The Mark Levinson Nš39 CD Processor has been one of the more pleasant surprises I've had as a reviewer. I expected it to be "good for digital." Instead, I found that in a couple of important ways, pertaining to a couple of key areas in the tonal spectrum, the Nš39 sounded more like real live music than any other playback component, digital or analog, with which I?ve spent prolonged listening time.
I?ll attempt to describe what I heard in just a moment; first, though, some background information. But not much, for instead of getting into a detailed recitation of features, design, and construction, I will recommend that you first read Bob Harley?s introductory remarks regarding CD players in general and his review of the Proceed CDP - the Levinson 39?s kissing cousin. The latter will highlight many features that are very similar to those of the 39; indeed, I wish I had heard both players so that we could discuss how far these physical similarities extend into the realm of sound quality.
The appearance of the Levinson Nš39 will come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with Madrigal?s other Mark Levinson components. The 39 is smallish, but built like a tank. A heavy tank, not the sports version. The faceplate is hand-brushed, black anodized aluminum; buttons are bead-blasted and custom-machined. The display is large and easy to read, with adjustable levels of brightness (four different settings) for its red lights. Overall, its looks are good, but a bit "computerish." The remote control?s design is better integrated with that of the "mother" machine than most, and features an unusually wide angle of acceptance; I had to get way off to the side of the 39 before it wouldn?t work.
Whether using the remote or operating the 39 from the front panel, I found its basic functions easy and intuitive to grasp. Not so the abundant and arcane special features that can be programmed into the CD player by the user, however. While the features themselves (including, among other things, programming polarity track-by-track and storing same into memory, using fixed or variable volume, adjusting mute level, altering balance, cueing silently or audibly, locking in a volume limit, naming inputs, "sleep" timing, etc.) are nifty, there was no way I could use them without sitting with the Owner?s Manual open to the correct page, reading carefully, making lots of mistakes, and sweating profusely. Then again, I?m not adept with computers; if you are, you?ll probably wonder what my problem was.
The CD loading mechanism of the Nš39 is the nicest I?ve encountered, a slim 1/8" drawer machined from a solid piece of aluminum. It rides on highly polished bearings and has variable speed built-in, making it nearly impossible to jam the drawer with an improperly placed disc. One (long) word can describe its operation: smooooooth.
The 39 will operate as a preamp in an all-digital system. Its balanced, analog (no loss of digital information here) volume control precisely tracks gradations down to 0.1 dB. More importantly (as I?m guessing that many users still have analog sources and therefore will not employ the 39 as a preamp), when the variable volume control is turned off, its circuitry is removed from the signal path. The 39 is fully balanced in both the analog and digital domains. (Again, see Bob?s discussion of the Proceed: Madrigal does "balanced" the right way.). It is HDCD-equipped. All of the machine?s digital filtering and processing maintains a true 24-bit throughput capability and the digital-to-analog conversion stages have 20-bit resolution, making the 39 a 20-bit machine overall.
Madrigal continues to wage its war against jitter by employing its proprietary, closed-loop jitter reduction system in conjunction with a double speed CD-ROM drive, reclocking the signal just before its conversion to analog and using the same super-accurate crystal oscillator to control the digital-to-analog conversion process, as well as the all-digital servo which governs the rate at which the disc spins and the laser focuses and tracks. In short everything that must be kept mathematically precise is run off a single timekeeper of unusually high accuracy.
All of which brings us to a point of discussion. While I admit that I?ve not extensively auditioned the top-of-the-line digital separates from Levinson, Altis, Theta, Spectral, Jadis, or others, I?m more skeptical than ever about the need for, or advantage of, these extremely high-priced beasties. They may have better isolation from mechanical vibration and power supply perturbations, but their interface through an outboard digital interconnect is probably the single largest source of jitter in a system. I?d rather have engineers attack those mechanical and power supply problems (as Madrigal has done so well in the little high-tech battle cruiser known as the Nš39) than cripple their effort to dramatically reduce the larger problem of jitter. Especially when an all-in-one design also saves money on power cords, chassis, interconnects, intermediary jitter reduction devices, and extra shelves in the rack. Why?d we get started on digi-separates in the first place? Can they really outperform the Levinson Nš39?
