NO 526 IN AUSTRALIA
Mark Levinson’s No 526 Dual-Monaural Preamplifier, which includes a high-resolution DAC, and is now on-sale in Australia. It has two balanced and three single-ended analogue audio inputs, stereo phono inputs and six digital inputs, Mark Levinson’s ‘Pure Path’ circuit topology, a Class-A ‘Pure phono’ stage, a 32-bit DAC, and a Class-A headphone amplifier, including a discrete, balanced R-2R ladder volume control to ensure sonic purity, channel balance, resolution, transparency and dynamic range irrespective of volume control setting. ‘ Completely designed, engineered and hand-crafted in the USA, the Mark Levinson No 526’s signal path is fully discrete, fully balanced and completely dual-monaural,’ said Nigel Ng, of Advance Audio, which distributes Mark Levinson in Australia, ‘ plus it provides connectivity to accommodate any analogue and digital music source, supported by the acclaimed Mark Levinson ‘Precision Link’ DAC and Harman’s ‘Clari-Fi’ music restoration technology.’
The Mark Levinson No 526’s ‘Precision Link’ DAC incorporates an ESS Sabre32 DAC that offers high-resolution digital decoding up to 32-bit/192kHz PCM as well as up to double-speed DSD and the six digital inputs accommodate asynchronous USB, AES/EBU balanced, optical and coaxial digital. The 526’s phono stage operates in Class-A throughout and offers fixed-gain for moving-magnet cartridges with five capacitive cartridge loading settings, and three gain settings and 10 resistive cartridge loading settings for the moving-coil input. Both stages incorporate infrasonic filtering to remove turntable rumble and low-frequency signals caused by record warp. The Class-A headphone amplifier circuit can drive headphones with impedances of up to 32 . ‘ The No 526 is built to the finest standards of materials, fit and finish, featuring a 6000-series aluminium housing in black with silver trim,’ Ng told Australian Hi-Fi Magazine. ‘ And for listeners whose libraries contain older or lower-resolution content, it incorporates Harman’s own ‘Clari-Fi’ music restoration technology, which rebuilds musicality and detail lost in the compression process.’ Available now, the Mark Levinson No 526 sells for $37,595 (RRP).