Last night my dealer had a MacIntosh demonstration at his store. This was a factory sponsored event and was very professionally presented. In my entire audio life, I had always heard of Mac, but had never had the chance to really check it out. They had a setup with all of the high zoot gear including some 7 foot speakers and 150 pound amps with the new crazy looking turntable. There were other more modest systems with Focal and Thiel speakers as well as a smaller set of the Mac speakers. They also had a few of the solid state offerings. A hybrid setup with tube preamp and solid state amp sounded very nice. Surprisingly, they had the more unusual hybrid of solid state preamp and tube amps as well. Also, there was a scary real home theatre system and a demo of their music server. It was all very informative and the equipment is extremely impressive up close. By reputation, the stuff must wear like iron and they still will work on equipment that is nearly 40 years old.
For the sound, of course it was impressive, it would have been shocking otherwise. How it compares to other comparably priced systems, I can't say.
However, I would recommend anyone who gets the chance to attend such a demonstration to take advantage of the opportunity as it was great fun and educational.

Tom