Just ordered a Mac 402 for my Spires!

I can't really share my excitement with my wife or my non-audiophile friends since they just don't understand...so I thought I'd just let you guys know!

I've been really enjoying my Spire - McIntosh 275 - McIntosh 2300 combination. Beautiful tone, great midrange, lots of depth and layering. But there have been times the system gets congested on complex music and peaks. So now I'll have a choice of tubes or solid state. Plus if I ever go for those CLX's, the 402 should provide plenty of current to drive them!

I got a great price on a new unit now that McIntosh has a 3 month excess supply of gear and things are slow at the dealers.

Once things settle in, I'll post my thoughts on the comparisons.

Dave

congrats ! I am very interested in your opinion of this amp compared to the mc275 as I run it with the c2300 to my spires. my room is 13' X 20' how big is your room?

Beautiful amp, you shouldn’t have any trouble driving any speakers with it!

Fish Man...

My room is 12' X 23' with an 8' ceiling that actually has angled sides from about 6' up to 8' (room is over the garage).

Most times, the 275 does great, especially with some Tele's and Gold Lions. In fact, I'm rocking to Mahavishnu Orchestra right now! I usually listen at about 80 - 85 db as measured by my trusty ratshack db meter from my listening chair. But there are times I crank it on up to 90+ db, and that's when things get a little mushy and congested.

Dave

wow we have almost the same room dimensions.please keep us informed

daveneumann said:

I've been really enjoying my Spire - McIntosh 275 - McIntosh 2300 combination. Beautiful tone, great midrange, lots of depth and layering. But there have been times the system gets congested on complex music and peaks.

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FWIW I used to get the same vibe off my 80W/channel Air Tight ATM2 driving Ascents.

My current amps are rated the same. But they are far from the same. I can get silly SPLs off them without any break up/screwed up soundstage. Then again, they are dual mono, and they have way more than double the amount of iron an ATM2 has... I am only guessing, but I suspect that has quite a bit to do with their much more powerful presence.

Then again, Neil was happy with an MC275 driving CLSes. Must listen quiet

Room size 12 by 17.5 as recently measured.

I guess the salient point here is the ATM2 is broadly similar to an MC275. 4 KT88s, and even a 12BH7A, similar sized box and iron.

I am listening to the 402 driving my Summits right now. Magic!

CCH said:

I am listening to the 402 driving my Summits right now. Magic!

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I am doing the very same thing at my house. I use to drive them with the 205. The 402 does a much better job. The 205 worked for the Vantage. When I got the summit, I new I needed more power.

daveneumann said:

I can't really share my excitement with my wife or my non-audiophile friends since they just don't understand...so I thought I'd just let you guys know!

I've been really enjoying my Spire - McIntosh 275 - McIntosh 2300 combination. Beautiful tone, great midrange, lots of depth and layering. But there have been times the system gets congested on complex music and peaks. So now I'll have a choice of tubes or solid state. Plus if I ever go for those CLX's, the 402 should provide plenty of current to drive them!

I got a great price on a new unit now that McIntosh has a 3 month excess supply of gear and things are slow at the dealers.

Once things settle in, I'll post my thoughts on the comparisons.

Dave

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congrats on the new amp!!! How about room treatment - have you treated any of your walls with absorbers, bass traps, etc???? Makes a HUGE difference in my eyes...

Ron said:

I am doing the very same thing at my house. I use to drive them with the 205. The 402 does a much better job. The 205 worked for the Vantage. When I got the summit, I new I needed more power.

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With 2 amps in each Summit, I would have thought there would be need for less power rather than more vs 1 woofer/amp in a Vantage or Spire. Can you explain why the Summit needs more power? Also, how do find the 402 betters the 205? I'm on this exact path with my Summits right now, so I appreciate everyone's experiences.

Wow, your keeping the 275 to swap with the 402? That will be sweet combination depending on the music mood your in! I was too afraid of the 275 because I would not be able to resist rolling!

Dave I'll be looking forward to your comments on the 402. Nice to see some serious Mac guys posting.

Gordon

jvitez said:

With 2 amps in each Summit, I would have thought there would be need for less power rather than more vs 1 woofer/amp in a Vantage or Spire. Can you explain why the Summit needs more power? Also, how do find the 402 betters the 205? I'm on this exact path with my Summits right now, so I appreciate everyone's experiences.

