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And the best stereo amplifiers

McIntosh has pulled back the curtains on two new high-end integrated amplifiers. The MA8950 and MA9500 are direct replacements for the award-winning MA8900 and five-star MA9000, so they've huge, clown-sized shoes to fill.

The good news is that the class of 2022 offer lots of improvements over their last-gen sibling models, including a "50 per cent increase in dynamic headroom" that's tipped to further reduce distortion and bring greater bass performance.

Buyers of the new models will also be treated to an upgraded power supply, plus the illustrious New York hi-fi brand's newest McIntosh DA2 Digital Audio Module, which is 'Roon Tested' and designed to beef up dynamic range. 

The factory-fitted module also boasts an "audiophile-grade" eight-channel, 32-bit DAC, plus an audio-only HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC) connection. The latter allows the amp to be connected to ARC-equipped TVs, so you can level up your TV's sound by listening though your hi-fi. 

The bad news? All of these state-of-the-art improvements don't come cheap.

The flagship MA9500 costs £14,995 / AU$24,995 (around $21,000). It outputs 300 watts per channel and has no fewer than ten analogue inputs (two balanced, six unbalanced, plus an MM/MC input with adjustable loading). You also get an eight-band tone control that allows users to manually tweak frequencies by +/- 12dB.

The MA8500 is a touch cheaper at £12,495 / AU$18,495 (around $17,000). It outputs 200 watts per channel and comes with a decent array of analogue inputs (one balanced, six unbalanced, plus MC with adjustable loading and a MM phono input). There's a five-band tone control capable of the usual +/- 12dB adjustments.

Both the new models feature McIntosh's signature 'industrial chic' design, and come complete with trademark "McIntosh Blue" watt meters that indicate power output in real time.

Like the cut of McIntosh's jib? The new MA8950 and MA9500 can be pre-ordered now through authorised McIntosh dealers. Both models are expected to start shipping in February 2022 (US and Canada), followed by the rest of the world shortly after.

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McIntosh has just launched the MCD85, a new compact-chassis SACD/CD player that promises to bring the company's latest and greatest digital technologies to your disc collection, plus USB connectivity for your digital devices.

Designed to complement the September-launch MC830 Solid State Amplifier and C8 Vacuum Tube Preamplifier (see below), the new open-chassis player marries CD and SACD playback with a USB input that supports high-resolution audio up to DSD256 and DXD 384 kHz.

"Painstakingly hand-built" in the firm's New York factory, says McIntosh, the player's advanced internal DAC enables playback from smart devices, computers and USB-equipped devices. A further two (192kHz-supporting) coaxial and optical digital inputs are also included.

The MCD85’s digital-to-analogue convertor is a quad balanced, 8-channel, 32-bit/192 kHz device. Here, four DAC pathways are dedicated to the left audio channel and four to the right, promising levelled-up stereo reproduction.

For CD and SACD data, the MCD85 boasts a 2x read speed and a buffer memory for advanced error correction and tracking. Discs are placed in a high-quality die-cast tray that features a new, custom front-bevelled nose to match the angle of the chassis, while promising smooth and quiet disc handling. Disc reading is performed by a high-quality disc mechanism, using a twin-laser optical pickup that each employs different wavelengths optimised for SACD and CD.

McIntosh’s Power Control and Data Ports should permit seamless integration with other McIntosh (and other home audio) equipment. To this end, the MCD85 features both balanced and unbalanced fixed analogue stereo outputs too.

As we've come to expect from McIntosh, the firm's die-cast aluminium name badge is affixed to each side of the chassis; the front, top and rear of this chassis is polished to a mirror finish, similar to the aforementioned MC830 and C8; and, completing the look, there's the black glass front panel with direct LED backlighting, silver trim, an illuminated logo and rotary control knobs.

Ready for pricing? Orders for the £4995 ($4500, AU$8995) McIntosh MCD85 SACD/CD player can now be placed, with shipping expected later this month in the United States and Canada, and by March in the UK and Australia.

