Levinson 36 to 360s help needed

I made this change in my system. The 360 is more open, more air, more dimensionality in the soundstage. However, it's still not great. There are better DACs, but it does work very well with the 37 and 380S which I also own. My vinyl is still much better than my digital front end and I was really hoping that the 360S would bring the two considerably closer. I did not expect the 360S to better my vinyl system, but I thought it would get it 90% and I feel it really fell short of that.

Hello Chantank,

It has been awhile, but I went from a ML-36 DAC to the 360s and to me it was a huge improvement! I felt it was well worth the money. There really wasn't even one area of performance that could compare.

BTW, at the time I also had the ML-37 transport. So if you are getting a really good deal my advise would be ...... yeah, go for it.

Good luck to you,
Tom

I really enjoyed my 360s when I owned one. It is a remarkable DAC. I don't think you'd be disappointed.

Using a 37 transport, I went from a 36 to a 360s, the latter being considerably better. That said, this DAC is now a twelve year old design that is not competitive with the better current CD players (or the two CD players that came after it in my systems, the latter costing only $1,600). CD players are part computer, and like all computers, they become obsolete as the years pass. There are dozens of single-box players on the market right now that will smoke a Levinson 37/360s combo - I would move on if I were you.

Thanks for all the inputs...I decided with the upgrade to 360s yesterday. My initial listening yesterday voiced all your inputs that it’s considerably better than the 36. I’m very happy with the upgrade.

The last point mentioned Raquel is an interesting one to me as I logically, completely agree and believes that with all technology this holds true (Newer version with higher computation power should be better at lower cost) but as you know buying HiFi (at least for me is part emotion so I guess I still like that old charm of the Levinson of separting DAC and Transport.

The only updated info. I’ve found re 360S is from Steroephile website where they did a comparison of all the high end DAC (Think it was in Mid 2003) and based on the reviewer comments the Levinson is still on top but again this was 5 years ago. Not sure how it holds up now with the best today.

Thanks again all!

Kris

I think you'd find that in some ways the 360s might be better or equaled, but besides the better computational power the new DACS have, I doubt if many of the new units (unless they are very expensive) would provide the power supply, superior circuitry, and execution the Levinson gear would have. The Levinson DACS are very musical and depending on the system, may be still competive to most systems out there. At any rate I think you'll enjoy it. I did when I owned one!

Chantank

Not sure when you posted this.The dates are unclear-was it in 2006 or 2008 and if you did have the 36 upgraded in 2008,could you tell me who did the upgrade?
I have been trying for the last several months to upgrade my 36 and have been told by both Levinson and their 2 auth.service centers that the upgrades are no longer available