Who needs Sonos? McIntosh’s new Bluetooth pre-amp does multi-room music the old-fashioned way, but with a modern app upgrade

The McIntosh CR106 can create and control six independent audio zones
Link five units to create up to 30 audio zones
$5,500 / £6,999

Money no object

We love to give practical buying advice on the latest gadgets here at TechRadar. But sometimes what we love even more is to indulge in the most high-end, cutting-edge, luxurious tech on the planet. That’s what we bring you in these Money no Object columns – you can read the whole series here.

If you’re looking for a high-end pre-amp and multi-room audio matrix for potentially massive home-install systems, McIntosh has just the thing. The new CR106 delivers up to six independent audio zones from a single unit, and it can be networked with others to provide as many as 30 different, customizable and controllable zones.

The CR106 combines a pre-amp and audio matrix – essentially a traffic controller for audio, providing you the ability to set custom audio tweaks for different zones – and it works with a wide range of amps and speakers. It can be rack mounted in a standard AV rack, where it’ll take up a modest 2U of rack space.

An angled rear view of the McIntosh CR106 on a white background — (Image credit: McIntosh)

McIntosh CR106: key features and pricing

The CR106 is controlled via the McIntosh connect app for Apple and Android, via a web interface, or via its front panel. The app offers lots of zone customization tools, enabling you to name each zone, group multiple zones together, selecting the audio sources for different zones and configuring their subwoofer settings too.

There are four unbalanced analog and four digital inputs, and if you have a large home or budget you can chain up to five CR106 units together via the Dante network interface to create up to 30 two-channel zones.

In addition to the hardware inputs, there’s also Bluetooth with AAC, aptX HD and aptX Adaptive, so you can stream into one of these units, and send it out to any of the connected wired setups.

Each zone that it supports has two sets of unbalanced outputs, and dedicated subwoofer outputs.

The CR106 will be available globally from McIntosh dealers from August 2025. The MSRP is $5,500 / £6,999.

Who needs Sonos? McIntosh’s new Bluetooth pre-amp does multi-room music the old-fashioned way, but with a modern app upgrade