McIntosh XRT22s Loudspeaker System
The McIntosh XRT22s is one of the more elusive pieces in the McIntosh catalog. It is a large, free-standing line array that the company positioned as a statement of its loudspeaker engineering ambitions. Documentation is thin, and what survives contains some real contradictions, so this page sticks to what can be stated with reasonable confidence.
It was a big speaker: roughly 165 cm tall, 142 cm wide, and 28 cm deep. The original retail price was $8,000, and it was made in the USA. Period advertising called it "the most advanced concept in sound reproduction yet devised". That is promotional language, but it shows how McIntosh framed the model at launch. Audio (September 1988, p.27) said the XRT22's high-frequency column needed less electrical input than conventional speakers for a given room level. The magazine tied this to reduced intermodulation distortion and what it called a revelation in the definition of musical sounds.
The driver count is where the record gets messy. One source describes each speaker as a line array with 22 drivers. Another lists 12 full-range drivers, 2 midranges, and 2 tweeters. The two counts don't reconcile, and the fact sheet flags this as an unresolved conflict. The listing that claims 22 drivers also dates the system to 1979, while other sources suggest 1986 or 1991. That is another conflict with no clear answer. What does appear consistent is that the crossover is external, a separate piece, which owners generally consider a plus.
At $8,000 and that size, this was never a volume product. One classified listing calls it "one of the rarest speaker systems ever made" and reports the sound as "simply amazing," with the unit described as in beautiful shape and in full working order. Beyond that, the sources are silent. No frequency response, impedance, sensitivity, or weight figures appear in any of them, and no owner criticisms or comparisons to competing speakers have surfaced.
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