Okay, I?m getting off of the soapbox and into the listening chair. It?s much more comfortable (and makes me a smaller target). And I like listening to the 39. A lot. In no particular is its performance less than excellent; in several it?s outstanding; in a couple, illuminating.
Let?s begin at the bottom. Those who are familiar with Madrigal?s Mark Levinson line expect deep, powerful, taut bass. Their expectations are easily met by the 39. In a couple of ways they?re exceeded. The 39 reproduces a sense of moving air inside drums and the bodies of double bass which I?ve not found from other digital gear, giving us not only the power and drive of our speakers moving air, but an understanding of the way bass instruments make their sounds and the way that musicians temper initial attacks and dynamics to communicate through their instruments. We get the linearity and power of digital reaching down to the lowest notes coupled to subtle detail that is more typical of bass from the best analog set-ups.
In the upper bass/lower midrange that performance is joined by a remarkable sense of "tactility." There is so much information here?and its presentation is so well proportioned?that it seems you can feel the windings on thick strings, the tension of stretched skins on drumheads. The verisimilitude of sounds in this area of the tonal spectrum exceeds that of any digital or analog gear I?ve tried.
Through the midrange the sound continues to be both accurate and natural, equaling, but not improving upon the best digital I?ve heard. Certainly, voices are smoother, more lifelike than is typical, though they haven?t the nuances that come from the low-level resolution of the better analog components and hence are a bit more generic and less individualized.
As we move from the upper midrange to the lower treble the Nš39 really shines. In fact, I?ve never had a clearer aural vision of the shine of metal in, for instance, cymbals or trumpets. They do not sound at all synthesized or electronic; there is neither the bleaching out of harmonic information nor the electronic splashiness that we?ve all come to accept, consciously or otherwise, from digital; sounds in this region are so true and natural that they simply do not sound electrically generated. A tap on a cymbal has a metallic "realness" I?ve not heard from any other medium of reproduction. It?s so good, so right, that it?s startling on first listening. And the feeling of the sound in this area is so lifelike?transients and dynamic gradations so natural?that the music is given a sense of propulsion that we usually associate only with instruments in the bass region.
Moving to the highest reaches the Madrigal unit, like other Levinson gear from Madrigal, does not have the stratospheric extension of some other marques. I wouldn?t call it dark, and it seems to ease off the extreme high frequencies in a gradual way, but the topmost shimmer and accompanying air just aren?t present. Still, it?s somehow artfully done; there?s neither a feeling of sudden loss or discontinuousness nor a fatiguing stridency, just a diminution of information in the extreme highs.
The Levinson Nš39 spreads its wealth of tonal and dynamic detail across a well-delineated, rather large soundstage, especially when decoding HDCD discs. Depth, in particular, is exceptional. The definition of individual images is quite good, too, especially in the middle of the stage (broadly defined?say the middle sixty percent of the stage area). The way the images are made, though, differs from the way analog reproduces them. Part of the perception of three-dimensional solidity in analog imaging comes, I think, from the sense that air has been displaced by a solid object. We not only see the object, we perceive its impact on the atmosphere around it.
With digital (at least on most digital?the best HDCD recordings differ in this regard) there is far less atmosphere, so the shape of the image and its three-dimensionality are defined not by the displacement of surrounding air but by the extreme clarity of the image itself, much like the high contrast and detail resolution we see in photographs of near-field objects (say, spacecraft or astronauts) in outer space. The images aren?t false, exactly, but neither are they representative of the way things appear in earth?s atmosphere. This has a parallel in the unnatural blackness of (especially, early) digital silence. And in the startling but somehow unreal 3-D-like depth of image you may have seen from DVDs. This type of imaging is enjoyable but unrealistic, like a special effect. But this is not a criticism of the Levinson Nš39 as much as of digital recording; HDCD recordings are more natural in this regard and the 39 excels in bringing them back to life.
In the here and now, I?ve not heard better digital than the Levinson Nš39 CD Processor. In the upper bass/lower midrange, as well as the upper mid-range/ lower treble, I?ve not heard more real sounding reproduction of music from any type of gear. Solid, reliable, and easy to operate (if not to program), the 39 does extraordinary things with the existing digital standard; I expect it will be years before we hear anything dramatically superior and I question what digital separates can do to exceed the performance of this fine machine.
