MDA1000 problem
 

My beloved McIntosh MDA1000 took a trip to McIntosh hospital this morning...:tears:

Last night, as I was doing some CD listening, I began to notice that my usual beautiful image and soundstage had shifted rather noticeably to the right. I tried CD after CD, and also observed on my amplifier meters that the left channel output was trailing the right consistently using the peak hold feature on the MC501 meters. All other analog sources (Turntable, tuner, etc) did not exhibit this. I tried the usual reversing cables, trying the unbalanced outputs on the MDA1000 instead of balanced to see if the problem remained (it did). It seems to most affect the vocal region. It is listenable, but definitely something is wrong.

I was on a scheduled day off today, and so this morning my troubleshooting continued. All digital sources run through the MDA1000 displayed the symptom, so we know the MCD1000 CD transport is not at fault. Finally I borrowed my Wyred 4Sound DAC2-DSDse from my office and installed it in the system. The channel balance was normal. As far as I was concerned, it was conclusive that there is an issue within my MDA1000.

I dropped it off this morning at ProAudio Electronics in Tampa, paying a rush fee to get it on the bench fast. Needless to say, I miss the unit badly, and I'm quite curious as to whet the findings will be. I'm obviously not happy about having it out of the house, or the prospect of an unwanted repair bill. I think the tech there is as curious as I am as to what is causing this. That may be a good thing, in terms of how fast they get to it.

Stay tuned....:sigh:

Keeping my fingers crossed Pete. Hopefully they will be able to revive the old girl. :yes:

I can feel your pain, hope it will be very fast back home.

How old is your MDA1000 Pete?

The label on the back says it was manufactured in March 2004.

I bought this one from Ivan in early 2015.

Good luck Pete! :hug:

Ouch…I feel your pain too…hope it gets fixed soon

I love very much my MDA1000; but nowadays, I have QOBUZ via ROON streamed via a BlueSound Node 2i, and my MDA doesn't sound right when there are 192/24 files, with some weird background noises etc...

I want to keep my MDA1000 for my MCD1000 and my Squeezebox Touch (which delivers 96kHz maxi) or even FLAC files stored on my Synology NAS via ROON.

But sometimes I would like to get a modern DAC ( or DAC/streamer), on par with the MDA's musicality.

What would you do in my place, advices well come.

Jean-Marc jmajma....the MDA1000 may, or may not play files above 96k correctly. Honestly, for me this is not a problem. When I do play hi-res files (which isn't all that often), it is from my laptop (using a Bryston BUC-1 USB converter) through JRiver. I simply set the JRiver config to output everything at 96k max. I really can't hear the difference between 96k and 192k on my DAC's that will decode it. In fact, I stopped buying 192k FLAC files from HD Tracks. Our late friend Dan was of the same opinion; he had stopped spending the extra money on 192k FLAC files.

Nothing beats the musicality of the MDA1000....I hope to hear some sort of update from the repair center today.

I have the same combination MDA1000 and MCD1000 in my bedroom system and they're one of the best Redbook CD combinations that ever existed. I stream CD quality music via Sonos and the sound is excellent. For my high res downloads the combination of Aurender N10 and D1100 Dac is hard to beat. I don't think digital sound can get any better.