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In Reply to: RE: As a reviewer, my experience with McIntosh was that I ... posted by Doug Schneider on May 25, 2023 at 14:38:25
How about... I had auditioned in the same general time frame... this was when I was writing the "A Stereo for Mr. Stevens" series in TAS, a solid-state ARC amp, I don't recall its model name, that was not as fudgy.
I also later had experiences with vacuum-tube gear that had almost none of the usual colorations. One that stuck in my memory was the Ars-Sonum from Spain.
At the end of the day, whether my educated guess was right or wrong does not matter, so please stop trying to thwack that piņata.
In the end, I sent that Fudgy McIntosh Thing back to its Mothership, and I did not review it, because I could not recommend it.
Whereas I recall that I did say some nice things in my TAS column about the McIntosh solid-state amplfier. IIRC it could have been the D110.
Are you claiming that the McIntosh piece I sent back sounded exactly the same as a Plinius SA-100, and that the McIntosh was totally NEUTRAL in all respects?
Of course not.
And if you dredge up something that HP said to the contrary, the primary reason I voluntarily left TAS was that HP was a hypocrite. He "Made Nice" with Mr. & Mrs. Dave Wilson, and as soon as they were gone, he told Scot Markwell to "get those speakers out of here and put in some real speakers."
Sad but true. The more TAS circled the drain, the more desperate he got.
ciao,
john
Follow Ups:
Wow, what's with all the gossip about TAS, a magazine I don't care about and has nothing to do with this. Deflection? Proof of expertise? Whatever, it's a sideline.
About: "At the end of the day, whether my educated guess was right or wrong does not matter, so please stop trying to thwack that piņata."
How can I not? If that's an "educated guess" you made, I can't imagine what an uneducated guess would look like.
You went into a review or whatever with the knowledge of an autoformer -- so a design difference -- *thought* you heard a coloration, and then automatically said that coloration, imagined or not, had to do with the autoformer, the only thing you seem to have known about the amplifier's internals. And someone is supposed to BELIEVE that, when there are how many other parts in the amplifier? And how different is the circuit design? And what might all those little or big differences account for?
Obviously, there was no education in that guess at all. From my point of view, where all this started -- the mountain of bad information about Audio Research -- you have some axe to grind with McIntosh. Or, you're like that friend of mine, who just "says stuff."
Doug
Do you doubt that ARC's prices have gone up twice as fast as consumer prices in general?
Do you claim that the GhostMeters were cheaper than a plain metal faceplate?
Because that is what it seems you are doing.
Here's a bit of advice for you:
Perhaps it is not the best role for an "Audio Critic" to play, to be the "Sir Galahad Virtuous Defender" of certain audio brands.
In all the back-and-forth about MFSL's "Analog-gate," did you notice that Michael Fremer expressed exasperation that MFSL had not delegated the Crisis Management to HIM?
Perhaps you should not want to go THERE.
john
PS: I have not that much trouble with McIntosh. I have more trouble with their customers who think there's nothing better. Just like I have trouble with BMW owners who think there is nothing better.
About the last thing I want to do is be a defender of Audio Research. You're Mr. Straw Man with stuff like that. I never said any such thing -- another deflection. But wasn't it you, in an initial post, saying that some consultant should read what you said? So was it YOU who wanted to be that consultant perhaps?As I said in a post, I don't know exactly why they're in receivership under the current crew -- yes, we agree on that -- though I could guess about many reasons.
But I'm not going to guess publicly when I really don't know. But you? You're in there with wild conspiracy theories about Ghost Meters and multi-colored amplifiers being the culprit. Oh, and prices, too.
All these things were in place long before the takeover by the newest management. Furthermore, the same sort of strategies were put into place in Sonus Faber and McIntosh -- with wild success. The same crew members who led Audio Research up to the takeover are still in charge at those companies. And from what I can tell (I was just at Munich's High End visiting them), those brands are doing extremely well.
Why I waded into here was I saw your initial post about the Audio Research demise -- which I saw riddled with so many inaccuracies that if you told me that the sun would be setting in the evening and rising in the morning, I'd be up and looking outside just to make sure. Honestly, you should put a disclaimer on those types of posts that everything written is purely guesswork and likely not to be true.
Doug
Edits: 05/26/23 05/26/23
Doug,
It's hard to argue against stream of consciousness gish gallop.
"All thoughts are prey to some beast" - Bill Callahan
I might lose respect for audio reviewers
:)
You say "Toto," and I start singing:
"I bless the rains down in Africa... "
tee hee
john
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