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Manufacturer Showcases (/showcases/) TAS Store (https://store.theabsolutesound.com) Login (/accounts/login/?next=/articles/mcintosh-mc275-vi-power-amplifier-and-c22-preamplifier/) Register (/accounts/register/?next=/articles/mcintosh-mc275-vi-power-amplifier-and-c22-preamplifier/) Equipment Reports (/articles/? type=review) News (/articles/? type=news) Show Reports (/articles/? type=show_report) Blogs (/articles/? type__in=blog,show_report) Buyer's Guides (/buyers_guides/) Back Issues (/publications/the- absolute-sound/) Music (/articles type=album_rev MCINTOSH MC275 VI POWER AMPLIFIER AND C22 PREAMPLIFIER Classic Cool Plus Equipment report (/articles/?type=review) by Paul Seydor (/articles/?authors=15) | Oct 31st, 2016 Categories: Tubed power amplifiers (/articles/?categories=8) , Tubed preamplifiers (/articles/?categories=44) | Products: McIntosh Labs C22 (/articles/?products=3073) , McIntosh Labs MC275 VI (/articles/?products=3072) The cool factor is way cool: Turn it on and the seven small tubes across the front light up, one after another, in a soft orange glow. Once they’re all lighted, a moment’s pause, then they turn green and you’re in business. I am referring to the latest iteration of what is widely and justly regarded as the one of the greatest tube amplifiers ever made and the greatest from McIntosh: the MC275, now in its sixth version. Not necessarily Mac’s “best,” whatever that may mean, but its greatest in the sense of an innovative product—Tim di Paravicini, a man not exactly generous when it comes to distributing compliments, called Mac’s “unity gain” circuit one of the few circuits he wished he had come up with himself—that came to be regarded as a classic even before its initial ten-year lifespan ended with the company’s turn toward solid-state. But diehard audiophiles continued to cling to the warmth, musicality, and sheer beauty of the best tube sound and the technology stubbornly refused to go away. (I think it not an overstatement here to say that attention of The Absolute Sound, Harry Pearson in particular, was for a time almost single-handedly responsible for keeping tube technology before the audiophile public.) Let us not be sentimental, however: There’s no tube amp in the world that for laboratory accuracy will not be eclipsed by any competently or better-designed solid-state amp. But those last few degrees of accuracy as such are not necessarily the be-all and end-all of music reproduction. A personal example: A close friend, an amateur musician and audiophile whose ears are as discriminating as those of any reviewer I know, dropped by not long after I had received this latest MC275 for review, accompanied by another Mac retro-classic, the C22 preamplifier. Now this man—who uses solid-state gear, I should point out—knows the sound of my system virtually as well as he does his own. After scarcely a minute’s worth of listening to my Quad 2805 ESL speakers, the source a CD of Dvořák’s “American” string quartet, he said, “This sound is just lovely, absolutely lovely, completely involving and beautiful. Everybody should hear it just to experience how beautiful music reproduction in the home can be.” He’s right. If it wasn’t the “best”—that pesky word again—sound I’ve ever had in my home, I’ve rarely had any I’d pronounce better. FEATURED ARTICLES CES Show Report: Electronics $15k and Up and Analog Highlights (/articles/ces-show- report-electronics-15k-and-up-and-analog- highlights/) CES 2017 Loudspeakers $20k and Up (/articles/ces-2017-loudspeakers-20k-and- up/) 2017 Buyer's Guide: Power Amplifiers $10,000-$15,000 (/articles/2017-buyers- guide-power-amplifiers-10000-15000/) Download the New TAS Buyer's Guide to Cables, Power Products, Accessories, and Music 2016 (/articles/download-the-new- tas-buyers-guide-to-cables-power- products-accessories-and-music-2016/) 2017 Buyer's Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $5,000-$10,000 (/articles/2017-buyers-guide-floorstanding- loudspeakers-5000-10000/) LISTS 2017 Buyer's Guide: Subwoofers (/articles/2017-buyers-guide-subwoofers/) 2017 Buyer's Guide: Power Amplifiers $10,000-$15,000 (/articles/2017-buyers- guide-power-amplifiers-10000-15000/) 2017 Buyer's Guide: Desktop Loudspeakers (/articles/2017-buyers-guide-desktop- loudspeakers/) (/) Subscriber Services ! Search our site... Tweet 105 Like Like
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Page 1: MCINTOSH MC275 VI POWER Equipment report … MC275 VI Power... · 2017 Buyer's Guide: Desktop Loudspeakers (/articles/2017-buyers-guide-desktop-loudspeakers/) (/) Subscriber Services

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MCINTOSH MC275 VI POWERAMPLIFIER AND C22PREAMPLIFIERClassic Cool Plus

Equipment report (/articles/?type=review)

by Paul Seydor (/articles/?authors=15) | Oct 31st, 2016

Categories: Tubed power amplifiers (/articles/?categories=8),Tubed preamplifiers (/articles/?categories=44)|Products: McIntosh Labs C22 (/articles/?products=3073),McIntosh Labs MC275 VI (/articles/?products=3072)

