Is there anyone out ther who can find me a good deal on a McIntosh MC440 or a McIntosh MCC406M 6 Channel amplifier? It looks like the McIntosh people are hard to find. Has anyone use a McIntosh amplifier and do you think it's worth the money? AL.
Al - McIntosh Labs is right here in Binghamton. They're only a couple of miles south of me. Let me ask around......got several friends in the stereo business. NOTHING like a McIntosh amp!! :TU:
Thanks!!! :beer I'm running a Tisumi GXE 660 right now and for what it is isn't bad but I'm looking for cleaner more accurate sound and the Alpine CDA-7878 (Alpines high end receiver 4+ years ago) is not the weak link here. It seems to me the McIntosh line is only own by audiofiles and you will never see them at any store but a high end certified McIntosh dealer. From what I heard of the McIntosh line is only good reviews. Thanks for your follow up and let me know if you hear some thing, :beer Thanks AL.
I'll still see what I can find out on the McIntosh amp. I can tell you from personal experience that you wouldn't go wrong with an Audiobahn amp. They have some powerful amps. I do think the McIntosh amps would be more quality over (watts) quantity.
AL..did you give up on the zapco amp? just curious?? mac amps very nice!! have you checked out Xtant amps?? i mentioned Crown to you before i also have an early ADS 6 channel that i love also hard to find don't really care for newer ADS !! good luck should be taking pics of my set up for ya as promised
Al - I talked to my friend Jason.....he knows of about 5 McIntosh amps available. He's trying to find out specs & prices. He mentioned several hundred, up to $1800-ish for a high end one.
i mentioned Crown to you before technically, 'for JBL by Crown'. my mother works in receiving for Crown. Harmon-Kardon has bought them all up. if you want 6,000 watts plus, i don't know if anyone else even has an amp rated that high yet. and Crown is notorious for underrating their equipment.
I'm looking for clean, clear, accurate sound at low and medium listening levels. I'm not interested in the DOOOOOM-DOOOOOM stuff. I listen to all kinds of music (no rap). The key interest is as I posted before is accuracy not blow the door off DOOOOM-DOOOOM stuff. The Alpine CDA-7878 is a great head unit but I don't think I'm getting the best the head unit could perform because the Tisumi GXE 660 amplifier is not to the level of accuracy as the Alpine head unit. You audiofiles out there correct me if I'm wrong, AL.
No, the Zapco is still an option but have trouble finding a reliable dealer and looking for more input on Zapco performance. I left a e-mail with the company and never did hear back from them. I've seen more of there amplifiers on Ebay then at dealers (?????????) o No: And the company has a posting on Ebay not to buy any Zapco products on line peroid. I would like to hear input on the McIntosh and the Zapco and JBL and anything that you all feel would me and exceed what I'm looking for. As I posted I'm looking for a 6 channel hight end amplifier that has excellent performance at low and med listening levels with clean, clear, accurate, performance. My wife's new Buick Terraza made me think that I'm not getting the full performance out of mine because the CD she was playing at low level had tight bass and clean, clear highs and mids and very accurate, AL.
I'm looking for clean, clear, accurate sound at low and medium listening levels. amps are rated for power at a certain distortion level (Crown usually goes with 0.1 THD). when i say that Crown is notorious for underrating their amps, it means that you get even more power at THD than they list AND that the amp is that much more accurate at less than full volume. bass is more a function of the current limit of the amp than anything else and that's something else that Crown amps are very good at; stupid low impedance loads and insanely high current draws. the reason you don't hear much about Crown is that their amps/microphones/etc are actually commercial / for stadium applications. this is why the car amps are marketed through JBL. JBL has the retail network in place. the Crown website (at which you will find no mention of car amps): http://www.crownaudio.com/# the JBL website that you can find the 3,000 watt full range and 6,000 watt sub amp at ... if it was actually up: http://www.jbl.com
You made a very interesting point :Smarty: . I've heard a problems on high level listening levels and you made a good point on the lower listening levels!!! :TU: Do you think the Crown would out perform the other high end units out there? I really think you undestand what I'm looking for and would like to see as much of your :Smarty: as needed to make a :Smarty: purchase, AL.
AL a couple more to think about....ready?? (1) soundstream XTA 600.5 ..5 channel 90x4 and 240x1 sub $279.00 (2) Kicker ZX700.5.....85x4 and 125x1 or 425 mono into 2 ohms..317.00 (3) JL audio 500.5 ..100x2 front 25x2 rear 250 sub...$599.00 (4) Phoenix Gold R9.0:5 no idea of what kind of ower but 500 total..$279.00 all prices with free shipping from www.onlinecarstereo.com BTW the soundstream amp offer 1200 wats total i believe...good luck Ihave used (abused :Brow: ) kicker amps before they are seriously under rated!!...around here soundstream was kinda the higher end amp to have check em all out!!! personally i like kicker amps still have an old impulse amp 2 channel bridged in 2 ohm config. the little amp puts out 525 watts at 12.5 volts!! nastly little amp
Soundstream amplifier Continuum (Reference 705) Has anyone heard of a Soundstream amplifier Continuum (Reference 705)? AL.
