Title says it all.
What next? Acoustimass with VU meters? 
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Bose sounds shit and McIntosh looks shit, a match made in heaven.
Only worry is what they do with Sonus Faber, the build quality on those is fantastic and it would be a shame if they started cutting costs and Boseāing them.
PS TBF itās only new McIntosh I hate, do quite like the look of the 60ās stuff.
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A cardboard tube down the back should do the trick!
Only bit of McIntosh I ever owned was an MR71 tuner from the late 60s. Looked and sounded fantastic
Surprised chiefly because I thought (Rongly) they were part of Harman Group.
Oh wellā¦ Donāt mind the looks, but never heard any of it sound like a match for its price.
Karl Heinz Fink posted an interesting comment about it - he speculates that itās for the automobile market. Bose offers many āpremiumā options for cars, but the brand name only really works for more regular vehicles. āBose for Bentleyā isnāt going to cut it, whereas Macintosh probably does (and theyāre also a āfull stackā hifi company)
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IIRC youāre getting Naim with your Bentley
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Well, thatās a good enough reason to cancel my order.
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Currently, yes. That was just illustrating the point though.
Whatever you feel about Bose, it has been in the home audio space for a long time and knows how it works. I suspect they will be less disruptive than an investor group with wholly unachievable growth figures in mind and absolutely no understanding of the limitations of the sector as a whole.
Ā£10 says a McIntosh branded pair of ANC headphones appears before too long though. It would take more discipline than any chief exec generally has not to.
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I had Bose in my Alfa. Like everything else electronic in that thing it was dog shit.
MacIntosh in your Maserati?
Similar experience with the Bose āupgradeā in my Mk1 TT, which is shit compared with the standard unit in our only slightly younger Volvo. The standard Audi unit must be really direā¦
Pretty sure I have the standard unit in my A3 (certainly no branding anywhere), and it seems perfectly decent to me.
No, Sonus Faber.
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I always rather loved the looks, but I never got on with the sound. Mcintosh sounds like the embodiment of what teenagers in the 80ās used to do with graphic equalisers. All boom and tizz.
Could also be car-related I suppose? The TT cabin is a pretty small volume compared with a Volvo XC90 (or even the A3 I guess), which may impose restrictions on what you can fit (and where), besides the ātiny roomā effect on speaker performance?
Thatās me getting well beyond any actual knowledge on space / speaker behaviour tbhā¦
The argument that being bought by Bose is not the worst thing that can happen to you is evidenced by the tribulations of Sound United at Masimoā¦
The article itself is largely bilge but the reality is that the three brands are stuck at a company that doesnāt want or understand them after they were vanity purchased by a CEO who has since been given the boot.
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B&W, Denon and Marantz are not exactly insignificant names.
I doubt they will disappear but ā¦
A lot of companies have passed but most were small, like Thiel. Or very niche.
Or, like Sansui, perhaps spread too wide?
If defunct hifi firms are of interest, thereās a good site here: Defunct Audio Manufacturers - Aa & Ab - audiotools.com.
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