Reprint - Masterlu's McIntosh Home Theater Masterpiece (Part 1 of 3)

[mchydro]

Hello AA Members,
I have recently returned home from South Florida and had the pleasure to spend some time with Masterlu and experience his McIntosh home theater masterpiece system for the second time. All I can say is... I'm speechless! Well, almost. If I can harness the power of concentration long enough, I should be able to share a bit of this pleasure with my fellow AA'ers. But it's not going to be easy. Masterlu's system is simply mesmerizing; it provides a profound sensory overload that it's sure to stun even to most avid audio and video-philes. My goal is to write another post summarizing the experience and to try and put into words the effects of the improvements he has made to the system since my last visit in August 2008.

The following story is a reprint. This shall serve as a prelude to the updates from my recent trip which I will post this weekend. Due to the 10,000 character post limit, I have broken it up into 3 parts. Enjoy!

-mchydro
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Very few times in my life have I been in absolute awe of something; Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and the Manhattan skyline are on my short list. I can now emphatically add another to that list.

For those of you lucky enough to have witnessed Mr. Ivan Messer's McIntosh home theater masterpiece, please bear with me as I attempt to share my experiences with the other members of this forum who have not. I was recently very fortunate to have visited Ivan, who graciously demoed his system for me.

This is not easy to put in words but I shall attempt to wrap a few words around an engineering marvel that simply must be seen, heard and felt to be believed. In that light, I will organize my experiences around each of these three senses by splitting them across 3 separate posts within this thread.

Let's begin with some of the sights I experienced.

When I first walked into Ivan's theater I immediately noticed its sheer museum-level beauty and its warm ambiance. The majestic mahogany entertainment cabinet and matching paneling and trim throughout the room, the burgundy colored leather theater seating, the soft glow of the recessed lighting, the felty hunter green acoustically treated walls, the immensely tall ceiling, the limited edition autographed movie posters all help serve as the backdrop for the most capable audio/video system I believe there is on planet Earth.

The solid mahogany cabinet is absolutely enormous and it is definitely the most exquisite piece of woodworking I have ever seen. It exudes strength, beauty and emits a pleasing warm glow. When Ivan first exposed a piece of McIntosh gear on one of its many shelves, the contrast of the famous shiny black glass and blue and green lights against its reddish-brown hues, struck a major chord with my brain's sense of visual appeal. This piece is truly one of a kind. It's shelves hold up massive 150+ pound amps and beefy Richard Gray components without the slightest sign of bowing. I also swear that there is not a single scratch or detectable imperfection anywhere.

The Sony G90 CRT projector system hanging from a Hollywood studio-style scissor lift is truly a sight to behold. This sucker is absolutely huge. Weighing 250 lbs and measuring 30" x 16" x 42", it's appearance suggests that this is not a consumer grade product - and indeed it isn't. Words simply cannot describe the images Ivan's video system, which incorporates a Lumagen scaler, the finest stretches of wire, a Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player, the McIntosh MVP-871, and even a HD satellite receiver is capable of displaying. I got the sense the projector wasn't even being taxed the least by it's job of casting a 100"+ image onto a massive automated Stewart screen.

Yesterday, Ivan popped in the Disney movie "Ratatouille". I saw detail in that movie that bordered on the ridiculous. Microscopic peach fuzz around the rats' ears and extremely subtle chin hair on the main character Linguine are just two examples of clearly defined details that were missed by my previous viewings of the film.

But the demo that truly blew me away was a Blu-Ray featuring two Jazz artists, whose names escape me at the moment, who were performing a vocal rendition of Brubeck's "Take Five". I swear the video was truly lifelike. No more "near lifelike", but actually spooky real. Because of Ivan's video system's ability to cast an image, so bright, so razor sharp, so palpable, you'd swear you were looking through a window.

What about the Mac gear? Well if you've never seen XRT2K speakers or it's counterpart center channel speaker, the XCS2KW in person, you're missing out. In pictures, they look very cool. But in person, you get to appreciate their ominous height and girth along with their classy luxurious looks. The shiny black gloss finishes on these speakers truly reminded me of the finest grand pianos I've seen. With the light cast from his theater lighting, there is a sheen on these speakers that accentuates the fact that these are the finest loudspeakers known to man. By the way, his new Gotham sub matches them perfectly and is a sight to behold.

