The sound

We’ve had the Mark Levinson 5805 in our listening room for a good two weeks. In the process, it has played along in a few reviews as an additional amplifier alongside the Pass Labs combination. This not only gives us an idea of how flexible this integrated amplifier is, but also how it compares to the Pass we know well by now. Price-wise, the two are quite far apart: the Levinson is 11490 Euros, the Pass XP-12 and X150.8 are around 17,000 Euros.

Rich and powerful

What is striking about the reproduction of this Mark Levinson is the richness with which the amplifier plays. No matter what we play: the amplifier embraces you with music. The stereo image – especially through the balanced inputs and the Sonnet – is large. Both in height, width and depth. As a result, we quickly drown in the music, which, of course, is wonderful.

Going back and forth between the Pass Labs and the Levinson for a moment, we hear that the Levinson presents richer in the bass area. We experience more bass and also more kick in the low end. On the TADs, it does sometimes go a little too far with certain recordings. Then the bass drowns out the mids and treble too much for our taste. Think of some songs by Massive Attack, but also certain tracks by Anathema. Perhaps the TAD and Levinson are just not the ideal match for those who want a dry and tight bass. Although we can imagine that there are also fans of nice round bottom end.

When we put on Beth Hart with I’ll take care of you, everything clicks together. It sounds downright great: ripping guitars and a delicious, raw voice. A Feast for our ears. And if we then switch to Eelke Kleijn for a moment, the party is complete. We get this sound. Big, plenty of detail, fast and a lovely midrange that allows for many genres.

Also older rock work. We completely forget that this integrated amplifier costs 6,000 euros less than the Pass combo…. Really. Yes: it’s a different signature. But that’s taste. The fact is: this amplifier makes music and knows how to entertain. It’s just nice.

Forgiveness…

We already mentioned the midrange. A great strength of the Levinson is that this amp is still quite forgiving. Even mediocre recordings – and a lot of rock is just not very well recorded – are perfectly playable. Perhaps because of the little extra bass and the powerful (and nice) punch this amp has. We heard a lot of music during the loan period. And time after time we noticed the glow that this ML brings.

The Pass is – in our opinion – clearly more neutral and calmly tuned than this 5805. Although we must say that in the mids and treble we certainly do not find the Levinson colored. It comes across as remarkably clean and insightful. It is the bass that is slightly warmer than the Pass. Put a Yamaha A-S2200 next to it and we have a culture shock, as you can imagine. The fact is: this tuning – with the right speaker – makes it possible to play a lot of music. And also with a good dose of fun factor. It is also possible to still listen pleasantly at lower volumes. It is a balance that the Americans have found that we can understand.

Overall

The Mark Levinson 5805 offers a lot of connectivity. We played via USB and analog XLR in the test (with the Sonnet Pasithea). We also played the Auralic via AES-in. The nicest in our case was the Pasithea via balanced in. This is not surprising since the Pasithea is a high-end dac that gets a reclocked signal from the Mutec. This gave a very large stereo image with lots of detail and air. Very nice. And it also immediately shows how good this Mark Levinson’s amplifier is.

USB and AES are close, but the Auralic did play a touch better than the USB input (which was connected to our AlphaPC with Jcat XE usb card. So not a lousy source). The USB input was certainly not bad, but played a bit smaller and a bit less airy than AES-in with the Auralic AND certainly compared to the balanced input to which the Sonnet Pasithea was connected.

By the way, it would be bizarre if there were no audible difference. The Mutec with Sonnet combination is more than 7000 Euro. If Mark Levinson delivered this level internally, that would be – put mildly – extraordinary.