Heathrow

[Dev]

Originally posted by merlin
Dev,

whilst I am not claiming the Mac is a worldbeater, what I suspect is that the player defaulted to the 5.1 mix, quite normal with DVDA's sadly. If that was the case then yes it would sound very dull indeed.

You could be right Merlin, but I told the sole Mac rep how dull the track sounded and I would have thought that he'd know enough about his kit to check the obvious. I'm sure I didn't hear it at it's best..

Looked so ....... whats the word... OLD? Not saying it's a bad thing

 

[merlin]

Dev,

I've known Rob (the "rep") for some time, and he hadn't even seen a piece of McIntosh gear before Saturday! So I very much suspect you got one third of the soundtrack A great shame, as listening to some Sam Cooke on it on Saturday almost had Graham N getting into sixties soul music!!

Yep it sure looks old, but for me it has a strange appeal in the same way as say Harleys and Bentleys. Harks back to the days when music was music, big speakers ruled, meters and tone controls were de rigeur, and things were genuinely built to last a lifetime. Happy days

 

[Dev]

Hi Merlin,

There is the obvious possibility that the Mac is nowhere near as good as my system

Hey, you have your fantasies, let me have mine

 

[merlin]

Dev,

you may well be right. I've heard a lot of stuff that's probably better. Problem is I haven't SEEN anything as nice

 

[sideshowbob]

Would look great in the dark:

-- Ian

 

[titian]

Ian

when you come here in summer you may get that experience.
Not exactly that unit but with:

MC7270
C32
MCD7007
MR78

I will clean them before you come.

 

[joel]

Originally posted by sideshowbob
Would look great in the dark:

-- Ian

Yes. Absolutely nothing beats McIn vin the dark. In visual terms at least. They don't sound too bad at all (we should know since most of their production comes here), although I don't think the "classic" pairing with JBL is especially brilliant for some reason.

 

[merlin]

Joel my plan was to use the McIntosh to feed the midrange up whilst bass duties were handled by that other classic combo of JBL & Crown.

Sadly it appears there may be an issue with the pre outs It seems they don't have independent pre out/power in like the Accuphase integrateds do. Will hopefully know more soon

 

[joel]

Originally posted by merlin
Sadly it appears there may be an issue with the pre outs It seems they don't have independent pre out/power in like the Accuphase integrateds do. Will hopefully know more soon

That is a big surprise. I'm reasonably sure the big McIn integrateds have that feature. Well, maybe not...

 

[MO!]

Originally posted by domfjbrown
and then proceeded to :chunder: all out of the window of my mate's Mini One while driving over to pick up a mate...

Hehe! Been there, done that!

Driving back from Swansea the MOrning after the vodka before :chunder:

20 meters or so after pulling off had to pull over. Leant our the door and threw up all over some guys drive. He was doing some work on the front door of the house and jus stood there hammer in hand staring at me MOtionless. Said sorry and then took off as quick as the mini would take us. A little while later on the MOtorway and felt it coming again. Thought simply opening the window would be enough. How wrong was I My internals ended up spread across my face and the interior of my mates mini aswell as a good aMOunt along the side too! Despite the fact it was pissing down, it didn't shift it and I was kicked out the car at a garage and not allowed back in (hangover or not) till cleaned.

Hope your attempt had MOre success!

Did you manage to get the tickets BTW?

 

[titian]

Personaly I wouldn't recommend McIntosh to anybody who cares for 'pure', clear sound. They might look very nice in the dark but their sound is very very colourful (even though warm). Yes the very warm sound can easily be loved by lots of people. The lack of clearness and details are their negative points for what they costs.
I still believe it was one of my biggest mistake to have bought a whole chain 20 years ago.

 

[merlin]

Point taken Titian, although you are talking about 20 year old kit are you not.

Certainly, if you are after ultimate detail retrieval, then I would also tend to look elsewhere.

Still, if you are just interested in playing "tunes" and don't mind missing out on the peripheral stuff slightly, then I reckon they might just do the job whilst looking a million dollars

 

[titian]

Don't think that the 20 years old kit is worse than today's Mcintosch. After the Japannese took over the company the quality certainly didn't get better although they are certainly marketing it better.

IMO they are just trying to take profit from the old reputation (especially from those mytical tube amplifiers from the 60' - 70').

 

[merlin]

Titian ,

it would be interesting to hear the one against the other don't you think.

20 year old Audio Research is fine kit, but personally I find the new stuff every bit as engaging but importantly the colourations of old have been banished.

It would be interesting to see if McIntosh have acheived the same, although I doubt it's managed quite the leap that Audio Research have. I think, as you say, their focus is somewhat different.

 

[domfjbrown]

Originally posted by MO!
Hope your attempt had MOre success!

Did you manage to get the tickets BTW?

