McIntosh MA6200 repair update and performance test
Published 2024-06-11
I proceeded with a performance test, using an 1kHz sine wave input signal, and mesuring the output. I expected to see significant distortion somewhere, but the signal coming through both the left and right channel are fairly clean and smooth up to about 90 watts. I did a spectrum analysis aswell, and did not see any significant issues.
As the output signal increases in power, the odd-harmonic distortion does increase significantly more than the even harmonic distortion, which produces harsher sounds than even harmonic distortion. Up until about 5 watts of output power, the signal is clean, but past 5 watts, the odd harmonic distortion increases at a linear rate. Odd harmonic distortion is one of the qualities of a cheap amplifier compared to a high fidelity amplifier. This does not indicate that your amplifier is not functional, but may be a clue that something is not performing optimally.