Mark Levinson Celebrates 40 Years with Four New Products

A concept rendering of Mark Levinson’s No 52 reference preamplifier.

Fans of Mark Levinson products can celebrate the brand’s 40th anniversary with four new additions that mark its re-entry into product segments that it left a while back.

To be introduced throughout the year, the products are the No. 52 reference stereo preamp, No. 585 integrated stereo amp, No. 519 CD/ SACD player/DAC, and No. 560 DAC. Three of these will be the brand’s first with USB ports for music playback, USB connections to Apple mobile devices, and HDMI ports.

The No. 52 two-chassis stereo preamp, targeted to retail for a suggested $25,000, will be the brand’s first reference-level stereo preamp in about a decade. Designed for use with the No. 53 reference mono amp, it is a pure analog model with solid-state design. Analog inputs and outputs are incorporated in one chassis to keep noise from entering control circuitry in a separate chassis, which also features a display.

With the No. 585, Levinson is offering its first integrated stereo amp in several years, but the new model adds connectivity to almost all modern digital sources along with its predecessor’s balanced and unbalanced analog inputs, Garrett said. The 585, targeted to retail for a suggested $10,000, is rated at 2x225 watts into 8 ohms. It comes with three USB ports, one of which streams music from a connected iPod, iPhone, or iPad and charges an iPod and iPhone.

The USB ports also accept 96kHz/24-bit PCM audio from PCs. The company is also aiming to connect the USB ports to USB sticks to play back music in a variety of digital file formats. An Ethernet port is available for connection to thirdparty home-control systems and to serve up web pages to run diagnostics. The 585 also features HDMI 1.3 connector.

The third new product is the No. 519 CD/ SACD player/DAC with digital volume control, which enables direct connection to an amplifier, making a preamp unnecessary. It’s targeted to retail for a suggested $8,000. For use as a DAC, the 519 features two S/P DIF digital inputs and two USB inputs capable of decoding multiple digital music formats. One of the USB inputs also streams music from a USB-connected iPod, iPhone, or iPad and charges iPods and iPhones.

The fourth product is the $6,000-suggested No. 560 DAC, which borrows the DAC technology of the 519 CD/SACD player/DAC, strips out the transport, expands the number of digital inputs to 10 from four, and features only balanced and unbalanced analog outputs. The digital inputs are two two-channel PCM/DSD HDMI inputs, three USB, one AES/EBU, and four S/P DIF. The DAC lacks analog inputs.

More from Harman's Luxury Audio Group

Mark Levinson isn’t the only Harman Luxury Audio Group brand making a splash a CES this year. Revel, JBL Synthesis, and Lexicon are also introducing new products.

Revel will replace its entire Performa series of bookshelf and tower speakers with the Performa3 series, which sports upgraded performance via advances in driver design and more aggressive price points. These speakers will consist of two bookshelf speakers, two floorstanding towers, two center channels, one bipolar surround, and one subwoofer. The fall speakers will add a second sub and the third tower.

JBL Synthesis is launching three high-end speakers, including the S4700 three-way floorstanding speaker with 15-inch woofer, horn-loaded high-frequency compression driver, and horn-loaded ultrahigh- frequency compression driver operating from about 16kHz and up. In its Array series, JBL Synthesis is bringing back two models discontinued a few years ago. The Array 1000 is a floorstanding tower, and the Array 800 is a bookshelf speaker.

Lexicon is adding a blackfinish option to its $2,500 DD-8 multiroom amp, previously available only in silver. The Class D amp is rated at 8x125 watts into 8 ohms.