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The McIntosh MA252 integrated amplifier is the first hybrid integrated amplifier this world-famous American company has ever built. The import of that statement needs to be viewed in the context that McIntosh has been building amplifiers for more than 60 years. So the McIntosh MA252 has been 60 plus years coming, and boy was it worth the wait. 

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But wait! What is a hybrid integrated amplifier?

Basically it’s an audio amplifier where one of the two amplifying stages uses valves – or ‘tubes’ as our US friends like to call them – to amplify the audio signal, while the other amplifier stage uses transistors.

Because any integrated amplifier has two amplifying stages – usually called ‘pre’ and ‘power’ stages – this means there are two ways to build a hybrid audio amplifier. One way is to use valves for the ‘pre’ section and transistors for the ‘power’ section; the other is to use valves for the ‘power’ section and transistors for the ‘pre’ section.

In the MA252, McIntosh has elected to use the former approach by employing 12AX7a and 12AT7 valves in the preamplifier stage and transistors in the output stage. The reason McIntosh does it this way, rather than the other way ‘round, is to ensure the best of both possible worlds: the sweet sound quality that’s inherent in valve amplification and the very high power output that solid-state devices make possible.

But wait! Is it not possible to get high power output from a valve amplifier stage?

Of course it is… and no-one knows this better than McIntosh. After all, its MC2301 valve amplifier is rated with an output of 300-watts into 8Ω. But achieving such high power output using only valves costs money… lots of it.

The McIntosh MC2301 currently retails for £14,900 / $19,900 / AU$27,995, and it’s just a single-channel amplifier, meaning that you’ll need to buy two of them for stereo, so that’s around £29,800 / $39,800 / AU$55,990 all up for a high-power stereo valve audio amplifier.

The MA252, on the other hand, is rated at 100-watts per channel into 8Ω (160-watts per channel into 4Ω) and it has an RRP of only £4,500 / $5,782 / AU$7,995).

Of course using transistors rather than valves in the output stage means that you also miss out on one of the other advantages of using valves, which is that it’s extremely difficult to drive them into hard clipping.

Unlike transistors, which go into hard-clipping the instant they are over-driven (and sound awful when this happens), valves have an inherent ‘soft clipping’ characteristic when they’re over-driven that can actually make the sound quite attractive. Indeed many guitar players use valve amplifiers with special ‘overdrive’ circuits for this express reason.

To circumvent this, the high-current transistors McIntosh uses in the output circuitry of the MA252 are continuously monitored by McIntosh’s patented ‘Power Guard’ circuitry which monitors the output signal for any signs of overdrive and makes real-time micro adjustments to the input signal to prevent the output stage from being driven into clipping. You will know if the Power Guard circuit is operating because when it does, the colour the valves are glowing changes from green to orange.

At this point valve aficionados should be scratching their heads, because when they’re operating, valves glow an orange-reddish colour, not green. The valves in the MA252 glow green simply because McIntosh has fitted chameleon LEDs underneath them, which emit a green glow that, during normal operation, is bright enough to outshine the glow of the valve heaters. However when the Power Guard circuit triggers, the LED colour changes from green to orange. 

If you’re wondering why McIntosh chose green, it’s because that’s the primary colour used in the McIntosh tartan worn by founder Frank McIntosh’s Scottish forebears. The same green has been used in various applications on all McIntosh products since 1949. 

There’s one Power Guard circuit per channel, so if only one channel is clipping, only that channel’s two valves will change colour. If both channels are clipping, all four valves will glow that orange colour.

Unlike many recent amplifier designs, which feature integrated DACs, McIntosh’s MA252 is purely an all-analog affair with two unbalanced line-level inputs, one balanced line-level input and a phono input (moving-magnet). 

We were really pleased to discover that McIntosh has included an input trim circuit that allows you to adjust the sensitivity of each of these inputs to exactly match the output of whatever component you’ve connected, so that when you switch from one input to the other, the volume issuing from your speakers will stay the same, so you don’t have to adjust volume level every time you switch from one input to another. 

Unlike some such circuits, which don’t offer much of an adjustment range, McIntosh’s trim circuit has a full 12dB of adjustment available… and in precise 0.5dB steps too. You can rename the inputs anything you like so long as you don’t exceed a nine letter description and, if you’re not using an input, you can have the McIntosh ignore it completely, so it becomes transparent when you’re switching inputs. 

