McIntosh C12000: PREAMPLIFIER

As I was talking with an audio-retailer friend recently, he reached for a Rolls-Royce metaphor to describe the McIntosh brand. Expensive? Sure, but not as expensive as some boutique high-end products. Fast? Sure, but there are faster things-also bigger things, smaller things, wackier things, and cheaper things.

- SASHA MATSON

But when you look at a Rolls or a Bentley, you immediately recognize it for what it is, and you want to sit down in it. And so it is with McIntosh, except you don't want to sit down in it; you want to sit down in front of it, between the speakers of the hi-fi system it occupies.

History matters. When a new model from Bentley appears, there is a connection to what came before it, a long tradition. There is no pretense of reinventing wheels; instead, it's about rolling those wheels a little farther on down the road. That heritage results in a comforting familiarity. From the first audio products McIntosh offered, in 1949, down to the present lineup, any knowledgeable consumer can look at it and immediately know what it's for and recognize its value. In particular, people value a legacy of quality, especially when so many older, vintage products are out there and still working. It feels good knowing that the thing you're buying is likely to last and be enjoyable and satisfying to use for a long time.

The C12000 is McIntosh's current flagship preamplifier. It's part of McIntosh's Hybrid Drive series of products that combine tubes and transistors in interesting ways. The first McIntosh product to incorporate such a mix-although it preceded the marketing term by several years-was the MA252 stereo integrated amplifier, released in 2017. It was "hybrid" in the familiar sense, pairing a tubed preamplifier stage with a 100W solid state amplifier. The range has since expanded to include amplifiers, preamps-even a CD/SACD player.