McIntosh Laboratory MA5200a

McIntosh Laboratory has launched the MA5200a which it describes as a "highly flexible integrated amplifier, complete with three-input DAC, headphone amp plus a dedicated moving magnet phono input". The £4,995 MA5200 offers D/A decoding at up to 32-bit/192kHz plus a complement of analogue inputs. The three-strong digital input “suite” includes an assignable coaxial and optical input, plus a dedicated asynchronous USB 2.0 input (operating at up to 32-bit).
The MA5200 has nine inputs in total: four line-level; one balanced; three digital; plus a "high-quality" MM phono input. It also has McIntosh’s new internal High Drive headphone amplifier which offers increased gain and output power, “optimising it for virtually every headphone type, from in-ear to over-ear.” Offering a 100 Watt output, the solid-state MA5200 has been engineered into a 15cm tall chassis for modestly sized (see European) living environments. It also has a home theatre pass through feature for integration into multichannel home cinema systems. It has a glass-fronted fascia, retro controls and blue power meters. Further features include McIntosh’s Power Guard technology: a waveform comparison circuit that continuously monitors both input and output signals in order to avoid potentially damaging clipping.