We can see how the transparency function makes sense on a component that has a great many inputs, several of which will inevitably be unused, but when there are only four inputs, as on the MA252, it doesn’t really speed up input selection all that much. 

You can also choose to have the McIntosh switch itself off automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity (no music, no controls moved etc), or not. In order to extend valve life, we would recommend you leave the McIntosh in its ‘Auto’ switch-off mode (which is the default), but small signal valves such as the 12AX7A and 12AT7 are not only virtually indestructible, but also relatively inexpensive, so it really wouldn’t much matter if you left the amplifier powered-up permanently.

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Listening sessions

Installation was mostly uneventful, except that we very nearly missed that instead of aligning the RCA inputs of the two unbalanced inputs vertically – like almost every other amplifier manufacturer in the world – McIntosh has aligned them horizontally.

We decided this made excellent sense, because it means the left input is on the same side as the left speaker outputs, and the right input is on the same side as the right speaker outputs, whereas if they were vertical, you’d actually have to know whether the right input was at the top or the bottom.

We were was also pleased that the balanced input is completely isolated from the unbalanced inputs – some amplifiers share an input and you only find out when you get the amplifier home and read the manual carefully that you can only use one or the other of two inputs. Effectively, this gives the McIntosh MA52 four inputs. There’s also a mono subwoofer output, which is a nice touch.

The speaker terminals, despite looking great and being gold-plated, didn’t turn very smoothly, and felt quite ‘rough’ as they were rotated. Room for improvement here then. Still, connecting speaker cables is something you’ll only have to do the once, and if your speaker cables are terminated in banana plugs, you won’t have an issue at all.

The  MA252 has a fantastic-looking OLED front panel display which shows the amplifier’s model number and the words ‘Tube Warmup’ while the amplifier is warming up (which takes around 15 seconds), after which it shows the source selected (which will be your last-used source), after which the volume level slowly ramps up from zero to stop at whatever volume level you were last listening. 

While the amplifier is warming up, the LEDs illuminating the small signal valves glow orange, so when they turn green, you’ll know the amplifier is ready to go. 

But the description ‘warmup’ is a bit of a misnomer because if you switch the amplifier off after it’s been operating for several days, and is totally warm, then switch it immediately back on, it will still spend 15 seconds ‘warming up’ again. In the light of this, ‘Initialising’ might have been a better word to use… except that maybe it would have too many letters to fit into the display.

The McIntosh MA252 ‘remembers’ balance, bass and treble settings independently for each input. So if, for example, you have adjusted the channel balance of the phono input to compensate for a slight voltage difference in your phono cartridge’s left and right channels (and this would be the case with almost every phono cartridge on the planet), then when you switch from your phono input to, say, your DAC on another input, the channel balance will revert to 0dB in each channel. 

Likewise, if you prefer to roll off the bass a little and accentuate the treble when listening to LPs, the McIntosh will apply these settings whenever you switch to the phono inputs, but revert back to a ‘flat’ tone control setting (or whatever other tone control settings you’ve chosen) whenever you select a different input.

We think this is a really great feature, one that is incredibly useful, but to use it, you will need to use the MA252’s remote control, and before you use the remote control, you will need to install the single AAA battery (a high quality Duracell alkaline battery is supplied), and before you do that you’ll need to find out how to install it, because McIntosh’s remote is so beautifully made that it’s not apparent how to do it, and there is nothing at all about it in the User’s Manual.

If you run your fingernail down the almost invisible seam on the left side of the remote, then pull the back-plate of the remote ‘out and down’ from the bottom, below the logo, you'll reveal the battery compartment. It’s a bit tricky to do the first time, so ask your dealer to show you how to do it before you have a go yourself. 

The input selector on the left side of the sloping section of the front panel has a click-stop action and in addition to selecting your desired input, doubles up as the ‘Trim’ control (push it inwards for Trim options). 

