McIntosh XRT25 (ca. 1995)
The McIntosh XRT25 is a big floor-standing loudspeaker system. It only makes sense if you have the room and the amplifier reserves for it. It's a 3-way, 18-driver, airtight (sealed) design with two separate enclosures per channel: a low-frequency base cabinet and a tall, slender tweeter column that stands over seven feet high. Documentation on this model is thin, and no confirmed production run years have been established. The firmest date on record is a May 1995 sale in Japan at ¥1,400,000 per pair. The U.S. list price was $8,300.00 per pair.
What the record does show is a speaker built around McIntosh's column-speaker system technology, developed in-house over nearly four decades. Each channel uses a 30.5 cm cone woofer and a 20.3 cm cone midrange in the base enclosure. The woofer uses McIntosh's patented LD/HP magnetic circuit. The column sits above that: sixteen 2.5 cm hard-dome tweeters with aluminum diaphragms, the same specification as used in the XRT26, bolted to the base cabinet. The enclosure is designed to eliminate harmful diffraction effects and resonances, and it's finished in selected walnut. Frequency response is rated at 32 Hz to 22 kHz ± 2 dB, impedance at 4 ohms, and sensitivity at 88 dB / 2.83 V / m. Recommended amplifier power is 200W to 1,000W. The whole system weighs 118 kg.
The speaker ships with an active equalizer unit, the MQ109. It has a 5-band equalizer with adjustment points at 70 Hz, 150 Hz, 300 Hz, 600 Hz, and 1.2 kHz, each with ±12 dB of boost or cut, plus a low-frequency level correction circuit and Q control. It's designed to be inserted into the processor loop of a preamp or between preamp and power amplifier, and it can be adjusted at any time after setup to suit room acoustics. The speaker also has three-way independent gold-plated input terminals for bi-wiring or tri-amping, and built-in automatic-return overload protection.
One owner on a forum noted that the XRT25s worked best paired with the MC500 amplifier, though they remained workable with the MC300. That fits a speaker with a big appetite for current. Formal reviews are scarce. An Audio Classics listing confirms the $8,300 per-pair price.
Known Specifications
- Type: 3-way, 18-speaker, airtight floor-standing system
- Low band: 30.5 cm cone woofer (LD/HP magnetic circuit)
- Midrange: 20.3 cm cone
- High range: 2.5 cm hard-dome tweeters × 16 (aluminum diaphragm, as in XRT26)
- Frequency response: 32 Hz – 22 kHz ± 2 dB
- Impedance: 4 Ω
- Sensitivity: 88 dB / 2.83 V / m
- Recommended amplifier: 200W – 1,000W
- Crossover frequencies: 250 Hz, 1.5 kHz
- Tweeter column height: 2134 mm (including base)
- Base enclosure: 450 mm W × 714 mm H × 400 mm D
- Total system weight: 118 kg
- Included accessory: MQ109 active equalizer (5-band, ±12 dB at 70/150/300/600/1.2k Hz, with low-frequency correction and Q control)
- U.S. list price: $8,300 per pair
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