As far as the amps, all I can say is, “Wow”! The triple chassis MC2KW's are gorgeous. Ivan has them cleverly flanked behind the speakers to maximize the space in his room, but still makes them visible from the seating positions. And as an owner of a pair of the massive MC1.2KW amps, I had a true appreciation for the sight to behold when Ivan unveiled a half dozen or so of them in various carefully concealed (yet totally accessible) compartments in his mahogany cabinet. The myriad of blue eyes generated with Mac's ingenious fiber optic distributed LED lighting, stuck out like blue jewels against the massive wooden cabinet.

The neatness of Ivan's installation is truly remarkable. I was hard pressed to spot a single cable. He had to shoot a flashlight in various spots for me to see the garden hose sized gold Wireworld cabling throughout his system. This is no small feat. He must have at least 60 or 70 separate chassis's with their own separate wiring needs.

And one more thing. The black levels in his theater are scary. When Ivan dims the lights, everything is black. The movie screen truly floats before you, no distractions whatsoever. These kinds of details, along with many others which I will describe later, let you escape into the movie or video like no movie theater venue can.

What was my favorite sight? The smirk on Ivan's face as I stared and listened glossy-eyed at his amazing creation which was the result of his relentless pursuit for the very best.

-end of part 1

[mchydro]

Now for the sound portion of my visit to Ivan's...

Just for a little background before I begin, here are some of the demo cuts I heard and some of Ivan's equipment that provided the magic. Ivan was kind enough to not only play all of this for me, but to patiently answer my endless questions in my quest to absorb as much knowledge from him as possible.

2-Channel Music
Night at the Roxbury – What is Love
Phil Collins – Sussudio – Extended Version
Dire Straits - Money for Nothing

Multi-Channel Music
Roy Orbison – Black & White Night - Pretty Woman (DVD-Video/DTS)
Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band - Hunting Wabbits (DVD Audio)
Elton John w/ London Philharmonic – Philadelphia Freedom (DVD-Video/DTS)
Eagles – Hotel California (DVD-Video/DTS)
Legends of Jazz – Kurt Elling & Al Jarreau – Take Five (Blu-Ray)
Toto Live in Amsterdam – Africa & Rosanna (Blu-Ray)
Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon – Money (SACD)

Movies
Training Day (Blu-Ray)
The Brave One (Blu-Ray)
Master & Commander – Cannonball Attack (Blu-Ray)
Casino Royale – Opening Chase (Blu-Ray)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith – Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Blu-Ray)
The Incredibles – 100 mile Dash (Blu-Ray)

Equipment
For his front channels, Ivan has the mighty XRT2K's speakers. Both are triamped. The bass sections are driven by the MC2KW's, the mids and highs are each driven by MC1.2KW's. Needless to say, he's covered on power there (how's that for the biggest understatement you've ever heard?).

For his center channel, he has the XCS2K speaker front and center on the carpeting just below the theater screen. It looks like a XRT2K, cut in half, flipped on its side, curved beautifully and tilted via a clever base for optimum sound. Same shiny black gloss finish as the big guys. Ivan is tri-amping it with the MC1.2KW's.

For side surrounds, he has the XR27's, invisibly recessed in the walls, being powered by MC501's.

For rear surrounds, he has the WS350's driven by an MC402 as well as HT-3F dipole speakers.

To my knowledge, he has four subwoofers now. For the front corners, Mcintosh HT-2 subs are used and serve a dual purpose. They reinforce the bass (if that's even possible in Ivan's system) and they serve as platforms for the stacked MC2KW amps. A twin 12” down-firing Mac sub sits in the rear right corner. It's passive and I believe is being powered by an MC1.2KW. His brand spanking new JL Audio Gotham G213 flanks the rear left corner. Guess who got to help him and his son put it in place?

