MCD600 SACD/CD Player

McIntosh · SACD/CD Player

The MCD600 plays SACD, CD and data discs through an eight-channel Quad Balanced DAC, adds coaxial, optical and USB digital inputs, and has variable outputs and a headphone amplifier, so it can drive a power amplifier directly.

Digital inputs, fixed and variable outputs and a High Drive headphone output. Remote included.

8-ch 32-bit

DAC in Quad Balanced mode, four sections per channel

384 kHz

all PCM upsampled to 32-bit/384 kHz

110 dB

signal-to-noise, A-weighted; 0.002% distortion

28 lb

12.7 kg; 17½ in wide, 6 in high

The MCD600 uses the digital section McIntosh developed for its larger players: an eight-channel 32-bit PCM/DSD converter run in Quad Balanced mode, four converter sections per channel with their outputs summed so that noise uncorrelated between them averages down while the music adds. Every PCM source is upsampled to 32-bit/384 kHz before conversion, which moves the converter's filtering far above the audio band. It plays SACD and CD, and also data discs and USB flash drives holding AAC, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, MP3, WAV to 24-bit/192 kHz, WMA and DSD to DSD128. The transport is McIntosh's twin-laser pickup, one wavelength for each disc type, on a die-cast aluminum tray.

Unlike the MCD350, the MCD600 has coaxial and optical digital inputs, so a television or a streamer can use its converter, and a front USB Type A port for a flash drive. The analog outputs come in both fixed and variable form, balanced and unbalanced. The variable outputs have a volume control, so the MCD600 can run straight into an MC312 or MC275 without a preamplifier, which is the arrangement The Audiophile Man's Paul Rigby preferred in his January 2019 review, scoring it 9 out of 10 that way. A High Drive headphone amplifier sits behind a ¼ inch jack on the front, and Power Control and data ports tie the player to a McIntosh system.

Specified distortion is 0.002 percent at 1 kHz with signal-to-noise better than 110 dB and channel separation better than 98 dB. Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity's Jim Milton reviewed the MCD600 in December 2018 and gave it a Thumbs Up award; Hi-Fi i Muzyka named it SACD/CD Player Product of the Year for 2020, and it shared a Diapason d'Or with the MA9000 in 2019. The chassis is the standard full-width McIntosh format, six inches high, with a black glass front panel and aluminum end caps, and it needs 6¾ inches of clearance in front for the tray.

The MCD600 is the McIntosh disc player for most two-channel systems. Behind a C22 Mk V or C12000 , neither of which has digital inputs, it supplies the converter as well as the disc; with a C2800 , C55 or MA8950 it can feed its own DAC or theirs over coaxial. With enough connectivity to serve as the digital hub of a small system, and a volume control, it will also make a complete source-and-preamplifier in one box ahead of a power amplifier.