Mark Levinson № 519: Audio Player

The Mark Levinson № 519 is a modern digital audio player designed for today’s music lovers. This complete audio player combines wireless and wired streaming with a slot-loading CD player, plus connections for USB drives, additional digital inputs, wireless Bluetooth® aptX®, and HARMAN Clari-Fi® music restoration technology; all in an uncompromising package featuring Mark Levinson Pure Path system design in a 6000-series aluminum chassis. The № 519 features a large, full-color TFT display, includes a matching remote control, and can be controlled with iOS and Android apps, all major web browsers, and a host of system integration connections including RS-232, IP control, and more. Like all Mark Levinson products, the № 519 is designed and handcrafted in the USA.

Mark Levinson Pure Path Circuit Design

Mark Levinson has been dedicated to the uncompromising art of sound since 1972, with the guiding principle of musical purity above all else. To achieve that goal, Mark Levinson engineers scoured company archives, ultimately developing a circuit-design philosophy called Pure Path. On a conceptual level, its hallmark principles include a discrete, direct-coupled, fully balanced, dual-monaural signal path that offers unrestricted, uncompromised sonic purity.

Far from merely arranging high quality components in an intelligent manner, Pure Path is the meeting of science and art: Mark Levinson engineers are tasked to create the best possible measured AND subjective performance. As said by Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Pure Path highlights in the № 519 include Folded Cascodes, an R-2R Ladder volume control, the class-A Pure Phono stage, and class-A Main Drive Headphone amplifier output.

Stream, Spin, Connect

The № 519 introduces a new generation of music access and enjoyment with Mark Levinson. The № 519 is a complex, yet easy-to-master unit containing a complete, embedded Precision Stream Linux® computer running a custom Mark Levinson version of the operating system to deliver outstanding headroom for flawless performance, regardless of configuration.

Apart from its ability to browse, access, and play music from a variety of connected sources, the № 519 is also a complete Mark Levinson digital preamplifier and DAC, which is able to directly connect to amplifiers or active loudspeakers without need for a preamplifier for those seeking to create a concise music system.

The № 519 plays from network-connected devices and drives including NAS, using its Ethernet wired and Wi-Fi wireless connections. It contains a slot-loading disc drive for enjoying disc collections of standard Redbook and MP3 compact discs. A full complement of digital inputs enables connection of external digital music sources, including an asynchronous USB connection for streaming high-resolution PCM, DSD, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, APE, AIFF, and WMV files from computers; and a Bluetooth receiver with the aptX AAC high-quality codec enables convenient, instant wireless music connection from virtually any handheld, tablet, or computing device. Two additional USB ports enable local connection of hard drives and thumb drives. With all of these methods for accessing and playing music, the № 519 is truly the music player the world has been waiting for.

The № 519’s Precision Stream also contains a wide range of embedded streaming music services. Built-in Spotify Connect, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Rhapsody/Napster, plus thousands of internet radio stations and podcasts deliver hundreds of millions of tracks in standard and even high-resolution formats, on demand (Availability of streaming music content and resolution varies by region.). And because the № 519’s Precision Stream is a powerful internet-connected computer built on a 1GHz ARM® Cortex® multicore 32‑bit processor with 4GB each of RAM and flash, its feature and content portfolios will continue to grow over time. Mark Levinson is committed to delivering continued feature and content expansion over the player’s lifespan. The № 519 is updateable over its network connection, and by inserting a USB drive containing software updates – a familiar and intuitive process that has been painstakingly crafted to be easy to complete.

Analog Mastery: The Folded Cascode

Mark Levinson components are designed around a Pure Path amplifier circuit concept that makes heavy use of a circuit design element called a cascode. Originally created for improving the bandwidth of vacuum tube circuits in radios, Mark Levinson engineers deploy cascodes in Pure Path circuit designs to both improve bandwidth and enhance linearity. A cascode combines two transistors so that they operate as a single composite device that functions like a single transistor, using the wanted characteristics of each component transistor, and rejecting the unwanted characteristics.

The engineers at Mark Levinson began their design of the preamp gain stage with pairs of JFETs (junction field-effect transistors), chosen for their low noise and high gain. JFETs achieve these characteristics in part by being large and with their large size comes nonlinear gain - or distortion. To mitigate this, BJTs (bipolar junction transistors) were added to the circuit. The BJTs exhibit very low input impedance and very high output impedance, which translates to excellent bandwidth and linearity. By creating a cascode of the JFETs and BJTs, they created a design with the best characteristics of both sets of devices.

