Channel configurations / power / clarity

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I am no car stereo pro by any means but I did do a fair amount of research and came up with this amp. For me it is perfect. Provides a perfectly balanced system all in one amp. 50W RMS X 4 for the speakers up front and 200W RMS X 1 for the 12" sub. ( bridged the two 100W channels ). I don't have anything to compair to but I have zero complaints. Very happy with sound quality and it gets nice and loud !! Very pleased.

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Very good imaging and no distortion at all volume

Low damping factor

I have two amps; MC440 and ADS 860. I found Mcintosh is too bright for my style however it's very high definition and very nutual with a really sweet. Therefore now I am using ADS in my car while still keeping Mcintosh for another car. You won't disappoint in having it. Only few disappointed for me are that the amp should has balanced input fuature, capable for more voltage input and higher damping factor.

Do yourself a favor.... if you are looking for the best sound possible in your car.... make sure the amplifier says 'McIntosh'. There is NO comparison.... I was suckered by Zapco into trying their gear. What a waste of money!!!! The trouble is, once you hear a Mac, you never want to use another amp again. The only dealers that try to discourage you against Mac amps are the ones that make more money by selling down.
A friend of mine got in my car.... they knew nothing about car audio... heard 30 seconds of my stereo, using the mac amp... there question was.... does this system cost more than 4000.00. Within 30 seconds, they concluded that the mac amp/mb quarts/sony headunit/Rockford DVC 12", was producing sound in the area of 4000.00

MC440 6 channel. 4 channels X 50w, 2 channels X 100w. Configurable for
6/5/4 channel operation. Includes built-in electronic crossover with
separate high pass and low pass filters. Power Guard. Ported tunnel
forced-air cooling. Multi-stage thermal protection. Dual MOSFET PWM
power supplies. Input level controls. Transient protection. Gold plated
terminals. 2 ohm stability. Allows internal installation of McIntosh
parametric equalizer modules. Size 2-3/4"H, 18-1/2"W and 12"D. Sold from
1994-1997. Last retail price $1300.00

I use MC 440 with the internal equalizer, so far it sounds very good. I also use Boston Rally 5 1/4" for my front, 6" for the rear, and ADS 10" subs. I mostly hear jazz and pop music and the system work great.

Update on MC440: I've been using this amp for 8 months now and the musical sound is better and better. When I hear other systems they just do not compare to this amp. No distortion and it will play loud, very loud. the internal eq system is great and is re-programable. I expect to have decades of use out of this amp.

I have tried many amps in my system over the last two years and I now use the MC440. My current setup is the simplest and the best sounding ever. The music is clear and dynamic at any volume. I can play anyting from rap to beethoven and it handles anything with ease. The other amps i had used were Coustic DR510, Orion HCCA250 Precision Promos 50. All of them strain at higher volumes but this amp just handles anything. The music is reproduced without any coloration whatsoever.
I am saving up to buy another MC440 amp for my other car. I guess that is recommendation enough.

Great price go to www.royalbahamian.com

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I purchased this amp at Sensuous Sounds in Tampa, FL, to be installed in my car. Unfortunately, I wrecked my car before it could ever be put in. Went back to Sensuous Sounds to get a refund, but they flat-out refused. Why? Because they have a NO return policy on ALL their merchandise, regardless of the circumstance (Keep in mind - I hadn't picked up nor even seen the actual amp intended for my car). Only after much haggling (with the owner of the store, no less), I was able to get store credit, but trust me - pulling teeth would have been easier and far more enjoyable. Rating for the McIntosh? I'm sure it would have sounded incredible - 5 stars based on blind faith. Customer service? Less than 0, based on the worst customer service I've ever experienced. I will never go back there again - avoid Sensuous Sounds like the plague!

The sound! There is really nothing like it. Customer service is also among the best that I have ever seen if you deal with McIntosh directly. I had an unfortunate freak accident where the terminals on my crossover came into contact with a 12 volt hot under the dash of my car. It fried the outputs on the amp really good. Not the manufacturers fault by any means, but when I called them to see how much it would cost to get it repaired, they insisted on replacing it free of charge. They even payed the shipping both ways. I didn't even have to pay for the phone call and a week later I had a brand new amplifier! You can't beat that with a stick!

This is not an amp that's going to win any SPL contests for you. My suggestion would be to do like I have in my car. Run the mids and highs off a McIntosh, and get a more effecient amp for the subwoofers. The new class D amps are exellent for this. The McIntosh is so anal-retentivly clean that you don't need it for the subs. There are only a few people in the world that could tell the difference between two equally powerfull amps run within their limits on a subwoofer anyway. Oh, and they aren't cheap. (If you ask me it's worth every penny though)

I lucked into this amp by chance. At the time McIntosh had just released their car audio line and I had only seen them in magazines etc. I was going to buy a pair of Soundstream Reference 500's for my car. When I went to the store to buy them, they had an MC431M on the wall. At the time it retailed for $1380. I asked to look at it and the owner of the store ended up selling it to me for the same price as the two Soundstreams. My initial immpresion of it was that it sounded absolutely incredible for anything but sub-bass. McIntosh has amps designed especially for the task of running subwoofers, so I can't blame them for this seeming shortcoming. This amp was designed to run midranges and tweeters, and it does that better than anything ever built for the car audio environment, period!. I have heard everything that you can think of, and nothing can really compete with the Mac. The only thing that came close was ARC audio. Anyone who thinks that these amplifiers have a bright sound has simply never experienced the music as it was recorded. The Mac has such tight control over the tweeters that they come through more clearly, like they are supposed to. There are none of the phasing problems I have heard in some other amplifiers. These ampifiers have one of the flattest frequency responses in car audio, so calling them bright is simply being miss-informed. Use these amps as they were intended to be used, and they are impossible to beat for sound purity. This is the only piece of my original car stereo that I still use, and it was a very nice system. Everthing else has been replaced several times over with new and better, but there is no such thing as better than this for running mids and highs. My old Mac will stay with me until it finally dies, if I don't die first that is.

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For pure sound quality the ony thing I have ever heard that was in the same league is ARC audio, but for my money the McIntosh still takes it. Nothing else out there should even be mentioned in the same sentence.