If you hold the Trim control pushed in for more than a few seconds, you’ll skip past the ‘Trim’ options and the display will instead show your amplifier’s model number, serial number and software version. On our review unit, this last was V1.01.

The volume control on the right of the front panel has a beautiful ‘smooth as silk’ action. Pressing the control inwards activates the amplifier or puts it into standby mode. Rather confusingly, the small LED alongside it shines red both when the amplifier is operating, and also when it’s in standby mode, which seemed to us passing strange. We wondered if maybe ours was miswired. 

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The very first time we turned up the volume control on the MA252 it was to bring the sound of Lloyd Spiegel’s latest, ‘Backroads’ up to a volume level that made our test room sound like a ‘blues night’ at a small night club… and if that’s the night you’re having, Lloyd Spiegel’s your man (though on this album he’s assisted by the other Spiegels, Marty and Riley, plus a gaggle of fine musicians, with the indefatigable Tim Burnham on drum duties.

Right from the intro track, The Kick Around, which is more boogie than blues, we could hear we were in for a treat, with the McIntosh’s solid-state bits delivering solid, driving bass and beautifully-paced rhythmic drum sound while at the same time the tube-y bits worked their magic on Lloyd’s guitar sound, so that it was simultaneously clean and accurate, yet at the same time warm and alluring.

On Bridges to Burn, one of our favourite tracks on the album, the warmth the valves bring to Levi Harkness’s bass is exemplary, yet at the same time listen to the drier sound of Burnham’s kit, while Lloyd’s voice is put right out front, just where it should be.

Then just listen to the absolutely stunningly reproduced lead guitar solos on Christina, along with the acoustic and the backing vocals. The McIntosh never puts a foot wrong, keeping a very tight grip on the PRAT while at the same time never once sounding clinical.

If you’re looking for a definition of a ‘musical’ sound, the MA252 is it personified. And just listen to the way the McIntosh handles the complex rhythms on Candy Cane…fantastic! But we can’t talk about the fabulous music and sonics on Backroads without mentioning Spiegel’s lyrics, which are always insightful and often beautifully poetic.

A switch to heavy metal, in this case Stone Temple Pilots’ album 'Stone Temple Pilot's (the second and most recent of the two identically-titled albums from the band of the same name… what were they thinking?) showed the band is powering to even-greater heights and that their newest vocalist Jeff Gut (who hopefully won’t follow too closely in the footsteps of previous STP vocalists Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington) is a real acquisition.

The McIntosh MA252 proved easily capable of separating the myriad musical strands presented in STP’s work, and also capable of digging through the ‘grunge’ to deliver the impeccable underlying musicianship. Lesser amps deliver STP as a ‘wall of sound’ whereas played through the MA252 the sound became multi-dimensional, and we could hear all the separate layers.

Listening to STP always has us cranking the volume, and with the McIntosh MA252, it had so much power on tap that we could crank it up to ear-shattering levels without running into clipping, or without even the sound getting hard… that lovely valve softness remained an underlying sonic signature. The lack of circuit noise was made shatteringly clear by the unexpected finale to Roll Me Under, which comes as a sonic wake-up call.

From blues to heavy metal to… classical of course, the forerunner of both, and to a true classic, Beethoven’s 5th, in the hands of Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic, which is likely the best recording of this work available… though we can’t say we’ve heard 'em all.

Carlos Kleiber was an enigma, a conductor who barely conducted, but when he did, wow! He could always bring out the best in any orchestra, and usually better than their best. You can hear this in this Fifth, and most particularly with the aid of the clarity of the MA252 letting you reach into the soul of the music.

The famous repeated four note intro doesn’t sound at all clichéd – it’s like you’re hearing it for the first time. Indeed Kleiber and the VP make the entire symphony sound fresh and vibrant, and there’s a beautifully articulated energy to the performance that just ramps up the tension for the stunning finale. The coup de grâce is the superb acoustic of the venue and the quality of the DG recording itself, both of which are enhanced by the McIntosh MA252.

We can’t help thinking that perhaps one of the secrets to Kleiber’s performances was that he was never ‘staled’ by the type of gruelling concert schedule that was (and still would be, were it not for Covid-19) typical of most conductors.

