MARK LEVINSON NO585.5 FLAGSHIP INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER EMBRACES VINYL
Mark Levinson's No585, in their own words, is the finest, most-accomplished integrated amplifier ever made. The awards and accolades that followed from prestigious publications including Stereophile and Hi-Fi News, to name just a few over the last four years certainly back up that statement.
Building on that success comes the release of the No585.5, featuring everything found in the predecessor but with the addition of a pure Class A phono pre-amplifier as featured in the award-winning No523 and No526 preamplifiers.
The phono stage caters for fixed-gain moving magnet (MM) with five capacitive cartridge-loading settings, while the moving coil (MC) section offers three gain settings and ten resistive cartridge-loading settings.
The No585.5 is a fully-discrete, mirror-imaged, dual mono amplifier that features individual signal switching relays for each of its five stereo inputs comprising one XLR and three RCA plus the aforementioned Phono stage.
Digital audio enthusiasts have not been forgotten with any less than six digital inputs including one AES/EBU, two coaxial and two optical plus a USB audio processor capable of asynchronous data transfer of high-resolution DSD and PCM files at up to 192kHz/32 bits resolution.
For low-resolution audio formats, Mark Levinson's proprietary Clari-Fi'” signal processing is said to reconstruct information and bandwidth lost in compressed file formats and restores them to higher fidelity.
The ESS Sabre 32bit DAC as found in the No585 has been carried over and uses proprietary jitter elimination circuitry, and fully balanced, discrete IN circuitry forms the heart of the digital audio processing stage.
There's no shortage of power on tap with the No585.5 offering 200w at 8 ohms and 300-350w at 4 ohms. The fully-differential Class AB power stage includes an oversized 900VA toroidal transformer with individual secondary windings for the left and right channels.
Conveniently, the No585.5 also includes stereo RCA pre-outs which can operate full-range or can be programmed as a second-order, 80Hz crossover filter which allows for seamless integration into 2.1-channel systems with powered subwoofers.
The iconic Mark Levinson aesthetic has been maintained with the steel and aluminium construction and black, and silver anodised aluminium front panel with its intuitive twin-knob control system and unique red display.
Designed and handcrafted in the USA, the Mark Levinson No585.5 Integrated Amplifier is available now and sells for $39,990 RRP.
For more information visit Mark Levinson.
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Marc Rushton
StereoNET’s Founder and Publisher was born in England and raised on British Hi-Fi before moving to Australia. He developed an early love of music and playing bass guitar before discovering the studio and the other side of the mixing desk. After a few years writing for audio magazines, Marc saw the future in digital publishing and founded the first version of StereoNET, known at the time as Planet Audio, in 1999.
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