MARK LEVINSON No 5805
amplifier
The first of the brand’s new ‘affordable’ 5000 Series to reach our listening rooms is a cracker.
Our challenge with the 5000 Series was to develop a product line which — although at a lower cost than the 500 Series which came before — still delivered the full Mark Levinson experience for our customers. We had to innovate.”
So said Todd Eichenbaum, Mark Levinson’s Director of Engineering, streaming to our office from Connecticut for a special 5000 Series event last October. By then the company already had two 5000 Series amplifiers on the market, including the № 5805 integrated amplifier we’re reviewing here, plus two sources — the № 5101 streaming CD player, and the rather exciting № 5105 turntable. A 5000 Series pre-power combo is also imminent, making a six-strong line-up. Given that there are only seven other products in the entire Mark Levinson line-up, this new series, tucking underneath that seven-strong 500 Series, is clearly a vital focus for the company’s latest evolution.
And certainly when it comes to high-end amplification, few brands are as prestigious as Mark Levinson. The company helped establish the idea of high-end hi-fi in the 1970s, going through a few fallow periods including the departure of Mr Levinson himself way back in 1984, when the company’s assets moved to Madrigal Audio Labs, before becoming part of Harman International Industries. You’ll search in vain for any mention of the man himself on Mark Levinson’s website today; Harman is name-checked only in the brand strip at the very bottom, while the ultimate ownership of Samsung is mentioned not at all.
Despite the temporal and personal separation from its earliest days, the brand retains its reputation, and has done so by building solid hi-fi components true to its stated ethos of constantly striving to bring you closer to your music.
So the № 5805 has quite some legacy to live up to, especially as being now pretty much the entry point to the brand, with only its sister model, the № 5802, coming in lower — and in fact that model is built into the same chassis. but offers only digital inputs. So if you require analogue inputs or a phono stage, the No. 5805 is now the most affordable Mark Levinson amplifier on the market.
Equipment
The № 5805’s build is reassuringly solid, its finish as good as you could possibly hope for at this level, and the controls — particularly the knobs that control inputs and volume — spin with pleasing precision. This unit is certainly up to the standards set by direct price rivals such as Krell’s K-300i.
As for inputs, it’s one of the oddities of hi-fi that buying a more expensive amplifier doesn’t guarantee you endless connectivity; indeed sometimes the highest of high-end goes the other way entirely, in the name of simplification and purity. The № 5805 sits somewhere in the middle, with three line-level analogue inputs, two with RCA unbalanced connectors and one as balanced XLR pair, alongside digital connections of USB-B for computer playback, one coaxial and a pair of optical inputs. There’s also a nod to wireless modernity in the form of Bluetooth reception, which includes the aptX HD codec capable of streaming slightly lossy 24-bit/48kHz from devices which support it. Fans of vinyl are well supplied. The № 5805 has a built-in phono stage with separate inputs for moving-magnet and moving-coil cartridges, plus two sets of little DIP switches to adjust cartridge loading.
All the paired inputs are mirrored around the centre-point, which is an indication of the entirely symmetrical direct-coupled dual-mono design, aiming to optimise stereo imaging and sonic precision with its mirrored circuit boards extending from the rear inputs to the single ultra-low-noise custom toroidal transformer rated above 500VA, which sits just behind the front panel. We’ve rarely seen a neater layout.
The only downside of mirrored inputs is that the left socket for the first analogue input is quite a long way from the right socket; you may need to peel apart your interconnects to spread them across the distance.
There’s also an Ethernet socket on the back panel, but don’t get too excited, as it’s for control purposes only; there’s no network streaming here. But you can use this connection to configure things from a computer or tablet on the same network. It’s one of those no-frills interfaces, but it’s easier than kneeling before the amp and using the remote and panel controls, especially as the set-up menus are pretty wide-ranging, providing various digital filter and upsampling options, adjustment for gain levels and the facility for giving custom names to inputs.
The DAC section offers seven digital filter choices; these generally come with the chip-set used and while there are obvious technical differences between brickwall, apodizing and linear phase filters, we’d suggest you live with Mark Levinson’s default until you’ve settled in and have a spare evening to experiment. It’s very common not to be able to hear the slightest difference from one to another.
