So quiet the system disappears

The most important thing my McIntosh separates do is nothing at all. The system is silent, dead quiet. So quiet that you forget you are listening to a system.

I expected the move from the MA9500 to the C12000 and the MC611 monoblocks to be about power and soundstage, and it was. But the quality I value most is the one you cannot point at. With no noise floor to listen through, you are simply there in the venue, along with the artists.

That silence is also why the music stays about the music. I sat with a D'Agostino system, large Wilsons and a dCS front end, and after 30 minutes I needed a break, because my brain was frosted. With my separates the only thing I care about is the next song and the next song and the next song, for hours.

It is the rule I closed my streamer comparison with: the best component is the one that gets out of the way of the music. The $329 WiiM earned my praise for exactly that, because it pretty much disappears into a system and you never notice it. At $40,000 or at $329, disappearing is the job.

You cannot read silence on a spec sheet. You hear it the moment you stop hearing the system.