Then the output of the cascode was connected to another transistor of the opposite “gender.” Current flows through it in the opposite direction to “turn around” the direction of the signal current. This special connection is called a Folded Cascode and it is a hallmark of the Pure Path circuit: high gain with low noise, wide bandwidth, and excellent linearity.

Military Grade Components

All Mark Levinson equipment utilizes electronic components chosen carefully for their specific task. Gain-stage JFET pairs have high gain, low noise, low distortion, and because they are encapsulated in the same package, the two devices operate under nearly identical conditions. Capacitors used in critical filtering locations are film types, noted for their consistent performance regardless of temperature and frequency. Finally, resistors in critical gain-setting and feedback locations use tantalum nitride thin-film elements. An extremely costly material, tantalum nitride typically finds use in sensitive military equipment because it is unusually stable with respect to temperature, exhibits very low noise, and is unaffected by magnetic fields. In fine audio equipment, those characteristics make the sound even more revealing and effortless, free of the low-level nonlinearities caused by lesser resistive materials as they heat and cool under dynamic conditions. The № 519 is housed in an aircraft-grade 6063-T5 extruded aluminum chassis, and features extremely high build precision, to exceedingly low tolerances.

The Mark Levinson Precision Link DAC

The Mark Levinson Precision Link DAC transforms digital data streams into analog audio art. Like every other element of a Mark Levinson component, it combines unique Pure Path engineering design approaches with painstakingly selected components to deliver impeccable performance that can be appreciated both on the test bench and in the listening room.

The converter chip in the Mark Levinson Precision Link DAC comes from ESS Technologies, a company known for jitter-elimination circuitry. Jitter - inaccuracies in the timing of samples arriving to the converter causes distortion. The ESS converter resynchronizes incoming data to its own extraordinarily stable clock. Combined with its 32-bit resolution, the low-jitter stream reduces distortion and noise, allowing remarkable retrieval of ambient detail that other DACs simply miss.

The Precision Link DAC operates the converter’s outputs in current mode, where they are fed into a fully balanced current-to-voltage (I/V) converter that provides the exact signal level desired. Maintaining near-zero voltage keeps the current sources virtually immune to nonlinearity, maximizing bandwidth and minimizing distortion. Common-mode noise and distortion are cancelled in this mirror-imaged, differential configuration, resulting in a pristine signal with a vanishingly low noise floor.

Also contributing to the Mark Levinson Precision Link DAC’s low noise floor is its unique power supply configuration: five independent power supplies operate the converter chip alone, and individual linear power supplies for the left and right channels power the discrete I/V and antialiasing filter circuits.

Personalized Performance with Precision Link DAC Filters

The Precision Link DAC performs oversampling and digital filtering of digital audio data. This process increases the effective sample rate by filling in additional data points between the actual data present, which in turn reduces the demands on the low-pass (antialiasing) filter required on the analog output of the converter.

Three digital filter options are available in the Mark Levinson Precision Link DAC.

• The Fast filter has a steep roll-off for maximum attenuation of unwanted high frequency information and offers the best noise and distortion measurements.
• The Slow filter has a gentler roll-off of high frequencies and exhibits less pre- and post-ringing on transients.
• The Minimum Phase filter has a steep roll-off of high frequencies. It exhibits only post-ringing on transients.

Music is made up of many transients; ringing after the transient is usually masked by the natural decay of the transient sound - think of the initial snap of a drumstick on a snare drum head, followed by vibration of the drum shell, drumheads, and snare wires.

These filters are selectable as there is no one correct filter choice. Some listeners are sensitive to pre-ringing on transients and think it sounds unnatural. A digital filter with pre-ringing exhibits excellent frequency response behavior precisely because of its transient behavior. Some listeners might be more sensitive to the relatively long period of ringing exhibited by the Minimum Phase filter and would prefer the Fast or Slow filter. Although it’s more likely that listeners will prefer different filters with different genres of music, and they have that option with the № 519.

An Array of Pure Path Digital Inputs

The № 519 features six digital inputs for system flexibility. One Balanced AES/EBU (XLR) input and two Coaxial (RCA) inputs use high-speed differential receivers to reject noise and provide clean digital waveforms to the Cirrus Logic digital audio receiver chip. Two additional Optical (Toslink) receivers drive the digital audio receiver directly. For direct connection to a computer, the № 519 also has an asynchronous USB Type B input built around a CMedia USB audio processor chip. Using the high-speed USB 2.0 standard, the CMedia chip reliably and accurately receives audio data over USB in PCM format at up to 32-bit, 192 kHz; or in native DSD format at up to double speed (5.6 MHz). The CMedia chip transfers USB data asynchronously: it gets as much data as possible as and when it is available, rather than transferring the data in sync with the music playback, which reduces demands on the computer and instead allows the processor chip to precisely control the flow of data to the digital-to-analog converter.

