Review: Part I - Laptop-Wired Impressions [Updated]: McIntosh MHA50 Decoding Headphone Amplifier

A lightweight, great-sounding taste of a luxury audio name

[Updated: this article has been corrected to reflect the finding that the MHA50 has not been discontinued by McIntosh, contrary to what the article claimed.]

First off, I have only heard McIntosh through headphones once, plugging into a tube-hybrid integrated amp in a showroom. The name is familiar to most audio enthusiasts. It’s kind of like “Porsche” or “Ferrari.” I jumped, impulsively (yes), at the chance to have the “McIntosh sound” the marketing copy told of. Whether the sound from this light, little decoding headphone amplifier is the McIntosh sound, and whether there is a McIntosh sound in the first place, are questions I won’t be able to answer. I can comment that the sound is full, with round low end that blends with the middle and top without booming at all, without overwhelming any of the higher frequencies. It has Bluetooth, a wired input specifically for iOS devices, and wired input for all else.

First off, I love the sound of this single-ended-only DAC/amp (no balanced output, sorry). Listening with a laptop-usb-wired configuration, streaming a female jazz vocalist, Nicky Schrire, with piano, bass, and drums, the sound is flawless, with a sound stage wide enough to suggest a club atmosphere, and with a depth just deep enough to go with that, when listening with Sennheiser 820 closed-back reference headphones. There is delicate, quiet sizzle in the higher treble for quiet cymbal work during slow passages. The piano has a powerful low end, with the bass doubling on some of the notes, reinforcing the low end, which is a strong point of the MHA50. There’s no muddiness. The ensemble remains a collection of instruments—working together to create an artwork—that aren’t stepping on each other’s toes. Schrire’s voice is strong and clear above all. Her nuanced approach to singing is supported by the powerful solid-state amp that has a clean tone and a finish I’d describe as glossy, and her quiet vocals are rendered as clearly the her higher-volume vocals.

The words that come first to mind when I think of describing the sound of the MHA50 are “crisp” and “clean.” Listening to a particularly clean album, Jonathan Fitoussi / Clemens Hourrière’s Möbius, the crispness of the cymbal work and a synth sound complement the more rounded, smoothly contoured drum and synth sounds. The low bass synth comes through powerfully and not overwhelmingly.

I just saw they have a free download below this paragraph. This track has lots of cymbal work that comes out cleanly even at higher listening volumes on high gain mode. The kick drum doesn’t clip and stays smooth. Mid-range synth work stays un-distorted. The sound stage is wide on this track. The mid-range synth work does get a bit crowded at just shy of maximum volume in high gain mode, and the Astell & Kern A&futura SE180 with SEM4 is more spacious and less mid-heavy at just shy over maximum output with digital audio remastering turned on, for up-sampling to DSD rates. These are not in close price points, so this is not a slight against the MHA50. It’s not sensible to listen that loudly, anyway, if one still has typical hearing characteristics. A friend of mine has hearing aids, and his listening volume might be as high as this brief test. In this test, I think it’s the A&K that wins out, but at the very different, higher price point it has, it’s not a surprise.

For an older recording to play, I chose a recently released concert recording of the Ahmad Jamal Trio from 1971. I’m familiar with this from many listening sessions. I love it. I get to hear Jamal play a Fender Rhodes electric piano! The Rhodes has some roughness to it in this live recording. The drums come through more clearly than the Rhodes. The ride cymbal has a combination of a tapping sound and a blooming, gong-like rushing into sizzle, that give character to it. The highs are clear. The very low frequencies in the acoustic bass are brought out well, despite the bass being quieter than the piano and drums. It seems to be farther back. At higher volumes (but not the ear-melting volumes of the earlier max-out tests), the acoustics of the performance hall are clearly heard, with hall reverb on the drums, and the sense of being in a very large space being unmistakable. The acoustic bass’s higher frequencies, when the player uses a technique that allows them to come out, are clearly separated from the piano and drums. A trio format may not give much of a problem for crowding, but it’s worth noting that the instruments are separate and that the piano is not walking across the bass’s space.

With the Sendy Peacocks, which I reviewed previously (https://open.substack.com/pub/hanscox/p/review-sendys-peacocksopen-back-over), the sound is more open and the sound stage is wider. The bass is quieter, as with the Sennheiser 820’s, but does not seem to be located behind the piano and drums, since the open-back Peacocks give a wider, shallower sound stage than the closed-back Sennheiser 820’s. It’s a different sound, and still clean as before.

Moving to a newer recording again, the word that comes to mind about the description of the McIntosh MHA50’s sound characteristic is “glossy.” The guitar intro to the title track of Valtteri Laurell Nonet’s album, Tigers Are Better Looking, for example, is a clean jazz archtop type of tone with a chirpy treble to it and a fatness to the lower strings’ tones. There is a tremolo effect as well as some reverb. It is clean and strong and even. The acoustic bass comes in and highlights the power in the low end of the MHA50 amp system. Now, on low gain, the bass is still strong. The Sendys don’t require the juice that the Sennheiser 820’s do. I wanted to see if it was just the high gain mode that was giving the strength, but the bass is there, in low gain mode, too.

I think a word used to describe sounds like this amp’s sound is “forward.” Everything is assertive and not aggressive. Nothing is shy—if that’s a way of talking about it that makes sense. I wanted to see how that worked with an album of delicate acoustic, nylon-string guitar played and recorded in an ethereal way. The combination works. The cleanness of the amp allows the cleanness of the solo guitar to present itself without distractions. The long reverb times involved are also cleanly reproduced by the McIntosh MHA50. Notes linger in the sound arena for as long as the sky is wide. It allows for more spacious-sounding reverb than does the A&K SE180 with the SEM4 DAC module. With the A&K SE180 (SEM4), the notes don’t last as long as they do with the McIntosh MHA50. The MHA50 is a fun little adventure into the namespace of luxury home stereo systems.

Next time in this sequence of posts on the McIntosh MHA50, I’ll talk about some tech specs and try out the iOS-only input with an iPhone 4S and an iPad. If I can get access to it, I’ll try out a Mac laptop as well.