Two channel music was handled by the C1000 Tube preamp. Ivan owns both the Tube and Solid State version of the C1000, but he temporarily swapped out the Solid State version simply to make room for additional gear. Digital feeds all went through the MDA1000. Mutlichannel and decoded multichannel went through an MX-135. For sources, he used MS-300's, an MCD1000, an MVP-871 and a Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player.

The Experience
Now for the fun part. How did it sound? Well, where do I begin? Imaging, soundstage width and depth, dynamics, clarity and accuracy, seemless multichannel integration all took on new meanings. Let me try to elaborate.

Ivan has a chair that he likes to call his sweet spot. Other than it being the center seat in the first row, let me tell you, every chair is a sweet spot. This marvelous room fills with sound like you wouldn't believe. I jumped from seat to seat to hear any differences and I couldn't detect any. His system and room acoustics are that good. The stereo separation is everywhere. There were a couple of times, when I had to ask Ivan whether a certain cut was stereo or multichannel. Stereo cuts literally engulfed the room, wrapping around my head. Sound came from up, down, left, right, front and back. Weird, huh? Mutlichannel sound was even more ridiculous. In the Cannonball Attack cut from Master & Commander Blu-Ray, aside from the the cannonballs literally throwing me out of my chair, and Ivan's concrete bunker of a theater room feeling like it was going to crumble, there were the eerie sounds of footsteps running over my head.

The soundstage is so very wide and deep, it is essentially a limitless musical canvass. Vocals are perfectly placed. If you gave me a piece of paper, I think I could draw a sketch of where every performer was located on the stage and probably do a pretty good job with the depth placement of each.

As for the dynamics, this system is ridiculous. The illusion of a live performance is uncanny. Drums are the real deal. The drum portion of Dire Straits - Money for Nothing, was outstanding. Imagine the thunderous boom of fireworks, firing rapidly, but with musicality and zero distortion. Big, big sound. Huge! Swings of 10, 15 and 20 db's were not uncommon at healthy listening levels. The amps are just massive reservoirs of power. The dynamics were giving me an adrenaline rush. The pressure his front speakers created was enough for my chest to feel like it was being squeezed by a massive vice. But it wasn't unpleasant at all. Rather, it was a strangely cool feeling. Since there is no distortion, the music wasn't hurting my ears at all. If it wasn't for Ivan's awesome digital SPL meter, it could have been very easy to go into the unsafe zone for human hearing.

The clarity and accuracy of this mighty system is exceptional. In the Eagles – Hotel California, the guitars were so vividly clean and pure, that you could swear the band was sitting right there playing. So crisp, so clean this system is, it is totally intoxicating. The timbre of each instrument was faithfully preserved. Ivan introduced an unknown band to me, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band. He played a cut for me from the DVD-Audio called “Hunting Wabbits”. It was a real musical treat, with a multitude of jazz instruments coming from all directions, once again all accurately represented. I literally had goosebumps when he turned it on. Cymbals were so clean and accurate, everything from the initial attack down to the lengthy decay was there. And badly engineered music doesn't stand a chance from being unnoticed on this system, it is much, much too revealing.

The seamlessness of all of the speakers is amazing. Starting with the center channel, multichannel music and movies are presented by a wall of sound. Hundreds of titanium tweeters and midrange drivers just spray you with sound. There's no escaping it. Nor would you want to; they just sound so good. Even the surrounds are remarkable. In Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon – Money, I just wanted to set buckets on the floor from all that change pouring from the walls. It was raining money.

As I said before, it's just hard to put all of this in words. This system is so maxed out, so uncompromised, that it excels at every aspect of the listening experience. The only weakness I can think of is the withdrawal symptoms I am now left with. Lu Flu has struck me so bad, I am now in the A/V intensive care unit. Consider yourself warned.

These memories will stay with me for a long, long time. Thanks Ivan!!!

Before I finish and post the third part, I would like to mention what I feel are some takeaways from my visit at the Master's house.

