Yamaha A S1100 vs MAC 4100

Meh. Yamaha gear lasts and is easy to get serviced. Old solid state Mac just can’t compete with the cleaner more efficient design. Especially their earlier gear. Until it became collectible it was widely criticized as a let down.

It will probably last longer and always be cheaper to maintain but if your in it just for the sound there’s no contest. I mean not one to mention measurements but… measurements.

YAMAHA A-S1100

Wonder how an old 4100 would do.

 

Actually voicing would be a good topic for its own thread.

 

Manufacturer specs?

 

+1 and old solid state Mac gear had a very specific sound. Then there’s the fact of age and noise.

Not knocking it. It’s great gear. Love McIntosh, but the top 3 Yamaha integrateds, and comparable Hegel, Supernait and the current Rotel gear are hard to beat until you are willing to sink some serious dough.

The big difference between those units definitely comes down to voicing and build quality. And the Yamaha’s win in build quality.

If the OP really likes his Mac’s sound and is just looking for a cleaner more modern amp and sound at the price of the a-s1100 he’d probably be better served by the Rega Elicit-r.

The Yamaha will sound more forward with a cleaner, more open, detailed sound.

The Mac has a fuller, weightier sound that the Elicit-r is closer to. Neither will have the noise floor of the Yamaha or the bottom end control.

 

The Mac is. Tough to find measurements for an amp that old. The Yamaha is measured here (use Google translate bc it’s in polish); graphs at the bottom: YAMAHA A-S1100

 

Specs are good. I rely on them. I recently had a preamp serviced and while the tech found some bad parts, he never heard the high frequency whine I heard with the music. Just seeing the excellent signal to noise specs he measured after replacing those parts made me feel comfortable that the problem was truly solved.

But voicing is another matter. Bob Carver pulled a great trick in the late 1970s/early '80s. He'd take one of his amps and by tweaking its innards, make it sound like whatever amp the reviewer liked. While just a stunt, it was a revealing one. A clever designer with a good ear can play with an amp's sound. Carver's magic trick would not be easy to define with specs, which tend to measure steady state things, one channel at a time. Music is anything but that. It's plucked strings, drum thwacks and cymbal crashes while both channels are live.

Anybody who's done serious dieting knows not all calories are equal. You will lose weight more easily if you are eating 1,500 calories a day of protein, fruits and vegetables than if you are drinking 1,500 calories of alcohol. You determine this by getting on the scale each morning. The weight you lost is measurable but is only part of the story.

 

For me, the best Yamaha is separates. That's where they excel. I like Yamaha separates a lot. I like the newer Yamaha sound better than the old clinical side of bright.

 

The only way to really tell is to get something and listen to it ... I have a hard time believing that in a good high res system the Mac would sound identical to the Yamaha, as someone asserted. They should sound different, hard to tell which you’d like better.

I had a Yamaha A-700 integrated amp ca. 1984, was well regarded, but a 1960s stock vintage Dynaco SCA-35 blew it away in almost all aspects. Soundstage depth and space, musicality, etc.. It became my main amp over several years and many upgrades and mods, mainly to improve the resolution. The A-700 drove my passive subwoofer.

The new Yamahas are supposedly (and I’m sure are) much improved over my old amp, seem to be especially excellent at soundscapes including depth, which the A-700 sorely lacked.

 

1) Carver tweaked a solid state amplifier to sound like a tube amp (i.e. an amp with significant distortion). The amplifiers we are discussing here have minimal distortion and flat frequency responses.

2) He didn’t rely on his ears; he used measurements. From the Stereophile article: The hotel room was a shambles! Across one end was a long table buried in oscilloscopes, distortion analyzers, voltmeters, the two amplifiers, a soldering iron, a white noise generator, two unidentifiable chasses full of inductors, resistors, and capacitors, a large table fan (there was no air conditioning), a half-dozen partially-drained Diet Coke cans, and perhaps 50 feet of audio cables, test leads, and clip-lead interconnects. The adjacent sofa and table were covered with countless little plastic bags of resistors and capacitors, several schematic diagrams, and sheets of paper crammed with arcane numbers and calculations.