The cool factor is way cool: Turn it on and the seven small tubes across the front light up, one afteranother, in a soft orange glow. Once they’re all lighted, a moment’s pause, then they turn green andyou’re in business. I am referring to the latest iteration of what is widely and justly regarded as the oneof the greatest tube amplifiers ever made and the greatest from McIntosh: the MC275, now in its sixthversion. Not necessarily Mac’s “best,” whatever that may mean, but its greatest in the sense of aninnovative product—Tim di Paravicini, a man not exactly generous when it comes to distributingcompliments, called Mac’s “unity gain” circuit one of the few circuits he wished he had come up withhimself—that came to be regarded as a classic even before its initial ten-year lifespan ended with thecompany’s turn toward solid-state. But diehard audiophiles continued to cling to the warmth,musicality, and sheer beauty of the best tube sound and the technology stubbornly refused to go away.(I think it not an overstatement here to say that attention of The Absolute Sound, Harry Pearson inparticular, was for a time almost single-handedly responsible for keeping tube technology before theaudiophile public.)

Let us not be sentimental, however: There’s no tube amp in the world that for laboratory accuracy willnot be eclipsed by any competently or better-designed solid-state amp. But those last few degrees ofaccuracy as such are not necessarily the be-all and end-all of music reproduction. A personal example:A close friend, an amateur musician and audiophile whose ears are as discriminating as those of anyreviewer I know, dropped by not long after I had received this latest MC275 for review, accompanied byanother Mac retro-classic, the C22 preamplifier. Now this man—who uses solid-state gear, I shouldpoint out—knows the sound of my system virtually as well as he does his own. After scarcely aminute’s worth of listening to my Quad 2805 ESL speakers, the source a CD of Dvořák’s “American”string quartet, he said, “This sound is just lovely, absolutely lovely, completely involving and beautiful.Everybody should hear it just to experience how beautiful music reproduction in the home can be.”He’s right. If it wasn’t the “best”—that pesky word again—sound I’ve ever had in my home, I’ve rarelyhad any I’d pronounce better.

FEATURED ARTICLES

CES Show Report: Electronics $15k and Upand Analog Highlights (/articles/ces-show-report-electronics-15k-and-up-and-analog-highlights/)

CES 2017 Loudspeakers $20k and Up(/articles/ces-2017-loudspeakers-20k-and-up/)

2017 Buyer's Guide: Power Amplifiers$10,000-$15,000 (/articles/2017-buyers-guide-power-amplifiers-10000-15000/)

Download the New TAS Buyer's Guide toCables, Power Products, Accessories, andMusic 2016 (/articles/download-the-new-tas-buyers-guide-to-cables-power-products-accessories-and-music-2016/)

2017 Buyer's Guide: FloorstandingLoudspeakers $5,000-$10,000(/articles/2017-buyers-guide-floorstanding-loudspeakers-5000-10000/)

LISTS

2017 Buyer's Guide: Subwoofers(/articles/2017-buyers-guide-subwoofers/)

2017 Buyer's Guide: Power Amplifiers$10,000-$15,000 (/articles/2017-buyers-guide-power-amplifiers-10000-15000/)

2017 Buyer's Guide: Desktop Loudspeakers(/articles/2017-buyers-guide-desktop-loudspeakers/)

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McIntosh C22 Preamplifier

And let’s not fret the accuracy issue too much. McIntosh tube gear has a long and well-deservedreputation for being the most neutral-sounding of all tube electronics: no apologies necessary forplummy bass, bogus warmth, pushed-back presence, drooping highs, euphonic distortions, orexcessive noise. Of course, it helps that both this latest MC275 and the companion C22 preamp, thelast of Mac’s classic tube preamps, are most emphatically not exercises in mere nostalgia. Thecompany’s engineers know that just because something is old or “original” doesn’t automaticallyguarantee it’s better, particularly when it comes to electronics, where it would be folly to ignore theconsiderable advances in the half century since these products were first introduced. Despite outwardsimilarities, these are not your father or grandfather’s Macs (see sidebar). Tubes constitute the heart ofthe circuitry, but no vintage 275 or 22 sounded like or as good as these new ones. Let’s begin withtubes’ principal bête-noire—noise. None. No, of course, not literally—with no signal playing I can crankup the volume to maximum and hear some thermal rush if I stand close enough to the speakers. But,hey, who listens that way? Certainly not I. Yet even at very loud volume levels, from my listeninglocation I hear nothing in the way of noise to suggest tubes in the circuit. Every pause yields quietbackgrounds or ambience if it happens to be decently captured on the recording. (And keep in mindthere are many solid-state units that will not pass the volume flat-out, ears-up-against-the-tweeter test.)