The wonder of this recording is that it might never have been made at all, because Kleiber’s father Erich (himself a famous musician and conductor) actively tried to dissuade his son from pursuing a career in music, instead pushing him to finish a degree in a chemistry. ‘What a pity the boy is musically talented’, he once wrote to a friend.

When we wanted to test the tonal accuracy of the McIntosh MA252 with piano, the recording we played first was a favourite, Hélène Grimaud’s recording of transcriptions of famous works by Bach. Normally we like our J.S. unadorned, but for Grimaud we’ll make an exception, because her playing is like that of no other pianist we have ever heard.

She doesn’t so much ‘play the notes’ as reveal the music behind the notes. She plays Partita No 3 (in a Rachmaninov transcription) like a ballerina, with her fingers just dancing over the keyboard, while the way she plays the Busoni transcription of Chaconne in D minor is like a composer. Unreal. The recording and sonics are superb, and the McIntosh MA252’s sound puts the piano in the listening room. You can ask for no more.

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Final verdict

McIntosh has a reputation as an ‘aspirational’ brand – a brand everyone desires to own but few can afford to buy – and certainly products such as the aforementioned MC2301 and the simply stunning XRT2.1K anchor that reputation in reality. 

Which makes the McIntosh MA252 something special. It looks like a McIntosh. It sounds like a McIntosh. It’s built like a McIntosh (and built in Binghamton, New York, like all other McIntosh products). But despite the fact that it’s aspirational, its price is such that buying one will not require you to aspire quite as much as most other products wearing McIntosh livery. 

Different, yet not different. You know you want one: We certainly do.

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Lab test report

Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the McIntosh MA252 as being 130-watts (21.1dBW) per channel at 1kHz, both channels driven into 8Ω, which is clearly much better than McIntosh’s specification of 100-watts per channel. A good 1.1dB better, in fact. 

Measured power output into the same load, but with a low-frequency test signal (20Hz) dropped by 0.7dB to 121-watts/20.8dBW. Again, an excellent result that was better than specification. 

Measured into more demanding 4Ω loads, again with both channels driven, Newport Test Labs measured an output of 209-watts (23.2dBW) at 1kHz, with output again reducing very slightly at low frequencies, this time to 182-watts (22.6dBW) per channel at 20Hz. However, once again both these test results are higher than McIntosh’s own specification for a 4Ω load impedance, which is 160-watts per channel. 

You can see from the tabulated results that when just a single channel is driven the power output of the McIntosh increases quite significantly, which is proof that when reproducing music signals, the MA252 will be able to deliver far higher power outputs than figures tabulated, which are continuous measurements that put the greatest stress on the power supply. In other words, dynamic power, or dynamic headroom, would be excellent. 

In fact the difference of 0.9dB at 1kHz into 4Ω loads measured by Newport Test Labs would suggest to me that McIntosh’s specification of 1.8dB is spot-on. 

The McIntosh MA252’s clipping indicators are not overly sensitive and their indication varies with frequency, but on average the output has to be above 150-watts per channel into 8Ω before they’ll illuminate, which means that you’ll probably hear the amplifier clipping before you see the clipping visually, except for transient signals. That said, we’d rather have the clipping indicators than not.

Wideband frequency response, as measured by Newport Test Labs, was excellent, with the McIntosh MA252 returning results of 5Hz to 150kHz (–1dB), and 3Hz to 170kHz (–3dB). This second result is far better than McIntosh’s specification (10Hz to 100kHz). 

Channel separation was good without being exceptional, again as you can see from the tabulated figures. As you’d expect, performance was best at low frequencies, with the MA252 returning a result of 91dB at 20Hz. This then decreased to 86dB at 1kHz and 81dB at 20kHz. Even the 20kHz figure is far higher than you’d ever need separation to be (and therefore impossible to hear), so overall an excellent result. 

Channel balance was 0.9dB, which is inaudibly low. So, too, was inter-channel phase, with a worst-case result of 0.41° at 20kHz, which is again so low as to be inaudible.

