playdrv4me
Active Member
I was giving this topic some thought yesterday after again happening across the page for the MAC6700 receiver... The more I think about it, the more I feel like it is the best current product, of any category you can get from McIntosh right now.
It can power a virtually limitless number of VERY good speakers on the market today (perhaps even my 802 Diamonds reasonably well), and it combines several thousands of dollars worth of other McIntosh product categories in one gorgeous unit that most people can reasonably afford, perhaps with a little saving here and there... You don't even have to sacrifice meters! Plus you get a tuner, to boot. I could get rid of ALL my other McIntosh if I had to and be happy with this single unit alone.
Even if you wanted a step up in power in an integrated unit, the BEST you could possibly do is the MA8000 and you only gain another 100 watts which in the grand scheme of things, won't make a hell of a lot of difference. Worse, you lose the tuner in the USA (the MAC6700 is a USA only product due to the built in tuner), AND you get hit with a not insignificant increase in cost. Instead, you could just grow to a separate power amp(s) and continue using your MAC6700 as a solid preamp for many years after that. Its only weakness being a lack of balanced outputs...
I hate to always sound like a product brochure for the damn thing, but I really do feel it's the best representation of what McIntosh is best at at a very reasonable cost.
What's your favorite Mac product? If we went outside the current timeframe, I'd expand it to the MI350/MC3500...
It can power a virtually limitless number of VERY good speakers on the market today (perhaps even my 802 Diamonds reasonably well), and it combines several thousands of dollars worth of other McIntosh product categories in one gorgeous unit that most people can reasonably afford, perhaps with a little saving here and there... You don't even have to sacrifice meters! Plus you get a tuner, to boot. I could get rid of ALL my other McIntosh if I had to and be happy with this single unit alone.
Even if you wanted a step up in power in an integrated unit, the BEST you could possibly do is the MA8000 and you only gain another 100 watts which in the grand scheme of things, won't make a hell of a lot of difference. Worse, you lose the tuner in the USA (the MAC6700 is a USA only product due to the built in tuner), AND you get hit with a not insignificant increase in cost. Instead, you could just grow to a separate power amp(s) and continue using your MAC6700 as a solid preamp for many years after that. Its only weakness being a lack of balanced outputs...
I hate to always sound like a product brochure for the damn thing, but I really do feel it's the best representation of what McIntosh is best at at a very reasonable cost.
What's your favorite Mac product? If we went outside the current timeframe, I'd expand it to the MI350/MC3500...
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