Soundstream Chrome plated Continuum amplifier. This amplifier is used but in good condition, I have also verified that everything on the amp works. This multichannel amplifier is a 4X100W amplifier and 2X200W for the subwoofer. This amplifier a limited edition version of the Soundstream Reference 705. Own this great sounding amplifier that was one of the last of Soundstreams line of amplifiers handmade in the USA
BTW...all the amps listed in post #14 are new amps and at least offer a 1 year warranty off ebay or other places maybe you'll get your money back....good luck
Confused I really don't understand the amplifier market. I see amps from $300.00-$1800.00 and all claim to be the one to buy. Something is wrong here! Is the reason for the high price on some because of the name? If this is the case I wish someone cut threw the BS on this one. Like the price of a Corvette, I own one and my 84 Buick Century is 10 times the car the Corvette is and the Corvette is a very well done frame off restoration, I hope you all understand the point I'm trying to make here. I would spend more for a amplifier that would do what I want it to do and will not pay a high price for a name and find out a amplifier at half the price is better of equal in performance. AL.
Do you think the Crown would out perform the other high end units out there? do i think you'd be happy with the sound of the Crown amp? oh yeah. i don't know if you'd be thrilled about the price though. i know the 6kw sub amp was many thousands of dollars, i assume the 3kw is north of $3,500. [double checks web] hey, whadayaknow? jbl.com is back up. hang on a sec and i'll quote you some prices. A3000GTI page ouch, $4,600. the 6kw sub amp is a bargain at a $ a watt. truth be told, the Crown amps are more for thumper competitions and the uber-audiophile. i was just chiming in because i saw that they'd already been mentioned and wanted to clear up what could have easily caused some sourcing confusion (Crown? They don't have no steenking car amps! :spank: ). I see amps from $300.00-$1800.00 and all claim to be the one to buy. Something is wrong here! Is the reason for the high price on some because of the name? no, not usually. car audio is one of those areas where alot of companies put more money into their advertising dept than their engineering dept. see the ricer market. some things to check for: is the listed power rating peak-to-peak, peak power or RMS power? anything other than an RMS rating and the ad copy guys are trying to screw you. the weight of the unit will often be a dead giveaway on this one. as most of the amp companies are using material with similiar conductance ratings, current carrying capability is primarily a factor of how wide/heavy the conductor paths are. too small/narrow/light duty of conductors and you'll simply burn up the outputs (exactly like a fuse, except more destructive) at a certain point. power is listed at a certain % THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) at the given power level. who cares if the amp can deliver 20 gazillion watts if it's doing it with 130% THD (more distortion than signal). i think the standards are a little looser for car audio but i still wouldn't trust anything over 1% THD. Frequency range: should be under 30Hz to well over 15kHz. Freqs under 30Hz are stressing the current capability of the amp (as well as the delivery capability of all but the most massive of woofers). under 10Hz and you're transitioning from 'hearing' to primarily 'feeling' the sound. most people can hear to over 15kHz so you wouldn't want the -3dB rolloff to occur to somewhere over 17kHz normally. kHz is 'thousands of Hertz' so you could also write that as <>30-15,000 Hz. it can be helpful to think of the power output over the frequency range as similiar to a torque curve ... with less variation (hopefully). -3dB is the point at which the delivered power is half of the power delivered at the optimum freq (ie - if an amp delivered 2w @ 8,000 Hz for a given input level, the -3dB rolloff might be 1w @17,576Hz or 27Hz, which would normally be quoted as a 30Hz-17.5kHz range). other things to look for are: manufacturer options to bridge the amp outputs. only serious amps will suggest that you run series bridged (connect the positive on one output to the negative of the other output and run a single speaker/array off of the two remaining posts). as to whether or not any other manufacturer recommends running parallel bridged (as the JBL page says is unique to the Crown) i have no idea. i don't think i've ever seen that on anything else. rated power into lower impedances than 4 ohms. impedance is a combination of the resistance + inductance + capacitance of the load circuit. many things affect the actual load impedance seen by the amp including the frequency being reproduced. inductance and capacitance directly cancel each other as the inverse of the frequency (high freqs pass through a cap as if it weren't there while an inducter would stop it cold and vice versa for low freqs). this means that your '4 ohm' speaker is actually a nominal rating. transient loads seen by the amp can be under 1 ohm or over 8. this is (part of) what makes high current ratings on the amp important for bass reproduction. i'm not really into the car audio market so i'm not going to have specific suggestions for you. i'll have to give Zorno Technologies (Zorno is a Purdue engineer that's a buddy of mine) a call and see if he's got anything. :laugh:
