AUDIO FILE
Two-chassis control/tube preamplifier
Made by: McIntosh Laboratory inc., Binghamton, NY, USA
Supplied by: Jordan Acoustics Ltd, Dorset, UK
Telephone: 01202 911886
Web: www.mcintoshlabs.com; www.jordanacoustics.co.uk
Price: £12,995
‘It serves up a soupçon of the “valve magic” that audiophiles crave’ If the object of an amplifier, as Quad’s Peter Walker once astutely observed, is to be ‘a length of wire with gain’, then McIntosh’s flagship preamplifier is a very long and impressive looking piece of wire indeed. Furthermore, it has plenty of gain too, but any prospective purchaser might be just a little wary about the very concept of the £12,995 C1100C/T.
It’s a massively complex, two-box behemoth with almost every feature under the sun, a sophisticated microprocessorcontrolled user interface and a large complement of vacuum tubes inside – plus…