Read our full McIntosh MA5300 Integrated Amp Review here: | Chat with us online: | Call for sales and support: 888.899.8776 If you’ve read many of our reviews, you’ve figured out we usually like to put a product in a far more demanding situation than you would ever normally do to see how good it can perform. We were at it again with the MA5300. We pulled out our Mark Levinson ML534 power amp and ML519 digital preamp which sell for $40K for the pair and inserted the MA5300 to drive a very hard load in the Revel Salon 2. This is a speaker that typically needs a monster amp to bring out its best.
The MA5300 did surprisingly well, especially in the sound staging area. It was able to paint a big and full soundstage that was very three dimensional. However, as we suspected, there is no 100 watt integrated amp that could ever be able to drive the Revel Salon 2 and while it had full bass, it did not have the control a big, separate power amp can deliver.
We moved things around and selected a speaker that would be more normal for the price range of the MA5300. We chose the McIntosh XR50 speaker, which is a great bookshelf speaker and as we like to say here the MA5300 made them stand up and pay attention! We had great detail with never a sense at all of harshness and the soundstage was just huge when we got the placement of the XR50’s dialed in.
The MA5300 has a sound that is like most current McIntosh gear, warm, rich, yet detailed. It also gets the timing right so you will be tapping your toes to the music on those rhythmic passages. On most speakers other than something like the challenging Revel Salon 2, it will also make you smile with its bass impact. No, it’s not as good as a 300 watt McIntosh or Mark Levinson, but when you consider how its made and what it costs, it’s pretty impressive. And don’t forget, you could, in theory, start out with the MA5300 as an all in one component, then add a much more powerful McIntosh amp to it later and continue to use it as a preamp.
The audio world is full of integrated amplifiers to choose from. We love the fact the MA5300 has the classic McIntosh look and sound, yet also has a future upgrade path with its modular digital board system. We can’t think of many $5,500 integrated amps out there with a better feature set or sound, and none have the 70+ year legacy you get with a handcrafted component from Binghamton, NY!
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