Going linear - The Luxman 507ux

It would be great if Luxman would update their preamps with an integrated DAC (as an option) and streaming."

Good idea, but I think they may expect that, on that level, people like to experiment instead of getting it already pre-assembled. Same with phono pre-amplifiers. Just my guess, of course.

One thing I like about Luxman intergrateds is that they have more or less everything (minus DAC option). Old school goodness.

yyzsantabarbara,

"I liked the 509x a lot...... I then heard the same equipment switched over to the m900u and c900u. What a shocker."

You are not making this easy, you know.

As far as "loudness" goes, it is much less prominent if the music is played louder which it might have been during the demo. It "works" the best in the apartment at night. Kind of when you do not want to wake up others. Luxman "loudness" is done well. Not overly aggressive like some (in the past, not many around these days), but still there.

For whatever my experience is worth, I found the remote control actually perfectly executed. Initially, I was just like erik_squires. Why would anyone make all the buttons same size and quite small, etc. However, after a while, I noticed that buttons are laid down in a way that almost all are easily found/recognized without looking. The space between them (on the left side) makes it so, I think. True, "loudness" and "line straight" are trickier, but those that I regularly use (on/off, meter, volume, mute, line 1, balanced 1, phono), are all easy.

Has anyone compared 590axII (if that is the newest one) and 509x (again, the newest one, I think)? I know they are different (class A and so on) and in some theory one would be "warmer", but the difference in price is smallish. I do not doubt that both are stellar, but if anybody has experience with both, I would appreciate your thoughts.

For some reason, Luxman decided that finding dealers should be an exercise for customers so I gave up guessing where to audition them. The only way I know is to e-mail the distributor (very friendly and responsive man, by the way) with your location and then he tells you who to call. If you happen to be travelling, write many e-mails, I guess.