Performance
This integrated amplifier is rated at a healthy 125W per channel into 8 ohms, and that figure just about doubles as the load impedance halves. That means the № 5805 will drive even the most difficult speakers without issue, and to pretty high levels. Only those with the largest rooms or particularly inefficient speakers are likely to need more.
While the amplifier’s casework gets hot during use, we never got to the point where the heat felt excessive, even when we pushed it really hard. But certainly ensure there’s plenty of ventilation above it. Also, make sure you have a sturdy support — this integrated weighs in at just under 28kg.
Bluetooth, even of the aptX HD variety, may not seem an obvious place to start when testing an amplifier at this level, but we were keen to see how well the technology has been implemented. We listened to Nitin Sawhney’s Fragile Wind and liked what we heard. The music sounded clean and precise, the amplifier rendering each sound in a coherent presentation that communicated the momentum of the piece. Vocals came through with clarity, nicely separated from the instrumental backdrop, while dynamic shifts were conveyed with fluidity.
We also plugged in a source at the other end of the digital quality spectrum from Bluetooth, a Naim ND 555/555 PS DR music streamer, plugged into the Mark Levinson’s first analogue input. This made as big a jump in performance as we’d hoped, highlighting the amplifier’s innate transparency across
“The No 5805 will certainly impress those new to the Mark Levinson brand, its many charms obvious, its presentation clean, detailed and articulate...”
a range of music, from the sultry rhythmically delicate Mira by Melody Gardot to Holst’s Jupiter and Kanye West’s Yeezus. The № 5805 handled such diversity of content with ease, and certainly had the resolution and dynamic expression required to render Gardot’s lovely voice with the body and finesse it deserves. This is a lively, entertaining performance that’s as detailed as they come, but also fun to listen to. The ML isn’t the kind of amplifier to make everything sound large and impressive for the sake of it. It can do that, but will only do so if the recording justifies it.
The large-scale of Jupiter needs power, authority and scale, which the № 5805 was happy to provide, while nevertheless painting sounds with precision, a delicate brush even atop high-level dynamic swings punched out with confidence. Even when pushed hard, the amplifier sounded impressively composed. We can’t fault its organisation or its ability to float an expansive soundstage before the listener and populate it with solidly focused and carefully layered instrumentation.
Tonally things were even, within a refined presentation with enough in the way of smoothness to avoid making a meal of poor recordings or sources, but transparent enough to allow high-quality music to shine.
We also tried the coaxial digital input to check the quality of the DAC within, and while we lost some of the solidity of the ND 555’s internal DAC (that is a $41,000 pair after all), the digital module in the
№ 5805 still impressed us with its expression and rhythmic coherence, a clean and crisp sound that balances smoothness with bite. This positive performance continued with the USB input, which can handle up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM or DSD 11.2. There’s also full MQA decoding onboard.
The 6.3mm headphone output is a good one, driving our Beyerdynamic T1 headphones to high levels with ease, the sound spacious, informative and entertaining.
Conclusion
As Mark Levinson (the company) well knows, there are levels of amplification above this which can do still more in the way of effortless performance — indeed that’s what the company’s 500 Series is for. But the № 5805 will certainly impress those new to the brand, its many charms obvious, its presentation clean, detailed and articulate, while the features set is admirably broad, short of smart operation and streaming, for which Mark Levinson can offer its 5000 Series streaming CD player (above). As a trailer for the new wonders of the company’s ‘affordable’ 5000 Series, the № 5805 is one impressive integrated amplifier.
SPECS
Mark Levinson No 5805 $15,000
Inputs: 2 x RCA analogue unbalanced, 1 x MC phono. 1 x MC phono, 1 x XLR analogue balanced, 2 x optical digital, 1 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB-B, Bluetooth with aptX HD, IR in, Ethernet control, RS-232 control, 12V trigger Outputs: speaker outputs, headphone out, pre-outs, trigger out
Power: 125W into 8 ohms (20Hz to 20kHz; THD+N <0.035% at 1kHz; <0.18% at 20kHz) Dimensions (whd): 428 x 145 x 507mm Weight: 28.1kg
Contact: Convoy International Telephone: 02 9774 9900 Website: www.convoy.com.au