Air 3.0.4 Officially Released

[Dr Tone]

Dumped the Devialet?

No, just borrowed some.

mac gear is, to my ear, the polar opposite of Devialet.  One, detailed and vibrantly fast, the other warm, gorgeous and slow: detroit heavy metal next to a, say, Tesla.  How do they compare?

I would normally agree with your assessment but this new MC152 power amp isn't as slow as the MAC6700 integrated I last tried. The MAC6700 4 ohm tap was a tad too warm and had no punch, the 8 ohm was better. I went straight to the 4 ohm on this amp and don't feel I am missing much punch and snap at all.

McIntosh is fuller without any harshness that can still exist in the D220 Pro.  The Devialet is blacker with better instrument seperation but the McIntosh is richer.

The DAC in this preamp is a HUGE upgrade over the DAC in the MAC6700 I last tried.  I'm currently upsampling everything to DSD128 with HQPlayer.  DSD256 is a little wonky, I haven't quite figured out the magic HQPlayer formula to make it work perfect.

I have allot of stuff to get my head around. These separates are closer to the D220 Pro than the MAC6700 was to the D200 when I last test drove.