Transients? Completely natural and realistic, just as these things sound outside of recordings, withforce and impact but never with the kind of exaggerated “speed” that screams “high fidelity”! There isresolution galore but not of the sort that calls attention to itself, a wealth of detail to savor as you wishyet that is not in least coercive or excessive. At no time did I find myself wishing for more or worrying Iwasn’t hearing what was there. Definition and clarity top to bottom are superb. Indeed, the circuitimprovements in the 275 mark it out as clearly a better amplifier than the version IV I reviewed over tenyears ago, splendid as that one was. Well-recorded rock music sounds fabulous. Admittedly, I don’tlisten to a lot of it, but the things I do I like a lot, such as the Rolling Stones or Buddy Holly. Or take PaulSimon’s Graceland, which the pair send up with sensational power and drive, where such qualities arecalled for, or delicacy and subtlety, where they are called for. Every strand in the texture of “The Boy inthe Bubble” emerges with a clarity so revealing that I doubt many solid-state amplifiers could materiallybetter it, while the a capella singers in “Under African Skies” are projected with lifelike warmth andvitality.

These components were originally designed at a time when serious audio designers and audiophilesused classical, acoustic jazz, and mainstream pop and folk as references; that is, music for which thereis a live, acoustical equivalent. These new Macs really thrive on such music. Take the Dvořák quartet Ireferred to at the outset: Get the playback level right with accommodating speakers and you reallycould almost be tricked into believing the players are arrayed before you, such is the solidity of theimaging, the tactility of the reproduction. Suffice it to say that whether it’s small music or big, this pairdoes soundstaging and imaging superlatively. The opening of Stokowski’s Romanian Rhapsody (onvinyl) has breathtaking power, definition, and real reach deep into the bass, with a quality to the loweroctaves that I wish to emphasize: It is not that “tight” kind of bass which so many audiophiles (andreviewers) seem to delight in but which has no real counterpart in reality. Rather, bass instruments aresubtly rounded and highly dimensional, with great bloom if the recording allows for it, yet never spongy,as tube bass can often be, even in several modern designs.

Voices. Gorgeous. In combination with Harbeth’s new Monitor 40.2, the best three-way speaker systemI’ve ever heard (review forthcoming), these Macs made for some of the richest, most vibrant andbeautiful vocal reproduction I’ve ever heard in home playback systems, whether it’s the AnonymousFour or Peter, Paul, and Mary, Sinatra or Fitzgerald, choral groups like Conspirare or Theatre of Voices.Anything and everything throughout the midrange has the warmth, roundedness, and body for whichthe best vacuum-tube reproduction has always been prized.

2017 Buyer's Guide: FloorstandingLoudspeakers $5,000-$10,000(/articles/2017-buyers-guide-floorstanding-loudspeakers-5000-10000/)

2017 Buyer's Guide: Headphones(/articles/2017-buyers-guide-headphones/)

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McIntosh MC275 VI Power Amplifier

When I reviewed version IV of this amplifier I noted that it was not quite as transparent as the bestsolid-state gear. If that is still true, the margin has so narrowed as to be of virtually no consequence. Ihave recently been the object of some sarcasm from another reviewer for insufficiently valuing small,not to say really tiny sonic differences among components. So as not to offend further in this regard, letme say that, as with other marginal differences, this reduction in transparency is there to be heard if youreally want to concentrate upon it to the exclusion of everything else. That said, I personally judge itinsignificant. I also noticed a slight darkness to the presentation with version IV, but not with this newone. All that attention Mac paid to extending the bandwidth with the new transformers has resulted inconsiderably more top-end extension, clarity, and definition. Yet there is no harshness, glare, orbrightness that I can attribute to the amp or the preamp. By the way, there is no mystery about why theMC275 sounds so neutral, especially as compared to most other tube amplifiers known to me: Itsoutput impedance is a mere 0.4 ohms. This is comparable to many solid-state units and in markedcontrast to a lot of tube amplifiers, on which I’ve seen output impedances north of 2 ohms (no suchamplifier is capable of sonic neutrality).

Power. It’s common knowledge that, owing to their greater output voltage swing, tube amps generallysound louder than their nominal ratings might indicate. This proves to be the case with the MC275. Forone thing, the amp puts out an easy 90 watts a channel, as opposed to its rated 75. For another, thecircuit is exceptionally stable, so it doesn’t frazzle when pushed too hard. All that said, the HarbethMonitor 40.2s are capable of playing very loud, and there were rare times when the 275 soundedfractionally undernourished on really big material (the Quads won’t play as loud as the Harbeths, so thiswas never an issue with that combination). The spectacularly recorded hammerblows on the ZanderMahler Sixth on Telarc—the best recording quality sonics of this piece I know—land with tremendousforce and impact. I compared the 275 to the solid-state Pass Labs X150.8, which generates double thepower. Though the Pass was slightly better in impact, the Mac was by no means left at the post. I mustpoint out that I was playing the speakers much louder than I would normally do, and louder than therelative level would be if I were listening to a large orchestra live, even in the first few rows (I’ve heardthis symphony from row two in Disney Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Dudamel,whose hammerblows are cataclysmic.). It is well to keep in mind, too, that the Pass is considerablymore expensive than the 275’s $5500 and double the rated power. But the 275’s 75 watts per channelcan be strapped for double the power when it is used in bridged mode as a mono amp. I didn’t have asecond 275, but I suspect the already-small gap in dynamic freedom would have been narrowed evenfurther by a pair of 275s.

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