Total harmonic distortion (THD) at an output of 1-watt into 8Ω is shown in Graph 1. You can see that there’s only a single second harmonic (at 2kHz) visible and that it’s 97dB down (0.00141%). The spuriae along the noise floor is presumably related to the valve input stage, but irrespective, it’s more than 110dB down (0.00031%) above 2kHz, and mostly 100dB down (0.001%) below that frequency, so would be inaudible in the presence of signal. 

Interestingly, when the MA252 is driven into 4Ω loads (Graph 2), the second harmonic drops to –100dB (0.001%) but we see a third harmonic at the same level, then a fifth harmonic at –105dB (0.00056%) and a seventh at –108dB (0.00039%). 

When the McIntosh is delivering 20-watts, which would be a fairly typical day-to-day output in a home, you see that into 8Ω loads (Graph 3), there are dominant second- and third-order harmonics at around –95dB (0.00177%) and although there are other higher-order distortion components visible on the graph, the first four are more than 110dB (0.00031%) down, and the others more than 120dB down (0.0001%). 

Interestingly, at this output level, distortion into a 4Ω load is slightly lower (Graph 4). In both cases, you can see that the overall noise floor across the majority of the midrange and high frequencies is more than 120dB down. 

At rated output, the situation is reversed again, with distortion at 4Ω (Graph 6, above) being a little higher than it is into 8Ω (Graph 5, below). 

In both cases, however, the highest components – at around –95dB (0.00177%) at both impedances – are the second and third-order components and these levels are too low to be audible but, if they were, they’d make the amplifier sound richer and more musical than if they were not there at all. Again, almost all the higher-order components are more than 100dB down (0.001%) and the noise floor is now down at around –140dB. 

Intermodulation distortion (CCIF-IMD) at 1-watt (Graph 7) was extremely low with the absence of high-frequency sidebands either side of the two test signals at 19kHz and 20kHz being particularly notable and the few that are visible are all more than 100dB down (0.001%). The regenerated 1kHz difference signal at 1kHz is just visible in the low-frequency noise, at around –100dB (0.001%). Speaking of noise, you can see that the low-frequency noise is more than 90dB below the 1-watt output level. 

Increasing power output to 20-watts, using the same IMD test signal (Graph 8) sees a relatively minor increase in the level of the high-frequency sidebands, plus a rather academically intriguing difference in the symmetry of those sidebands, but the major difference is the increase in the level of the 1kHz difference signal to –87dB (0.00446%). 

Audio band frequency response was excellent, as you can see for yourself on Graph 9. This graph has two traces. The black trace shows the McIntosh MA252’s response when driving a standard laboratory test load (a high-power non-inductive 8Ω resistor) and you can see that response was just 0.09dB down at 20Hz and +0.03dB at 20kHz, for an overall response of 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.06dB. This result is, once again, is much better than McIntosh’s own specification for this parameter. 

The red trace on Graph 9 shows the McIntosh MA252’s frequency response when it is driving a complex load that simulates that of a real two-way bass reflex loudspeaker. As you can see, the differences between the two traces are minuscule, which means the frequency response of the MA252 will always be the same no matter what loudspeakers you use with it. 

The McIntosh MA252’s tone control action (Graph 10) is highly unusual. The ‘bass’ tone control has an effect more like that of a graphic equaliser than a conventional bass tone control, with a peak boost/cut effect of around ±10dB at 75Hz that diminishes to around ±2dB at 20Hz. This means you’ll get emphasis in the upper low-frequencies, but almost none at lower frequencies, which is certainly a very ‘speaker friendly’ approach. High-frequency boost action is more like a conventional treble tone control, but we would have preferred a greater shelving action. 

The overall signal-to-noise ratios measured by Newport Test Labs were only average referred to a one-watt output level (72dB unweighted; 76dB A-weighted), improving to 92dB and 95dB respectively when referred to rated output, with the 95dB test result being 2dB shy of McIntosh’s specification of 97dB. 

Square wave testing revealed that there’s a small 1.5dB lift in MA252’s frequency response at around 107kHz, which is what gives rise to the overshoot visible on the leading edge of all four oscillograms.