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It's the panals that require the power on the summits more so than the woofer section. The 205, I would consider the minimum amount of power needed. When I changed to the 402, it was like a different speaker. It just opened up and sounded sweeter even at low levels. This is a very pleasant and musical amp.

daveneumann said:

I've been really enjoying my Spire - McIntosh 275 - McIntosh 2300 combination. Beautiful tone, great midrange, lots of depth and layering. But there have been times the system gets congested on complex music and peaks. So now I'll have a choice of tubes or solid state. Plus if I ever go for those CLX's, the 402 should provide plenty of current to drive them!

Dave

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I have the MC275 with the 2200 preamp driving my CLS1's and have exactly the same perspective as you do with the sound... I have listened to my system with a MC252 and it definitely gets rid of the congestion, but I missed the lushness of the 275 especially on vocals. I will be interested in your thoughts on the 402 vs the 275. Having both the 402 and the 275 to play with it is ideal!!!

call me an idiot but I still think in a small room such as ours we are not maxing out the 275 I wish their was a watt meter on these so we could see really how much power we are really using. I think most of our congestion is being heard from bad room acoustics and problems such as stacking and bad decay times.these problems are often more evident with the types of music you guys are having problems with not the amp but hey I could be wrong. I could understand a noticeable difference between amps when driving CLS1's as they are less efficient and have no lower end help.

Room treatment...

Fish Man - You raise an excellent point and I guess I'll know pretty soon how much of what I am hearing is the 275 and how much is the room.

If you read Jeff Dorgay's comments on the 252 in the latest Tonepub, he makes the comparison with the 275 and feels that the tube amp is not the best match for ML's. I think his comments are on both the CLX and the Spires.

I do have some amount of room treatment including diffusion, absorption, corner tunes and strategically placed furniture, ficas trees, etc. Plus I've been fairly meticulous with placement and making spl measurements with each change of speaker/chair.

Regardless of the congestion issue, I am anxious to hear the other differences such as soundstaging, extension and dynamics.

daveneumann said:

Fish Man - You raise an excellent point and I guess I'll know pretty soon how much of what I am hearing is the 275 and how much is the room.

If you read Jeff Dorgay's comments on the 252 in the latest Tonepub, he makes the comparison with the 275 and feels that the tube amp is not the best match for ML's. I think his comments are on both the CLX and the Spires.

I do have some amount of room treatment including diffusion, absorption, corner tunes and strategically placed furniture, ficas trees, etc. Plus I've been fairly meticulous with placement and making spl measurements with each change of speaker/chair.

Regardless of the congestion issue, I am anxious to hear the other differences such as soundstaging, extension and dynamics.

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one more thing to keep in mind is that martin logan no matter how much we love them has always been week in this area anyway. if a friend asked me to recommend a speaker that he was only going to use with Rock and more congested pieces basically anything with a lot of layering heavy in the mid range I would probably not recommend Logans or at least point out this weakness. I think you will gain more power but loose the tube sound. which is better ? I guess that's why they make the 2301's right lol.anyway I think regardless that amp is going to be a major addition to your system I am really looking forward to hearing about it

aside from tube replacement getting crazy with another 275 I would have been really tempted to just ad another one. I have talked to mac about this and they told me that that amp sounds even better in mono mode than in stereo

Fish Man...

Regarding going to mono 275's, I was headed down that path until I was advised by a fairly well know reviewer, via private email, to not do that because the 275 gets slow and sluggish in mono (his words). Also, talking with Frank Gow at Audioclassics (son of Gordon) he also said the 275 in mono would not give me that much more current and therefore would not really be much different from just one 275. He said that to get the current that he thought would be necessary I needed to go with the 353 or 402.

Anyway, most of the time I am very happy with the single 275 driving my Spires. On acoustic, vocal and jazz it is supremely listenable!

just remember the scale for every 3 db increase you need to double the power!

that's why you need the MC1.2KW that they make lol oh they are mono so you really need two!

anyway the 7 or 8 db gain may be all you need for audio nirvana

FISH_MAN said:

just remember the scale for every 3 db increase you need to double the power!

that's why you need the MC1.2KW that they make lol oh they are mono so you really need two!

anyway the 7 or 8 db gain may be all you need for audio nirvana

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Those are on my wish list for 2010!

Gordon

Gordon said:

Those are on my wish list for 2010!

Gordon

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are they really you sick little monkey