This is not your ordinary budget Mac meal with fries and drinks.
It's not even a Big Breakfast by any standards. This is the Grand Ol' McIntosh, the name that has been legendary to the folks who played around with 'audio' in the 60s or maybe even the 50s.
Uncle's system has not only morphed from one beast of a system to another, I think it has trans-mutated.
From the Gibraltar like Eggleston Ivy/ML Towers/Halcro to the flagship Wilson X2/Burmester and now, into the latest transformation and even a transfiguration of a system that I have personally come to witness -
a 12-piece package of the top-of-the-line McIntosh Audio System.
Let's start from the very beginning...a very good place to start...
The XRT2K Loudspeaker System:
Left channel:
Right channel: ( Yes folks, mercifully, these things STILL have the left and right channels...
)
If you're wondering what those bubble-like things in front of the woofer towers are doing, no, they are not part of the grills, they are the tweeters and the midrange drivers. The smaller round things in the middle are the tweeters - 40 pcs. in all, PER CHANNEL. The midrange drivers, I had to block out all music from my seat just to visually count them, 64 pcs.ONLY, on two lines flanking the tweeters, per channel, but of course.
The 3-Headed Monster (Amps):
Left Channel:
Right Channel:
Power Supply (2 blocks per channel):
Power Meter Level Indicatior (in case it cranks up to 2k watts - I say, be my guest):
Side View of Speakers:
FULL FRONTAL:
Front End:
CD Transport and DAC:
Pre_amp:
The Glowing Green color of the Tubes (like a Celtic Green)
Back side of Speakers:
Back side of amp that has 9 pairs of binding posts to the speakers:
The Top Line Transparent 'Opus' Speaker Cables:
Another angle of the room:
A novelty of a CD:
At first, what looked like a mooncake box turns out to be a CD from Tibet, recorded on XRCD2 format with incredible sonics staight from the mountains of the 'Roof of the World'.
Good thing they recorded this prior to the protest riots there.