mcintosh vs jeff rowland

I have owned a lot of Mac gear and love it for it's utilitarian approach. I have moved on to Jeff Rowland's products of late (a C500 and a 102/Capri pair) and am enjoying the transition. The Rowlands are a more relaxed and fluid sound, and offer up detail lost on my mac gear. It's not up and in your face like some products (Krell, Pass, etc); but a more calming tonality.

Rowland gear is good, that is for sure. I could certainly live with it. I just love the sound of tubes.

Talking Mc and Rowland: how would you expect a McIntosh MC275 paired with a Capri to work? Sounstaging? 3D?

I own the 275 and been looking into the Capri for a while, but can't audition. I wonder if, for the money, there are better preamp matches for the 275.

Thank you!

I really like the sound of the 275. I have heard many different amps and at this point, it does enough things right for me to keep it for a while.

The C220 is a fine preamp and is designed to mate with the 275. you probably could find better preamps I am sure but it sounds great to my ears with the 275. The tubes it comes with sound okay, but I have rolled mine and it sounds much better with the NOS tubes.

I am sure the 275 would sound great with the Capri. It sounds great with just about anything. If I had to put words to describe the sound, I would say "romantic and liquid" sounding. You also can voice it to your own taste. What kind of speakers do you have?

Yeap, the C220 and C2200 are also in the list. They set the bar against which I'll judge other preamps such as the Capri, Lamm LL2, Aesthetix Calypso, Audio Note M2, etc. I noticed most Virtual Systems with MC275 also run either C220 or C2200, though, which has me thinking maybe I'm getting just too creative...

My speakers are B&W 804S, and tubes are genrally a good match for my taste with those aluminum tweeters. BTW, I also have a REL (Storm III). I have rolled in upgraded small tubes for the MC275 (KT88 pending). Seems our taste might not be that far off. You have a nice system. One day I'll dive into vinyl, but before I need to upgrade so many other parts of my system!