McIntosh MXA70 – the big little system
Legendary American high-end Hi-Fi manufacturer, McIntosh Laboratory, is launching its big little system. Named the MXA70 it is available for the first time in the UK from Jordan Acoustics, McIntosh’s UK distributor.
The McIntosh MXA70, as you would expect, is a highly versatile high-performance hand-built audio system, constructed in McIntosh’s Binghamton (NY) factory.
The system contains an advanced 50-watt McIntosh amplifier, in-house aluminium loudspeakers and a dedicated headphone amp. You also get a top-quality McIntosh DAC with four digital inputs, bringing the famous McIntosh sound quality to a wide range of digitally connected devices.
The speaker cabinets can be angled upwards by 10 degrees to best suit their environment and for extra depth – speaking of extra depth, connections for a powered subwoofer are available from the main unit.
The MXA70 includes the same high-quality dedicated headphone amplifier that’s found in the recently launched MHA100 head amp. The system employs a new adaptation of McIntosh’s unique autoformer technology which offers three selectable headphone impedance ranges: 8-40; 40-150 and 150-600 ohms. This flexibility enables anything from ear-buds to studio-quality cans to be able to deliver that expected level of aural pleasure.
The MXA70 also features McIntosh’s new Headphone Crossfeed Director (HXD) technology. Apparently this allows high-quality recordings played through headphones to image like conventional speakers. The idea is that this HXD improves the sound localisation for headphone listening and restores the directionality component of the spatial sound stage normally experienced with loudspeaker listening. This is something I *need* to hear with my own ears. Soon!
The amplifier is a Class A/B complimentary-symmetry design featuring ThermalTrak output transistors. The transistors feature precise bias current control for ultra-low crossover distortion and cool operation.
Further features include tone controls for greater flexibility across a range of source material plus McIntosh’s Power Guard tech. This cleverness consists of a waveform-comparison circuit that continuously monitors both input and output signals, dynamically adjusting them when necessary, in order to avoid potentially damaging clipping.
One thing that you cannot mistake is that the MXA70 gloriously retains McIntosh’s legendary 1950s styling. The entire unit is housed in a beautiful stainless steel chassis that not only compliments the famous fibre-optic-illuminated McIntosh glass front-panel, retro knobs and brushed aluminum end caps, and is guaranteed to look awesome in any room.
The new MXA70 is considered to be…
perfectly suited to deliver the full potential of today’s high-quality music files, while enabling the legendary McIntosh sound quality from a wide number of source components
All this luscious Hi-Fi tech can be yours for the paltry sum of £5,995.
