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7) McIntosh Engineering

McIntosh is truly an Engineering based company.    There are approx.  30 engineers in their Engineering Department, and again, the department itself is larger than many high end firms in their entirety .   

The company employs real engineers and not bogus self proclaimed engineers with degrees from Bangladesh.    Beginning with the now retired Sidney Corderman, who was one of the company’s founders & chief engineer, he was one of very few people to have graduated from MIT with straight “A”s  all the way through.     The current chief engineer, Ron Evans (see picture below), has been with McIntosh for over 35 years.   They hold various patents, including the famous Power Guard circuit invented by Sidney & Ron back in 1977.

I was very surprised to see McIntosh allowing us to tour this department, let alone taking so many pictures.   I believe they have the best engineering in the whole industry and they are proud to let you see it.   

With a hard core engineering team, McIntosh can afford to spend time, energy and man power to properly develop a new product.  I was told by John Henkel (Engineer for Home Theatres), that it takes a minimum time of approx. 1 year for McIntosh to develop a new model.   Many hours of repeated testings are put into each product before they go into full production.   Not too many high end companies can afford do to this.

McIntosh probably has the largest engineering team than any other Hi-End company, and they probably hold more patents than any other audio manufacturer.

Initially, I thought this was the vault. 

Turns out the thick steel door is the entrance to the ANECHOIC CHAMBER. 

The term ANECHOIC literally means “without echo”.   The chamber walls, ceilings & floors are made of fiberglass wedges.   The floor was a little bouncy.

Al D’Addario is in the photo.

Inside the  Chamber.

Gary B. & Ron-C.

Notice the floor is a wire mesh.

     

      The Chamber is not ‘for show’ only. 

      They were doing measurements on a speaker in development.