That aside, the tilt of the waveform of the 100Hz measurement simply confirms the MA252’s non-d.c. low-frequency extension as noted previously, but there is no phase shift evident, which is excellent. 

Likewise, the 1kHz square wave is otherwise commendably ‘square’… indeed perfect except for the overshoot. 

The 10kHz square wave shows an extremely fast rise-time, while the square wave that demonstrates the MA252’s performance when it is driving a highly reactive load (8Ω in parallel with 2µF) shows an almost half-height overshoot plus a little associated ringing. This suggests the amplifier will be completely stable into highly reactive loads. 

The McIntosh MA252 will certainly be able to control even the largest-coned bass drivers, thanks to an output impedance of 0.04Ω at 1kHz delivering a damping factor of 200, a figure high enough that no further damping would ever be required. 

As for input sensitivity, Newport Test Labs determined that to deliver one-watt it was necessary to provide an input voltage of 31mV, which makes the MA252 quite sensitive and puts gain at 39dB. For rated output, 305mV was required, almost exactly the equal of McIntosh’s specification of 0.3V. The input sensitivity of the balanced input was 610mV. 

Power consumption was only modest, so that the McIntosh MA252 will pull only around 70-watts from your mains supply under typical operating conditions. Push it to the max, however, and you’re looking at consumption of more than 400-watts. In standby mode, it draws only 0.22-watts, well below the Australian government’s standard for this mode, meaning you could happily leave the MA252 in standby anytime except your annual holidays. 

Overall, outstandingly good technical performance from this powerful hybrid integrated amplifier.

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Always hankered after a retro-chic McIntosh valve preamplifier and compatible power amp to match? Feast your eyes on this neat new duo. 

Following in the footsteps of McIntosh’s retro-styled MA252 and MA352 integrated amplifiers, (which themselves took design cues from the MC275 Vacuum Tube Amplifier), McIntosh has launched two new high-end ‘open chassis’ amplifiers, the C8 Vacuum Tube Preamplifier and MC830 Solid State Amplifier.

Despite style cues that nod to the firm's 1950s and 1960s design heritage, McIntosh is quick to state that both the C8 and MC830 are chock-full of modern-day technology. 

The duo offers direct turntable connectivity thanks to MM and MC phono inputs, digital readiness for McIntosh’s (optional) multi-input DA2 DAC module, plus a high-quality McIntosh headphone amplifier for late-night or more personal listening.  

The C8 Vacuum Tube Preamplifier offers a compact footprint, powered by those four green-glowing 12AX7a valves housed in protective (and striking) cages.

McIntosh says the C8 is all about flexibility for the modern music lover: you get both balanced and unbalanced inputs plus Moving Coil and Moving Magnet phono inputs with adjustable loading. You also get bass and treble tone controls to help with different environments, nameable inputs and the option of connecting a powered subwoofer too.

Since many hi-fi enthusiasts already own high-performance standalone DACs, McIntosh has decided to supply the C8 digital-ready, i.e. add your own DAC. But McIntosh's optional DA2 Digital Audio Module can be installed by McIntosh dealers for a supplement (as first-seen in the C53 preamp last year), bringing a total of seven digital inputs: two coaxial, two optical, one USB, one proprietary MCT (for use with McIntosh's line of SACD/CD transports), plus one audio-only HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC) connection. Phew.

For late-night listening, minus the complaints from your neighbours, the C8 is specified with McIntosh's High Drive Headphone Amplifier, which can drive a wide range of headphones. The C8’s Home Theater Pass Through allows the C8 to be integrated into home cinema systems too.

Input selection, bass, treble, tone bypass, balance and input offset levels can all be adjusted using the front panel knobs, or the included remote control. All settings, volume level and input selection are shown on the front panel display.

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The MC830 (monoblock) is a "massively powerful" 300W (8 Ohms) solid-state amplifier that belies its compact footprint. Its distinctive ‘open chassis’ design boasts unrestricted access to its fast-responding Dual Scale Watt meter, which promises an accurate readout of power output.

