I happen not to like to pay for cosmetics- I think of these things as industrial objects, so when I want romance and instant lush, wonderful qualities I use the 1965 McIntosh tube stuff, and when I really want to hear an LP, it's the old SP10. Some people prefer a less analytical sound of the lusher McIntosh- or Conrad-Kohnson, and ARC stuff is generally not forgiving of the quality of the source, but especially for preamps, I think ARC is just the top. In my view, the ARc and McIntosh customer are generally not the same people, though our late Asylum friend ruffscruff used an ARC AP3 preamp and McIntosh MC2XXX (?) power amp together for years. Again, these are generalisations from a long-time, devoted ARC user. It sounds solid, but to me is less accurate to live sound than the ARC. The bass is the thing for me that really rules out modern McInotsh preamps- I like a nimble, transparent bass with intimate detail and I find the current McIntosh typically to be boomy and semi-opaque.
Preamp vs poweramp series#
When evaluating tuners too, I listened to a number of the later 70XX series and I found these to be dry and lifeless with tubby bass- and very expensive. It's fun and impressive looking, but I saw some tube amp with a window showing the tubes and it looked contrived- a bit goofy actually. And you might notice all my McIntosh stuff is about 40 years old - the MR77 is the newest at 1974, and I find modern McIntosh to be intentionally retro- which to me is a game that I tire of quickly. Features are logical and most preamps have "bypasss" or "direct" modes. ARC stuff is also very dynamic and the power supplies are well regulated with large capacity.
Both are well constructed with excellent materials and components choics, but if I had to summarize, I find Audio Research to do everything that I find important in audio a bit better: the sound is typically cleaner, faster, more natural timbre, with very accurate imaging. I'm both an enthusiastic McIntosh (have: MX110, MC240, MR67, MR77) and 20 year Audio Research owner (have: SP8, SP10, D115, LS3, D130) but I find these companies to have traditonally quite different approaches to sound- and I like them for different uses. Audio Research vrs McIntosh ? posted by AKopac
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