Our readers respond…we respond right back!

Mr. Tim Roth,
Hope all is well, I had to read your review of the LS1s a number of times to fully understand it. Indeed a well written peace dear sir. You see for years I have been a supporter of all one's hifi to be from the same manufacturer simply because to mix & match is a task that not everyone can successfully implement. My first hifi was an all Mcintosh system down to the cables and speakers. But as I grow older I can not help but to think " there has got to be a simpler system that can play back music in the highest fashion possible i.e. without coloration". Never heard of "The Grimm God" before till I stumbled on your article. And after a week of research on the company to my astonishment I realized that I have had no idea what so ever what a proper audio system should be. Thank you for the education.

I am an American from Santa Barbara CA, I am married to a Turkish lady and we currently reside in Bodrum/Turkey.

There is a vast difference of culture between my wife and I, but we have managed it rather well for 20 years now.

HiFi, fidelity, audiophile, high-end equipment etc. etc. are not within the vocabulary of an average Turkish person, so how does one go about explaining 40k for two speakers? How does one explain to a loved one that "nirvana has been located", it's all very simple a pair of LS1s with an Astel & Kern digital source.

Yes Mr. Roth in your brilliantly written article you have failed to mention how to convince a loved one to part with 40,000.00 USD to reach audio nirvana. This is not the case of "honey have I told you how much I love you lately? You see Mr. Roth you write a phenomenal piece of journalism and then you leave a reader like me to hang bone dry, now I ask you sir is that a fair thing to do?

I will be travelling to the Netherlands to listen to the system soon, thanks for the most informative article, but...

Kindest regards,
Assassi

Dear Assassi,

Good luck with that! Being unmarried, perhaps due in part to my love for audio, I can't say I can give you expert advice. What I would suggest is that you find out what her favorite music is and then play it for her on these speakers. Let them do the convincing. Good luck!

Tim

Jeff,
I could not restrain my self from commenting on your excellent article on the vintage McIntosh tube amplifiers. I have owned a Mc225 since 1964, when I bought it new. It has been in almost constant service, and has needed very little in the way of repair or tube replacement. (I have a stock of replacements). I have also used the services of Terry DeWick, and his "Cat assistants". He has updated my power supply, (rebuild), and replaced my RCA inputs, to gold plated ones and replaced the power cord. I also had a defective 220uF/450v capacitor replaced in 1992. The work was done at the Audio Den in Smith Have Plaza in Lake Grove, NY. Before I could even even get out of the shop someone offered me $400.00 for it. I refused. I had asked Terry about upgrading the power cord, in his opinion power cord upgrades for McIntosh power amps, "are snake oil". He said it has the same power cord as the Mc275, and that is sufficient. I suppose other people have other opinions, but, I never replaced it.

At the time I lived in NY, I was driving two Electro-Voice Patricians, that I built from plans from Electro-Voice, and I had a center channel of a 12 cu.ft Infinite baffle with a 15" woofer and the mid-bass driver from a Electro-Voice Georgian and a JBL 075 ring radiator. I thought I was in Audio Heaven. The Patricians were driven by the Mc225 and the center channel by a Fairchild 255A 30 watt power amp. The Fairchild got its power from a Scott LC-21, that had a center channel output and volume control. No longer have the Scott LC-21, but, still have the Mc225, and the Fairchild.

The Mc225 is still in use today!!!! It is in a bi-amp system in my small music room (9x12). It drives a pair of Golden Ear AON2s. The bass is handled by a 10.6 ft Transmission line, with a dual voice coil Aurum Cantos 10" sub-woofer. The Mc225 gets it’s signal from the pre-amp stage of a Rogue Sphinx Tubes 12AU7, and the Transmission line is powered by the Same Rogue Sphinx. Maybe, not the best of all worlds, but, I am very pleased with the sound. I could go on and on about my other source components, like my Empire Troubadour 595 turntable and tube output CD player, but, this is a sonnet on the McIntosh Mc225.

Thank you for your article on the McIntosh tube equipment. I an telling every audiophile I know to read it. Maybe they will realize why I will never part with the Mc225!!

Warren A. Schrick

Hi Warren,

Thanks for your kind words, very much appreciated. Your email is definitely my favorite message of the year! 🙂

You've really owned some wonderful hi-fi gear over the years and made some great equipment choices. The little Mac MC225 is fantastic, and it is my favorite amplifier for my Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers. I don't ever plan on letting it go now that I've found it! You were very smart in buying your MC225 originally and for keeping it all these years - it is a jewel of the amplifier world.

May your tubes always glow, and the music always be sweet!

Kind regards,

Jeff

The Higher End

About the "expectation of privacy" and those emails to Positive Feedback Online…

Ye Olde Editor

We do like hearing from you, our readers. It adds a great deal fun to what we do, encourages our editors and writers, provides information we may have missed, and correction that we may need. This is all to the good.

Your communication with us these days is almost always via the highly rational path of email. And we do read it, responding to the constructive correspondence—which is most of it, really—as quickly as possible. (The destructive stuff is routed directly to the bit bucket. Didn't yo' mama teach you better than that?!) Dave Clark and I are generally pretty rapid in getting back to you if a response is needed from us, or in re-directing inquiries to the appropriate person at PFO if it needs to go to an editor or writer.

By the way: please understand that the writers and editors at PFO are helpful folks, eager to assist their fellow audio/music lovers, or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Nevertheless, PFO is not an audio consulting service. Please do not clog the gears with complex requests for assistance with the sourcing of audio gear in your personal setting. Remember too that PFO is not, and has never been, an audio ombudsman. If you are having problems with a particular vendor, company, or dealer, please avail yourself of the normal channels for such resolution; no audio publication has the time or resources to take on such a responsibility for consumers. Enough said.

With an increasing flow of emails to Positive Feedback Online, and upon evidence of some recent confusion on the part of our email correspondents, it's become necessary to re-state the ground rules by which we operate here. So gather round the campfire, friends…

Any time an email, or an exchange of emails, is both constructive and of potential wider interest, we exercise the reserved right to publish it in "Reverberations," the letters section of PFO. This is, after all, a publication, a "journal for the audio arts." We are seeking to further educate and entertain our readership in our common love for fine audio, and contributions in the form of emails/letters from our readers are one way that we accomplish this goal. When you write to any of us… our essayists and reviewers included… we assume that you are aware of our nature as a publication, and that you write to us in the light of that knowledge.

This means that—unless you request confidentiality explicitly in your email or letter—there is no expectation of privacy here at Positive Feedback Online.

To put it another way: Any email or letter sent to this journal will be considered fair game for publication, unless you state in the document itself that the contents are private/confidential.

So… our default is PUBLISH.

The reverse is also true: the editors do reserve the right not to publish an email or letter. We are not obligated to publish your letter or comments simply because they are submitted. And hostile, negative, sarcastic, destructive emails or letters are never published.

So…sometimes we DON'T PUBLISH.

Finally, our subtitle for "Reverberations"—"Our readers respond—we respond right back!" is not a guarantee that we will always respond to an email or letter that is published. Often we do; sometimes we don't… usually when we don't, it's a case of res ipsa loquitur.

So finally… sometimes we PUBLISH WITHOUT RESPONSE.

I think that makes things clear. Having said all of this in the name of clarity, keep those cards and letters coming in!

All the best,

David W. Robinson

Editor-in-Chief