We stuck the car thru the carwash - no chance! So I was out with bucket'n'spongue and it ended up fine.

As for the tickets? Ha - laugh, my head almost fell off. To say I was on the verge of starting a riot or murdering someone after that 16 hours of hell is an understatement.

Better luck next year I guess

 

[titian]

Originally posted by merlin
Titian ,

it would be interesting to hear the one against the other don't you think.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

CMON, lets do it!
Bring that unit over.

 

[merlin]

Just so long as you don't make it play with the big boys

The good news is that it does have the pre/power facility so one is definately coming to my house and the Moon kit will be actively offered for sale.

The bad news is that I might have to wait for a while. But hopefully it will be here in time for my new ZG housewarming party ( No CD Allowed )

 

[MartinC]

Right, finally get chance to post... Firstly it was great to meet a few ZGers (WM, Steve, sideshowbob, Bottleneck, HenryT, GrahamN and SCIDB(sorry I didn't get to talk to you too Dean)), and thanks to everyone for making me feel welcome at the end of the day. Sideshowbob's taste in music was nothing like as traumatising as I'd been led to believe . Thanks particularly to Steve of course for letting us all enjoy the tunes for a good while after the show .

The show itself was rather low on visitors as others have said, which made it all far more relaxing than the fight through the hords at Bristol. Shame I hadn't bothered to take any CDs with me really as it would have been pretty easy to get them played. Music was mostly pretty serious jazz and classical as you'd expect.

My humble thoughts on what I heard:

The system I enjoyed most on the day was the GTAudio one, which was a small room with some pretty imposing light green coloured Avangarde Acoustic Solo speakers (see here , although sadly not the same colour), TRON Meteor pre-amp and a Lindemann CD/SACD player. The room size was a problem when playing music with much by way of bass, which got very boomy, but staying clear of this it sounded great, both on SACD and CD. Really I just got sucked into the music with this system, but also it was detailed without being at all fatiguing, with female vocals particularly standing out.

There was lots of vinyl and valves, which aren't really my cup of tea, although I did enjoy a good ten minutes or so in the Aeon Acousicts room when they were playing some live guitar recording. Wish I'd asked what this was actually, it was good stuff.

Other systems that stood out were the McIntosh, Steinhart and Audionote rooms. Oh, and actually I didn't think the TACT room was too bad :duck: .

Plus of course the Seventh Veil room was sounding good, provided it wasn't pushed too hard, with the soundstaging being particularly noteworthy compared to most systems on the day.

Overall a fun day out, plus I picked up a new toy from Tone .

 

[joel]

Originally posted by MartinC
Sideshowbob's taste in music was nothing like as traumatising as I'd been led to believe .

Ha. The old soften them up before the killer plinque ploy. We'll have you all screaming for the exits soon enough :JOEL:

 

[greg]

Dust has cleared eventually...
Well I must say I enjoyed meeting a few ZG folks and pleased to put faces to names: WM, sidehow (thanks for the drink Ian), Issac, Julian, HenryT, Michael, Robbo, GrahamN, and thanks to Steve for providing the extremely pleasant drop in point. Shame I couldnt stick around after 4:30.

I echo some previous comments - very quiet on the Saturday, good venue, plenty of potential, nice to attend an Audio-only show, but clearly it was VERY badly marketed, the Chester Group web site clearly represents their poor aspirations in this regard. They really need to re-evaluate inclusion of the word "communication" in their company name.

- I enjoyed the Audio Solutions room (Opus3, Korato, Dali, etc.)
- I found the TaCT room listenable, but far too bass heavy.
- First time I've heard any Audio Note gear, I was quite impressed, but not smitten.
- I wasnt smitten by the McIntosh gear, though didnt give it enough time to fully explore. I'm not that keen on the aesthetics though.
- The Audio Atmosphere room was small, but produced a very big sound - certainly worth a listen for typical domestic room sizes, even if just to rule out. The Hegel CD and Amp sounded good together (I'd recommend giving these a listen - good value at 1500 each). The tiny Elac 200 minis sounded surprisingly good, but I guess most significantly was inclusion of the Shunyata power cables with the Hydra8. This was, I belive, the focus of the demo - ie. 4K of boxes using >5K worth of power cables/conditioning, interconnect and s/cables. "look at our tiny speakers see how they sound so big" NB: this isnt intended to get a cabling debate going but did present a case.
- after that the Wilson B/ART room sounded very pale and un-involving
- Steve/7V, WM, etc. presented an interesting setup. without going into the realms of nebulous adjectivory (is that a word?) I liked the imaging and integration between main speakers and subs, felt close to the performers so to speak, the detail and imaging was good too.

All in all, enjoyed hooking up F2F with other members and look forward to getting together in the future. I thought the venue's potential should be explored with a better managed event in the future though I imagine the Chester Group might well have second thoughts.

Cheers
Greg