The new C22 and MC75
(Credit: McIntosh Labs)Apple was founded in 1976; McIntosh Laboratories goes all the way back to 1949.
Computers get old really fast, while TVs age a bit more gracefully. But there's not much of a collectors market for old TVs or computers, at least by people who use them on a daily basis. Face it: computers, iPods, and TVs are disposable technology, while the useful working life of great audio designs is measured in decades. Many decades. Case in point: McIntosh's classic designs from the 1960s still fetch big dollars. Which is why buying really good stuff makes sense.
I doubt Apple will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Apple II in 2037 with a commemorative reissue, and I can't imagine Sony announcing plans to offer Trinitron CRT TVs anytime soon. Audiophiles still covet classic tube and solid-state electronics, and pay big bucks for good condition originals.
Which brings us to McIntosh's 60th anniversary limited-edition reissues of its legendary amplifiers, the 75-watt MC75 monoblock tube amplifier (modeled after the original 1961 version) and the C22 stereo preamplifier (originally introduced in 1962).
... Read moreYou see it every day, a passing parade of new-tech gizmos crowding the market.
From phones to mobile Internet devices, digital cameras, music players, and mini notebooks--and on the home theater side--formats that whither and die just a couple of years after their much ballyhooed introductions. Every day there's more junk.
Most of this glittering assortment of wowie-zowie tech trinkets are destined to take up landfill space in five years or less. That's apparently OK; nobody expects to keep an iPhone all that long, and besides there's always something new, jam-packed with the latest tech to buy. Why would anyone expect to just buy something good enough to use for a decade or more?
Audio is the exception to that mindset. It seems like I've met a gazillion baby boomers still using the hi-fis they bought around the time of the first Woodstock. One Audiophiliac reader bemoaned the fact that his 20-year-old $600 speakers were now beyond repair. He got 20-something years of use out of the speakers--and that's not enough.
Woodstock-era audio, still going strong.
(Credit: McIntosh Labs)When it comes to audio people think it should last forever, though some of the best stuff comes close. For example, the "other" McIntosh, the audio company, still factory services amplifiers built when Nixon was president. Gee, I wonder if Apple would fix your dad's Apple II?
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The one and only Beatles DVD-Audio release
A reader responding to my The Beatles on iTunes? Who Cares? rant came up with this great summation: "iTunes are to audio what McDonald's is to hamburgers, but if this is how the public wants to buy music, then let 'em have it." Right on! Sound quality doesn't matter anymore, just the so-called convenience of downloading 1s and 0s at the cheapest possible price, or better yet for free. Why buy the complete "Sgt Pepper" when you can just get "With A Little Help From My Friends"? That's where it's at.
If a remastered recording sounds "better," but no one can hear it, does it sound better? No, not really. I get the feeling that the remastered tag has just been reduced to a catchphrase, something to connote goodness. Hey, it's been remastered, so it's got to be better. Yeah right, maybe, maybe not. I think Apple did a lousy job on the Beatles "Let it Be... Naked" CD a few years ago.
It's curious, the Beatles' Apple's supposed "remastering" for low-fi iTunes was mentioned again and again by The Audiophiliac's readers, as if the new digitalization would reveal new sound from the old tunes over 128 K iToons. Puh-leeze! Yes, sure, maybe they'll also put out remastered CDs or DVD-Audio like Apple did with last year's Love release. Maybe we'll get multichannel, 5.1 Beatles on Blu-ray, sure, why not? Now that would be something. We audiophiles can dream, but the market will collectively yawn.
Paul McCartney is now saying the Beatles catalog won't be available on iTunes until sometime next year. Yeah so? Maybe I don't get it, but didn't the "digitalization" of the Beatles catalog happen more than twenty years ago when they put out the CDs? So why are iTunes buyers a vast untapped Beatles market? The catalog is already online--if you have a hankering for Abbey Road buy the CD from Amazon and rip it right now.
I could give a hoot about the long-running legal feud between the Beatles' music label Apple Corps and Steve Jobs' Apple, and their endless haggling over the deal. Aren't Steve Jobs and Sir Paul rich enough already?
What's so good about good sound? Who gives a crap? Strolling around Apple's oh-so-cool Fifth Avenue emporium in Manhattan, taking in the screechy din of countless cute-as-a-button iPod speakers, you'd have to conclude no one. Apple's temple is flush with style, but the sound is, in my opinion, flat out dreadful. OK, it's a showroom and hardly the sort of environment conducive to a quality listening experience, but even so, the priorities disparity is jarring. With most iPod speakers hovering around $100 to $200, you'd have to conclude that's what sells: a tinny sound from a speaker system that doesn't take up a lot of space. Yes, Apple's iPod Hi-Fi speaker is a big step up from the little critters, but is that all there is?
Apple's glass house looms large
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Maybe it's just me; the place is jammed with giddy Apple worshippers, oohing and aahing over every expensive Mac gadget. Steve Jobs knows where the action is, and sound quality ain't it. That's too bad.
By the way, I'm no Apple basher, I just bought a new 24 inch iMac and love it.
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