Haha... Mc work with a lot of other manufacturers to produce the products they design and engineer but need additional facilities to build. Then you have random peeps shooting down mcintosh because either they cannot afford them or they just don't know them well enough.
I don't think I was shooting down McIntosh (I don't know if you meant me in particular) as I own and have owned plenty of Mac gear that costs many times what these headphones cost. I have a McIntosh D100 and pair of MC601 monoblocks right now, and recently sold a C50, C2300 and an MT10 TT.
However, price doesn't necessarily correlate to quality. It's true that what I consider McIntosh's "core" products, Amplifiers, preamps, tuners, receivers, and by some measure... speakers, are some of the best in the world. Someone mentioned Classe, which I've also owned, and at the very least something I appreciate about McIntosh is that within this group of core products, final assembly has been kept isolated to the United States, while Classe is now pushing manufacturing to China. Some people don't care about this. I personally do because we aren't talking about a razor at WalMart. It's not as though Classe is charging *you* the end customer LESS for the product just because they found some efficiencies in manufacturing. No, it just means they keep more of the profit. That doesn't fly with me in this class. Now, when you talk about a brand like Oppo, that's entirely different. Oppo is a brand that is considered high end to many, but still sells on a value proposition that many other brands can't match.
But I digress. My point is, while McIntosh's core products have been historically near flawless, their "extended" products have been much more questionable over the years. The MS whatever music server which was a rebadge from the days when Escient was under the same roof, many of the disc players which have ranged from "very good" to downright unreliable, power conditioners, cables, clocks, turntables, "mini systems" and everything else that forms what I consider "completion" products, for those who are Mac fanatics and want every last piece in the chain to reflect their love of the brand (and this is perfectly ok). My point is simply that when you move over to the completion products side of the house, you have to be careful in not simply placing credence in that product just because there's a brand name on it. It serves one well to do the due diligence when possible and ensure that it isn't possible that very same product, feature set, or performance could be had elsewhere for less by a company not just giving McIntosh "production assistance" or "facilities assistance", but literally reboxing a very similar product... UNLESS, that is, you want the name. And again, there's nothing wrong with this at all. But then on the FLIP side of the flip side, it's important to not just spout it as fact that such and such product is just a rebadged this or that if you don't know for sure was all I'm saying. Because I picked that up on another (respected) forum, then I started repeating it and was quickly shown that my view was not only simplistic by other McIntosh personnel, but actually mostly wrong in regards to the MT10.
You may not agree with my view, but that's just the way I approach any high dollar purchase. I don't have a universal affection for anything. Thus, I'll be eager for people to start giving these headphones some real hard core tests of the kind we're used to seeing around here. Maybe they'll provide surprising results once measured and "heard" over an extended period with better equipment. FWIW, I'm not even a Beats or Bose hater depending on the product being discussed, so I certainly don't intend to come off that way. I just came here to give my personal, unbiased opinion after a quick demo.