The Carver Challenge Page 2

 

No one said that. The differences, assuming proper functionality of the vintage Mac, should be minimal.

 

If you were to undergo a level-matched listening comparison of an AHB2 and one of the MOSFET-based Yamahas, I have zero doubt you’d conclude they sound very different. Some amps do indeed sound identical or nearly identical (Sony TA-A1ES and Parasound Hint, for example) but nothing I’ve owned sounds like these Yamahas.

 

Differences are “subtle to nonexistent” … to me this asserts pretty much if not completely identical. I’m sorry if I mischaracterized your statement.

Also hard to say if the vintage Mac is totally functioning as if it were new, or with changed/updated parts it might have a different sound than it used to.

Sure it won’t be night and day one horrible/one great sort of thing … but thinking that things like soundstaging, space, depth, resolution of …everything, maybe bass performance … should be discernibly and repeatedly different.

“Maybe maybe not. You will have to try it out.” I think I said this too …

“The only way to really tell is to get something and listen to it ...” Yep.

 

I think this will be also highly dependent on the synergy between the Ohm speakers and either amp, as someone else pointed out.

 

Your Mac if still in good shape still has considerable monetary value, the Yamaha is already a doorstop.

 

I'm very curious. I gotta listen to the new hi end yamahas.
In the guitar world, I play mostly American made either Gibson or Kramer. But I have a Yamaha that I been playing since the 80's and can be in the spotlight!

 

The problem, @big_pink_floyd_toole, is you've picked the wrong hill to defend while shooting a gun with limited range and accuracy. Good for you. God knows I've done that, too, on this forum. Admirable and wrong are two qualities that are not contradictory. I've been both here, especially wrong.

I will agree that absolutely, two transistorized amps, even from different eras, can sound pretty close to identical. As numerous people have pointed out, a vintage Mac and a modern Yamaha aren't two of those. Sonically, they are worlds apart. Interestingly, in this thread, this is something on which both the defenders of McIntosh and Yamaha agree.

Using as your standard static, full power bandwidth, harmonic distortion measurements ignores many other tests which might show those differences, like slew rate, transient intermodulation distortion, spectral analysis, stereo crosstalk, and signal to noise ratios.

Sonic similarity isn't just limited to solid state amps. You'd be surprised how close my backup amp, a fifteen year old, tweaked, transistorized Plinius 9200 integrated amp, coming in at a hefty 200 wpc, sounds to my main amp, a tube rolled, 75 wpc PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium HP integrated.

The only hill worth dying on is the one defending live music. As a boss of mine once said, "I don't care if it is a hamster running on a wheel which creates the music as long as it sounds real."

My advice to you, friend, is an old chestnut: He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.

 

I’m not fighting with anyone; we’re having a discussion. As @Khorn pointed out, perhaps voicing should be its own thread. Also not making a trite argument that “all amps sound the same.”

I’m legitimately asking: What is voicing, if not frequency response?

The rest was just either clarifying my prior statements (e.g. should be minimal, maybe maybe not, emphasis added) or commenting on the Carver Challenge.

Now to be clear, I do hold the opinion that if modern SS amps are well designed, proper functioning and measure the same, there should be minimal differences (not nonexistent, not impossible to hear but certainly subtle). But that is exactly why I’m asking about voicing.

 

Yamaha went to heavy use of IC chips by the 1980's. Especially on the lower end models, and most heavily on the AVR (all AVR heavily uses IC chips, many custom). Most of those IC chips don't have substitutes available. For those who keep gear they love for many years, a service headache with age. Also, the new ROHS solder is a big failure item with age. (the Cardas silver solder a much better alternative when repairing one).

Older McIntosh when serviced properly every 15-20 years, is generally very stable, reliable, well behaved equipment which sounds excellent. I can say this from having owned quite a few of the integrated amplifiers, and the MAC 1900 receiver. I like McIntosh going away from screw terminals and spade lugs as those were less robust of a connection.

