McIntosh MHA200 Headphone Amp Design & Build Quality

Known for classic home audio components, McIntosh has been thrilling music lovers for more than three-quarters of a century. So, it’s not surprising they are constantly innovating their approach.

The McIntosh MHA200 is a dedicated headphone amplifier designed to enhance your headphone listening experience. It has a compact footprint of just 6-1/8" (15.6cm) x 9-1/8" (23.2cm).

The aesthetic is 100% McIntosh. It's inspired by the look of their most popular tube amplifiers, the MC275 and MC1502. As a matter of fact, it looks almost just like a tiny version of the MC1502.

Just like their tube power amps, you'll see the McIntosh logo on the side of the polished Stainless Steel chassis.  The left side houses two output transformers and a power transformer. On the right are 4 tubes. A protective cage is included to cover the tubes from prying fingers.

The power button is in the center of the amp. When you power up, the tube sockets will flash green several times until they are fully warmed up, then they glow solid green. The left knob has impedance settings to match your headphones. The knob on the right sets the volume level.

McIntosh MHA200 Headphone Connections

The McIntosh MHA200 headphone amplifier has one pair of 3-pin balanced XLR connectors for dedicated left and right balanced output, one 4-pin balanced XLR connector for balanced stereo output; and one 1/4" stereo headphone jack making it compatible with virtually any type of headphone connector.

The build quality is exactly what you would expect from the McIntosh team, top-notch and designed to last for decades.

McIntosh MHA200 Features & Technology

So what is a tube headphone amplifier? In its simplest form, the entire audio path would be all tubes. Musicians, music lovers, and audiophiles love the sound of tubes for their pure, warm sound.

The MHA200 is an all-tube design. It uses a pair of 12AT7 vacuum tubes to amplify the incoming audio signal with another pair of 12BH7A tubes to provide the power to drive the output to your headphones with low distortion.

The output stage is a Push-Pull pure Class-A triode design like you might see in some premium lower power tube power amplifiers. It is the only headphone amp with the Unity Coupled Output transformers and the Push-Pull configuration.

We should point out that the MHA200 headphone amplifier is all analog, with no built-in DAC like some headphone amps. You need to feed it a source. You'll find a pair of balanced audio inputs and a pair of RCA inputs. Either of these can be used to send a signal to the MHA200.

If you want to switch between sources, we suggest you use a preamp, integrated amplifier, or receiver to do the switching. You can then feed the outputs from your preamp, integrated, or receiver to the inputs.

For those of you with a preamp or integrated amp with balanced outputs, we highly recommend you use that type of connection, as the MHA200 has XLR inputs. It has a pair of RCA inputs for a normal connection.

If you've been bitted by the audio bug for better headphones, you already know they vary greatly in their impedance. Some of them have a very high impedance, which makes them harder to drive. The MHA200 headphone amplifier has settings for 32 ohms, 100 ohms, 250 ohms, and 600 ohms which cover pretty much every headphone pair we know.

The MHA200 power and distortion ratings are very interesting. This headphone amplifier is rated to deliver 500mW (milliwatts) of power at .5% distortion at ALL of the impedance levels. 500 milliwatts is enough to power any headphone far beyond extremely high listening levels. You may see other headphone amps with a lower distortion, but we do not know of any that keep their distortion spec at full power and at all of the impedance levels like the MHA200.

The volume control knob is a little different and takes some getting used to. It has a center detent if you connected up your preamp or integrated amp using a variable output so you have a reference point to go back to.

In our testing, it does not get very loud at all until you approach the 12 o'clock position. At first, we had a hard time fine-tuning the small knob to the right level when we had a source directly connected to it. We discovered a little trick though. If you pinch the knob and place a finger or thumb on the center of it, you'll find it very easy to fine-tune the volume levels to your tastes.

How does the McIntosh MHA200 Sound?

The MHA200 sound blew us away! We had it in a system with a McIntosh C22 preamp and tested both vinyl and streaming sources. The headphones we tried it with were the Focal Clear MG, Focal Stellia, and Audeze LCD-X.  We made some comparisons between the very good headphone circuit on the C22 and the MHA200. There was just really no comparison.

Some people think McIntosh tube gear leans toward a warm, lush sound, but the Class-A triode design gave the MHA200 what we felt was an extremely neutral sound. We played tracks we have used for headphone testing hundreds of times and heard new layers to the mix we had never heard before. Subtle emotional changes in instruments and voices we used to strain to hear on some passages were clearer and more present than we had ever experienced before.

Going all-balanced made a huge difference. The only headphones we had with an optional balanced cable were the Audeze LCD-X. When we switched from the ¼” cable to the 4-pin XLR balanced connection, it was like a veil had been lifted. They sounded far more effortless and at ease. You could easily hear some layers that had been barely audible with the non-balanced.

Going with balanced inputs made a similar difference, but was not as big as using balanced cables for the headphones.

Another interesting part of its great performance was how different these three headphones sounded to us. Obviously, you would expect them to be different, but with the amount of information the MHA200 could deliver to them, the differences between them shone through more than we had ever heard.

Overall Recommendation

The McIntosh MHA200 is the best headphone amplifier we have heard to date. If you have a serious pair of headphones, there is no question you will love the sound from this amp and it will let you hear them to their fullest potential. While a bit pricier, it is built to last for decades. In the world of high-performance headphone amplifiers, we believe it is absolutely worth the price.

We hope this brief overview of the MHA200 has helped you understand what an amazing product McIntosh has created. If you have any questions about it, or any home audio or home theater gear, please reach out to our experts at www.audioadvice.com or drop by one of our showrooms in the Carolinas.