Review: McIntosh MTI100 Integrated Turntable

Video Transcript

"Hi, everyone. This is Adam with World Wide Stereo, and today I want to do a product showcase on a truly exciting, brand new product from McIntosh, the integrated turntable, the MTI100. This is the McIntosh MTI100. It is an integrated turntable. Yeah, I'm going to say that again. It's an integrated turntable. This is probably one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

It's a turntable that has an amplifier built into it, lots of extra inputs. It's expandable, because you can add another amplifier to get more power out of it. We just haven't seen something like this in a while. This is a really, really cool product. This turntable right here will play 33s and 45s. Again, it's got a built-in phono preamp and amplification on top of that. You'll notice some of the parts here that you'll see on the MTI100.

They actually were supplied by another great American audio company in VPI, based right out of New Jersey. The tonearm, the platter, the motor, it's their parts, but it's fully assembled by hand by McIntosh in Binghamton, New York. When you unbox this turntable, pretty much everything is ready to go for you, except for a few little details. Got to put the tubes down, put the little cage over here, but that's just plug-and-play stuff.

Really, really, simple to do. The key parts, like the cartridge, already done for you. The counterweight in the back, already done. The anti-skating weight for the turntable, already done. So there's very, very minimal installation that you need to do to get this thing up and running. You will have to put the belt on, which just wraps around here. You have two different notches for the belt.

If you want a 33, you put it on the top. If you want to play 45s, you just simply slide the belt to the bottom. So I mentioned amplification before. This turntable has built into it…it's a class-D amplifier, and you're going to get 80 watts into a 4-ohm speaker and 50 watts into an 8-ohm speaker. Now, as most audio components are about 17 1/8-inch across, this guy is a little bit bigger because it's a turntable and an amp built all into one.

So you're going to need about 19 1/4 inches across, 6 3/4 inches high, and it's about 14 inches deep. I'd probably add about another inch or two to that depth, just to make sure you have room for all your connectivity here in the back. Included, will be a remote control to control it, to switch between all the inputs and also to control its volume. On the top section here, you do have a rotary nob, two of them, one for selecting your input and actually starting and stopping the turntable, you know, to make it spin.

And then on top here, you have your on and off, plus your volume control right here. The fit and finish of this is everything you'd expect from McIntosh. It's gorgeous. We got a glass top. Everything's illuminated underneath. There's nice McIntosh green lights. The tubes are illuminated.

It's a beautiful, beautiful piece. On the front of the unit, you'll see a headphone jack, the McIntosh label. Because it's also an amplifier and there's amplification on the back, you got the tubes up front, to meet code, it's not allowed to have a cover. They don't want you to put a cover over the top of this thing and, because of the heat buildup, basically turn it into a little oven. So let's take at the inputs on the back of this thing, starting from left to right.

First thing you'll see is an antenna. This is for a Bluetooth connection. Yes, you can pair your phone, an iPad or a tablet, computer, and stream all the music that you want through this antenna and into this machine. Now, this machine has a phenomenal DAC in it, so anything you feed from it from your phone or a tablet is going to sound fantastic. Next thing you'll see there are your digital inputs.

You have a digital coax input and you have a fiber optic input. This is great for connecting your TV, maybe, or maybe you have a streaming media player, so you can gain access to services like Tidal, and Spotify, and Koba, and Pandora. You could feed all that into here and have it come out of your speakers. There's also an analog input. Maybe you want to connect a CD player. Maybe you want to connect…you have a reel-to-reel machine or a cassette deck.

You can bring that into this machine and have it come out of this fantastic amplifier that's built into this thing. You also have a single subwoofer output. If you wanted to add a big subwoofer to your system to really make your system sound full, they make it super easy on this machine. Next, you'll see your preamp input and output section. Now, it comes with these bars here.

That's what makes it work. If you were to unplug these bars and try and play your speakers, it's not going to work. What that's for is, if you want to take the signal that's inside this machine, send it to a bigger amplifier because maybe you have some bigger speakers that you want to power, you can use this thing as just a preamp and add an external amplifier. Next, you'll see your speaker terminals. Okay. Left and right. Typical McIntosh binding post.

You can either unscrew them and put bare wire in or a spade connector in, or you can use banana plugs by plugging them straight into the back of the machine. Lastly, all the way to the right, you'll see two things. You have your power, and you also have a service port. This looks like a USB connection, and it is, but it's not for connecting a computer to it. It's just for service. So now I want to show you this turntable in action a little bit and talk about how this section over here works.

First, after you turn it on, you'll switch the input over to the PH, or the phono, input. And the platter hasn't started moving yet until I actually press this button. Then, it's going to start spinning. Remember, over here, your top little spindle is for a 33 record, and you just need to slide it down to do a 45. This is a fully manual turntable. Again, this gorgeous tonearm provided VPI. You take it, and you're going to lift it over, get it to the edge of your record where you want to start.

And here's your cueing lever right here. You just lay that down, and it'll start to go down. Now, when it gets to the end of the record, because this is fully manual, okay, it's just going to hit that lead-out edge and go all the way to the middle of the record. Use this cueing lever again to lift it up, and then you can return it to its original resting position. Back here again, this little weight hang again.

This is what's called an anti-skating weight. It kind of makes sure that the stylus on the cartridge sits properly in the groove and reads the record properly, and this is factory preinstalled. Again, something you won't have to worry about. And also, right here on the back, this is what's called your tracking force weight. This thing slides back and forward to add more weight to the tonearm, more or less weight, depending on the cartridge. So you can upgrade your cartridge.

You don't have to use this one that it comes with. It is a very good one, but over time, if you wanted to get a better one, you're allowed to actually change that out and you could slide this forward or back to add more weight or less weight, depending on the specifications of your cartridge. On the top here, there's a little Allen key that holds it in place. So once you set your weight, you tighten it down so it's locked in for good. The current selling price of the McIntosh integrated turntable is $6,500.

I think this is a phenomenal piece for maybe somebody looking to get into McIntosh and has a smaller room, you know, an apartment or maybe they want to put it into their office. It's a great way to get going because you have the bookshelf speakers, you have the headphone jack on the front so you can do some passionate headphone listening in that space. But don't forget, this is an expandable piece, so if you want to grow it into something larger with bigger McIntosh amplifiers and bigger speakers, you can totally do that with the preamp outputs on the back.

This is a great-sounding piece, and it looks phenomenal. This is the McIntosh MTI100 integrated turntable. Please, don't forget to check out all of our other videos on McIntosh. Currently, this item is only available to view online. If you'd like to purchase it, please come into either our Montgomeryville or Ardmore, Pennsylvania showrooms. We are an authorized dealer for everything McIntosh here. If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comment section below, or please call or email us at any time.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and follow us on all of our social media channels. This is Adam with World Wide Stereo, reminding you to listen to music every day. So long. ♪ [music] ♪"

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