McIntosh parts availability and service support is still among the best in the industry. Often you can still obtain many parts for 50 year old equipment. Parts, service literature, and phone support excellent. Crown (pre-Harman), and ReVox tape machines are also like that. Teac for the older A series tape machines and earlier cassette machines is the best in Japanese equipment for long term parts and service support..

I like Yamaha separates and pre 1975 receivers the best. And I also like their new integrated amplifiers and going back to the older styling and design cues (and Yamaha is one of the best in terms of styling, ergonomic control design which is sensible). The pre-driver IC chips are often a weakness in post 1975 Yamaha equipment. I like the new Yamaha sound better than the older Yamaha (which for me was on the bright side).

 

Antique American amp and preamp is going to sound nearly the same as a newer Japanese amp and preamp circuit. Highly unlikely

 

Remember, back in the day with the McIntosh clinics, McIntosh also tested non-McIntosh equipment and kit equipment too. For many years, Dave O'Brien knew more about the competitor's equipment reliability with age than the manufacturer themselves did. Marantz up to 1968 was the only other equipment manufacturer which did not use IHF or music power ratings without the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) requiring it.

Do remember, Yamaha was a very late comer to the USA audio marketplace (1973). The first Yamaha audio sold in the USA was their compact AM/FM radio/phonograph compact systems beginning in 1969. Which used single play, AC motor belt drive turntables of excellent quality, and magnetic cartridges. They were upper end models, usually priced in the $400-$500 range. I recently saw a Yamaha Stereo console from that era, talk about a very nice system, and better than most of the era.

 

@McLover

I don't think leadless solder is too much of a problem anymore, (I don't work on audio equipment but have been working on game consoles for a decade).

The solder used now is leagues better than the crap from 2005-2009 or so.

Don't the new McIntoshs' use ICs as well? I assume that their display unit requires a couple. It is nice that the DAC is seperate, but I don't think that will affect things within the realms of serviceability for a Mac or a Yammy, (higher-end units for Yamaha) will turn out much different, especially when one considers that the folks at Yamaha are trying admirably to appeal to audiophiles.

To the OP, try to find a way to listen to both. I have only laid eyes upon Mac units, and would love to hear them some day...

 

No argument there but then again that applies to most new HiFi gear including new McIntosh gear. IC Chips all have a mean time between failure specs. Most things these days have ICs so…

The Yamaha is also a complex design. The Mac will last longer and be easier /cheaper to service. It just can’t match the sound.

My take pretty much on most HiFi gear is if it melts down and I can’t walk away and replace it and only suffer the annoyance I can’t afford it.

Have close to a 1000 hours on my a-s2100 and it’s going strong. The model came out in 2012 and you don’t here a lot of complaints.

If you want a more serviceable amp with that sound quality or better you have to jump in price quite a bit and look at a brand like Pass Labs. I’m currently plagued with thoughts about the Int-25.

 

McIntosh uses IC chips, but also tends to do a lot better job of stocking spare parts if you need them, and not being secretive with service information. I agree, I like a separate DAC over a built in in terms of two channel. Yamaha is not a purist audiophile brand only, they span the gamut now from economy basic receivers to high end priced units. More generalist than a specialist firm. I wish Yamaha would start a high end brand, with a separate dealer network, for their best equipment. So it gets a fair chance at the upper end customer. Aventage would be a good sub brand idea (and sold at specialist dealers). I like the fact that Yamaha is also a much more stable company than everyone else left but Sony.

 

My MA 6100 has logged thousands of hours of service and that's third owner at that. Pass Labs is great gear, but also lacks the control facilities I need. I do love it's build quality and overall engineering. Nelson Pass is a gifted design engineer.

 

That's good to know.

I think the fact that Yamaha hasn't created a high-end brand of somesort, (like Rotel or Hyundai) is more a philosophical thing than anything else.

Heck, at least their dealership network isn't like Technics, (it's ridiculous how little physical presence they have in a big market like the US.)