One person’s gimmick is another person’s desired feature.
I abandoned McIntosh in disappointment when they entered their solid state only era.
I’ve journeyed through Conrad Johnson, ARC, Krell, Levinson, Marantz, … maybe some others … even Prima Luna …, and presently Burmester.
I’ve never lost my affection for my local salesmen friends and dealer, even as the franchise has progressed through three different companies. So I’ve auditioned a lot of McIntosh over the years.
What I’ve noticed is that their stuff covers a wide range. At the low end, it’s just lifestyle level. It perks up in the middle and is quite good on their high end.
As for gimmicks, take the MA9500 for an example. For $12k retail you get a 300 Wpc amp with nearly 3dB of headroom, a preamp with 17 inputs, an 8 band equalizer that can be removed from the audio path, an adjustable MM phono, an adjustable MC phono, a DAC module that can be replaced with upgrades when upgrades are developed. You can drive a second amp from the preamp. You can feed a different preamp into the amp. It has an excellent built in headphone amp. It has a full featured remote, and other control options six ways from Sunday.
Which of the above are gimmicks? Frankly, they are all useful to someone.
McIntosh, perhaps more than any other American high end audio company, listens to what we call in the Design Business, the Voice of the Customer. They have over 150 employees, and their worldwide sales figures dwarf their competitors’.