levinson 32 heat

Hi all,

thanks for your responses.

to clarify, only the power supply unit is hot. and it is very hot to the touch, including the control knobs. It is uniformly hot (both sides) but I have not heard a whine noise at all.

I know that the unit should be ventilated well but I have it in a large enclosed cabinet with air/space around the unit. This is not ideal but should not produce the heat that this power supply seems to produce. I use the cabinet for other equipment and have had a variety of components / units in there and the only one that has ever been warmish is the ps audio p-500 (which seems to get hot whereever it may be). The power supply of the ml32 is much warmer.

Piperdan, what did Levinson mean when they told you that the unit had "experienced over-heating issues"? Also, could faulty DC connections/cables be a culprit to this problem?

Any other suggestions of things to look for before it goes back? I love the sound and would like to keep this unit.

Thanks
Chris

I had a similar experience to Dan. One side ran much hotter then the other, and the unit had a "whine". After sending mine back for the third time, my dealer convinced Levinson to provide me with a refurbed/restock unit (both pieces). I haven't had any problems since, but the controller will throw off some heat in standby (which the cat loves...). Bottom line, if you can't keep your hand on it, something's wrong.

I bought a used 32 about two weeks ago. I left mine in
stand-by and it runs warm but not hot. I keep the two units
side by side on the same shelf and there's proper ventilation.
I think that the whine is a clear symptom that something is
going wrong. I own a ML-36S DAC, a ML-331 power amp and a
ML-31.5 transport too and I've noticed that the 36S and 32
reach about the same temperature while in stand-by. The 31.5
is not warm at all and the 331 is significantly less warm
than the 36S and 32 (surely because it's designed to have
great heat dissipation).

its biased pure class a thats why it runs hot dont worry about. biasing at pure class a is why it sounds so good

Wadia,

Most linestage/preamps are Class A biased. Given the low output of linestages, excessive heat is normally not an issue with solid state linestages. Besides, with the Ref. No. 32, the amplification stage, input switching and volume resistor ladder is in the box that Fmj said is not hot. The box that is hot is the power supply/logic control circuitry box.

The power supply box does get somewhat hot, but the kind of heat Fmj is reporting (even the knobs are warm to the touch) is not typical of normal running condition.