[dude120]

Pull the button out a little bit. Sometimes for some reason the button gets pushed in and it does not travel enough when is pushed to activate the switch.

It happened to me when I open it up after picking it up from my dealer.

I just pulled the button out a little bit to allow it to travel and started working normal.

That did the trick, ended up pulling both dials out and reattaching em.
Thank you!

 

[gonzalo05]

That did the trick, ended up pulling both dials out and reattaching em.
Thank you!

What are your initial thoughts on the kit? Also, are you running speakers?

 

[dude120]

What are your initial thoughts on the kit? Also, are you running speakers?

Its pretty nice so far. I'm playing around with the settings. It definitely sounds better with HXD off. My other amp, the Wells Audio Milo I think sounds a bit better (at least on harder to drive headphones). but the presentation and the kit feels much nicer and more premium on the mcintosh. I've always wanted one of these and got a reasonably good deal on this one.

I'm not planning on running speakers, however I'm planning to use it with an ifi iesl and see how it sounds with my electrostats. I've also been curious about running speaker taps out to my harder-to-drive planars.

So far I've tried the he6, an abyss 1266, and a he1000se on it and the 1000se has sounded the best out of the bunch. It drove the he6 fairly well though all things considered.

I would've though (looking at the specs of the unit) on paper it'd barely be able to drive them.

 

[musicman59]

I am glad that fixed it. Based on your description of the issue I was almost sure that was the problem.

Regardless of the headphones impedance for hard to drive headphones set it up in High Gain and the Highest Impedance (McIntosh guys told me to do that). That is the setting with the most power.

I drove my Susvara out of that with no problem and compared them being driven by the speakers tabs and the difference was very little if any.

I had the MHA100, Milo and Enigma (with upgrades) at the same time. The Milo and Enigma are just different type of sound compared to the MHA100. The Wells amps I will call them warmer or musical while the MHA is more detailed or analytic. To me is just a different flavor not one better then the other. It all depends of taste. Between the Milo and Enigma (at least mine with the upgrades which by the way is for sale in the classifies section) y prefer the Enigma.

The Milo is great for the price but the Enigma has more power and refinement. It’s just a bigger better amo IMHO.

 

[m8o]

I'm not planning on running speakers, however I'm planning to use it with an ifi iesl and see how it sounds with my electrostats. I've also been curious about running speaker taps out to my harder-to-drive planars.

So far I've tried the he6, an abyss 1266, and a he1000se on it and the 1000se has sounded the best out of the bunch. It drove the he6 fairly well though all things considered.

I highly recommend making an adapter and using the speaker taps with those. It is my favorite way to drive my HE-1000; every aspect of the music reproduction is 'better'. When I was working from home and listened to music thru headphones, this combo of amp and he-1000 via the speaker taps got something like 95% of my head time.

My Ether Flow C 1.1 otoh doesn't respond as well to the speaker taps. Tho slam and bass authority may be better the soundstage becomes more equidistant around the head, like a helmet of sound. I like the Ether Flow C 1.1 better thru the autoformers as the soundstage has more 3-dimensionality. (tho personally I like the Ether Flow C thru my WA-22 even more; which is not the case for my HE-1000.)

Curious to hear your thoughts & opinion with the 3 planers you mentioned thru the speaker taps should you try it.

P.s. I really dislike HDX. The only time I might use it is with some productions that have extreme panning of guitar and bass (or other instruments) in individual channels, like early Cream for example; but even some recent jazz may be mixed that way. Even then I go back and forth and am likely to not make it thru a whole song with HDX enabled. It is just too extreme and mono-like to me.

 

[m8o]

Regardless of the headphones impedance for hard to drive headphones set it up in High Gain and the Highest Impedance (McIntosh guys told me to do that). That is the setting with the most power.

I drove my Susvara out of that with no problem and compared them being driven by the speakers tabs and the difference was very little if any.

I had a similar experience. *This is just a guess* :: I attribute the slight difference to be that on high impedance you still have the autoformers in the circuit in parallel to the headphone. Imparting some sort of effect on the drive circuitry from its inductive reactance reflecting back. Where via speaker taps the relays remove all signal from passing thru the autoformers and their effect.

 

[musicman59]

I highly recommend making an adapter and using the speaker taps with those. It is my favorite way to drive my HE-1000; every aspect of the music reproduction is 'better'. When I was working from home and listened to music thru headphones, this combo of amp and he-1000 via the speaker taps got something like 95% of my head time.

My Ether Flow C 1.1 otoh doesn't respond as well to the speaker taps. Tho slam and bass authority may be better the soundstage becomes more equidistant around the head, like a helmet of sound. I like the Ether Flow C 1.1 better thru the autoformers as the soundstage has more 3-dimensionality. (tho personally I like the Ether Flow C thru my WA-22 even more; which is not the case for my HE-1000.)

Curious to hear your thoughts & opinion with the 3 planers you mentioned thru the speaker taps should you try it.

P.s. I really dislike HDX. The only time I might use it is with some productions that have extreme panning of guitar and bass (or other instruments) in individual channels, like early Cream for example; but even some recent jazz may be mixed that way. Even then I go back and forth and am likely to not make it thru a whole song with HDX enabled. It is just too extreme and mono-like to me.

I agree on the HDX. I did not like it’s effect so never used it.

 

[dude120]

Anyone have any luck getting the DAC to work in windows 10 (64bit)?

Would like to use the intergrated dac to tie me over till I get a replacement for my dedicated dac.

My gungnir appears to have kicked the bucket and while the MHA 100 works without issue with my macbook, it throws a USB error on my desktop:
Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed).

Ive tried installing the drivers that are on the mcintosh website, but it doesnt seem to make a difference to get windows to detect it.

 

[Tekk83]

I have it working on windows 11 64 bit so I would think it should work on windows 10. I do run into a random issue that the DAC doesn't detect but not often. I'll have to check what driver I ended up using. I don't think their website had the drivers for mha100 anymore only 150.

 

[dude120]

Ended up getting it working - for what its worth, the device is very finicky about being detected in windows. Sometimes that error will get thrown when the device is off or the driver isnt initialized. Restarting the mcintosh amp seems to remedy the issue. Seems obvious in retrospect, but that issue didn't exist when using it in conjunction with my mac.
Side note, I think I prefer the built in dac to the gungnir (as odd as that sounds). Its not necessarily as detailed, but it seems to have thicker/more musical presentation

 

[billqs]

Ended up getting it working - for what its worth, the device is very finicky about being detected in windows. Sometimes that error will get thrown when the device is off or the driver isnt initialized. Restarting the mcintosh amp seems to remedy the issue. Seems obvious in retrospect, but that issue didn't exist when using it in conjunction with my mac.
Side note, I think I prefer the built in dac to the gungnir (as odd as that sounds). Its not necessarily as detailed, but it seems to have thicker/more musical presentation

Glad you got it sorted. I've been running this dac/amp through Windows10 64 bit for about three years or so. It does throw a USB error when it auto-shuts off, but usually it runs fine. I was using an RME dac but ended up selling it to fund higher end headphones. The onboard dac sounds great. I've just gotten the Susvara's in and they sound amazing from the MHA100!