1. Assuming you aren't going to compromise life's necessities or your spouse's mood, go for the best components you can afford. If you're really passionate about this hobby, treat yourself to the nicer model(s). Stretch yourself a bit. You won't regret it in the long run.
2. Mac amps are wonderful building blocks to any system. They will last a lifetime and when you want to upgrade, you can always without regret redeploy them to surround or bi-amp/tri-amp duty. Monoblocks are ideal, however, any Mac amp is great.
3. Room treatments are critical. Ivan's system sounds so good in large part from all the great care he put into treating the room. Do we all need to spend thousands or more on this? No. There are some practical things you can do. I'm still talking with Ivan about this and picking his brain and will share what I finally decide to do. Remember when Serge mentioned getting a fake plant with lots of leaves to help with the room acoustics? That was a fantastic idea and a very affordable one at that.
4. Music servers - having your music at your fingertips makes enjoying your system much easier. It also gives you something to do (i.e. ripping, backing up, etc).
5. Invite others to see your system. Their positive comments will reinforce all the good thoughts and hard work you put into your system. Pride of ownership is fun.
6. Have a long term upgrade plan. Ivan's system wasn't built overnight. This room was years in the making and many hours of thought were put into it. If you're a 2-channel person like myself, think about home theater or multichannel music or vice-versa. It's always fun to keep dreaming. And if and when you decide to make the next upgrade, all that time thinking about it will help you enjoy and appreciate it even more.
7. Neatness of installation - There's something beautiful about a neat setup. Ivan's is the most tidy setup I've seen. Take pride in your setup. You'll feel better about it.
8. Look for star components. You know them. A bunch of AA'ers saying the same things must mean something. MDA1000, MC501's, etc.
9. Enjoy what you have. Chances are that what you have is better than 99.9% of the population. If you own Mac, you're doing really well with your system.
10. Always protect your hearing. Ivan has some beautiful digital SPL meters that not only look cool but serve this most important of functions.

I hope this was helpful. I'll post the third and final part of my story shortly.

-end of part 2

[mchydro]

Here's the third and final part of my story of my visit to Ivan's. To recap, parts one and two related to the amazing sights and sounds of this legendary home theater room. This last part will talk about what I felt.

My first day of demos was with Ivan's system sans the Gotham sub. He played two channel and multichannel music for me. After a few minutes of easy listening with some jazz, he cranked the system up with some rock, namely, Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Lucky man". It was almost as if an enormous pulse of air pushed up against me. When the bass and drums kicked in, I felt like King Kong was beating on my chest. However, the big ape wasn't the culprit of course, rather it was the fleet of 12" McIntosh drivers being driven by gobs of clean power. Listening to the drum and bass lines of the music was just darn right addictive. Clean bass radiated straight through my viscera at the beat of the music. I felt like I was right on stage with the musicians.

Miraculously, what I did not feel or hear, were any unwanted resonances interacting with the room. Ivan truly created an airtight, concrete bunker, with layers of the finest acoustic room treatments money can buy. Silences were so black that I felt at times like the system had shut off. And when Ivan shuts all of those beautiful blue and green lights off, in what he refers to as theater mode, indeed you can't tell whether it's on or off.

I laughed at the thought of the addition of the JL Audio Gotham G213. If there was ever a system that didn't need more bass, this was it. However, Ivan likes to push the envelope as we all know. After helping him and his son get it in place in the rear of the room, Ivan began to configure it for optimal sound. When he was finished, we listened to some demos again. The G213 is truly a monster. With the Gotham, bass was now even more gripping and prevalent in the room. My chair began to feel like a Sharper Image massage recliner. Now, not only was I hearing and feeling fantastic bass from the front, but also from behind. There was no escaping the downpour of low frequency notes. Pure heaven.

From the drums, the bass, synthesizers, explosions and other movie sound effects, Ivan's amazing theater room delivered like no other. Dynamic range was limitless.

And so there you have it. I'm just a "lucky man" who was fortunate enough to experience the Master's system. Sharing those experiences with all of you has been fun.

Most importantly, thank you Ivan!!!

To be continued...

[cougit25]

Great report!! Thanks for sharing!!!

[jericho]

This report is "The Maxx"!!!.Great
Thanks for sharing

[mchydro]

Thank you, cougit25 and jericho!