HARMAN Clari-Fi® Music Restoration Technology

HARMAN Clari-Fi music restoration technology analyzes compressed digital audio files during playback, in real time, and reconstructs much of what was lost in the compression process. The complex Clari-Fi processing algorithm is implemented on a powerful Analog Devices SHARC DSP (digital signal processor). Unlike simple equalization, Clari-Fi continuously and automatically adapts the amount of reconstruction it performs to the degree to which an audio file has been compressed. The № 519 offers an Intensity control, enabling fine adjustment of the amount of reconstruction applied to the signal - or bypass if preferred.

Completing the Signal Path

The № 519 delivers its signal to balanced (XLR) and single-ended (RCA) stereo outputs, as well as a 1/4-inch (6.3mm) Main Drive Headphone output integrated into the front panel metalwork - a first for Mark Levinson.

The Main Drive Headphone amplifier circuit drives up to 32-ohm headphones in class A by employing the main output circuit rather than a secondary signal path: reducing clutter in the circuit design.

A selectable fourth-order, 80 Hz high-pass filter enables seamless integration of a single or dual subwoofer for full-range performance with a wide range of loudspeaker setups.

In addition to its analog outputs, the № 519 also offers three digital output connectors – balanced (AES/EBU), coaxial (RCA), and optical (Toslink) - for direct connection to separate DACs preamplifiers with internal DACs, and other components with digital inputs.

Equally Flexible, Beautiful Control

With so many connections and capabilities, the № 519 requires a beautiful, easy-to-understand control interface. In order to create a best-in-class user experience, designers started with a large five-inch, full-color TFT front-panel display flanked by eight aluminum buttons and the iconic Mark Levinson twin-knob controls. The final result was a gorgeous design style for all states and modes that suits the № 519’s place within Mark Levinson systems, yet looks to the future in terms of detail and resolution. And thanks to its powerful [Name TBD] embedded Linux computer, the № 519’s display is always quick and responsive.

Apart from its front-panel control and display, the № 519 also features matching iOS and Android apps for remote control from virtually any smartphone, tablet, or other device running the world’s most popular mobile computing platforms. Additionally, the № 519 can be controlled from any major web browser on laptop and desktop computers thanks to its matching webpage interface.

System-integration connectivity includes Ethernet/IP control, RS-232, plus 12V triggers and an IR input. An included machined metal remote delivers the robust feel and precise control befitting of a component of the № 519’s caliber.

Designed and Handcrafted in the USA

Like all Mark Levinson equipment, the № 519 is designed and handcrafted in the USA. A dedicated Engineering Center of Excellence in Shelton, CT houses Mark Levinson engineering and product development, just a state away from small-batch production at Mack Technologies in Westford, MA by an excellent team of craftsmen.

Highlights

• Roon Ready
• Plays from networked drives and devices, streaming services, Bluetooth and connected media
• 32-bit Precision Link DAC with three selectable output filters and nine power supplies
• MQA full-decode certified
• Pure Path discrete, direct coupled, fully balanced, dual-monaural signal path
• Plays up to 32-bit, 192kHz PCM, double-speed DSD, CD and virtually all two-channel formats
• Large 5" full color TFT display
• Designed and handcrafted in the USA

Inputs

• Digital Inputs: 1 balanced (XLR); 2 coaxial (RCA); 2 optical (Toslink); 1 USB-B asynchronous
• Mass Storage Connectors: 2 USB type-A
• Bluetooth audio input with aptXi®

Outputs

• Class-A Main Drive Headphone output uses main line stage to directly drive headphones down to 32 ohms
• Selectable fixed or variable line outputs for use with an analog preamp or for direct connection to amplifiers or active loudspeakers
• Analog Outputs: 1 balanced (XLR); 1 pair single-ended (RCA), 1 headphone (¼", 6.3mm TS)
• Digital Outputs: 1 balanced (XLR); 1 single-ended (RCA), 1 optical (Toslink)

Control

• Control Connectors: Ethernet (RJ45), RS-232 (RJ12), Trigger In and Out, IR In, USB-A,
• Mini USB
• Aluminum IR remote control
• Mark Levinson app for Android and iOS devices

Networking

• Support for Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Rhapsody/Napster, internet radio, and podcasts built in
• Update software via USB or OTA

No519 Owner's Manual (English/Spanish/French/Chinese/Japanese)