The MC830’s distinctive McIntosh monogrammed heatsinks add visual appeal and should keep the MC830 running cool for optimum performance. The amp also benefits from both balanced and unbalanced inputs and features several proprietary McIntosh technologies. Firstly (and to protect speakers and systems), the MC830’s patented Power Guard technology monitors the amplifier's output signal to protect against overdrive; if necessary, the amplifier makes real-time micro adjustments to the input signal to prevent clipping (aka distortion). 

Another level of proprietary protection is Sentry Monitor: fuse-less short-circuit protection that disengages the MC830's output stage before the current exceeds safe operating levels and resets automatically when operating conditions return to normal.

The MC830 also features McIntosh's patented Solid Cinch speaker binding posts, which are gold-plated to prevent corrosion and to ensure that the best signal is transferred to your speakers.

Both the C8 and MC830 include the company's Power Control ports, which boast easy system power-up and shut down by sending power on/off signals to other connected McIntosh components. Both separates also feature a user-selectable Auto Off feature, which switches the power off if no signal or user input has been detected after 30 minutes.

Get ready for pricing, because none of this comes cheap. Orders for the C8 and MC830 can be placed now with authorised McIntosh dealers. Shipping is expected to begin in September (USA and Canada) and October (UK).

The McIntosh C8 Vacuum Tube Preamplifier is priced at £4295 ($3500, AU$6995). The McIntosh MC830 Solid State Amplifier costs £4995 ($4000, AU$8,495), bringing your tidy total to £9290 for both – but remember, that's without the optional DA2 (DAC) module in the C8. Better start saving... 

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Hand-built in McIntosh’s New York factory and replacing the MC452 in the brand’s prolific catalogue, the new 450W MC462 quad balanced power amp costs a cool £12,495.

Aside from its headline-grabbing 450W of amplification, it is packed with features and technology to justify its hefty price tag, including McIntosh’s Autoformer technology, which is designed to ensure the amplifier’s 450W are fully delivered to any speaker.

In addition to that and a Quad Balanced design, the MC462 features exclusive McIntosh technologies including Power Guard (which aims to prevent speaker clipping), Sentry Monitor (which provides continuous short circuit protection of the amplifier and connected speakers) and the patented Solid Cinch speaker binding posts.

Like the MC11, the MC462 also features McIntosh’s monogrammed heatsinks. 

McIntosh claims that in addition to enhanced bass performance and reduced distortion over its predecessor, dynamics have been improved thanks to an increase in filter capacity taking dynamic headroom up by 66 per cent (from 1.8dB to 3dB). 

The MC462 is in keeping with McIntosh’s trademark amplifier aesthetics, but the front panel now uses direct LED backlighting for supposedly improved colour accuracy, and the autoformers and single power transformer are housed in new enclosures.

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McIntosh has unveiled the MA8000 300-watt integrated amplifier, which has been designed as a modern audiophile system 'hub'.

The unit incorporates a five-input DAC with decoding up to 32-bit/192kHz for digitally connected devices, while a total of 15 inputs are on offer – including six line-level; two balanced; five digital; and a high-quality MM and MC phono input.

MORE: McIntosh introduces new compact amps, Media Bridge and headphones

The five digital inputs comprise two assignable coaxial and two assingable optical, along with a dedicated asynchronous USB 2.0; which can operate up to 32-bit.

Adjustable cartridge loading and impedance matching are features of the MM and MC phono inputs, which also can be optimised to support a variety of turntable and phono cartridge configurations.

Meanwhile, the MA8000 incorporates McIntosh's new High Drive headphone amplifier, which offers increased gain and output power. All headphone types are supported from 20 to 600 ohms.

MORE: McIntosh C2500 review

If you want an exciting multichannel home cinema system, the MA8000 can oblige with the help of the Home Theatre Pass Through. McIntosh has also included its Power Guard technology, which monitors input and output signals, dynamically adjusting them when necessary.

The MA8000 is another product from McIntosh to feature the iconic blue power meters, glass-fronted fascia and retro controls. Like all products from the US manufacturer, it is handcrafted in Binghampton, New York.

You'll be able to find the McIntosh MA8000 on sale now for £10,000

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by Max Langridge

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