Mark Levinson No.512 CD Player---Opinions

Well, I just got my ML 512. Let me open with a joke. Two men meet on the street and one says, “How’s your wife?” The other man responds, “Compared to what?”
The player is heavy and solid, but I haven’t had the time to a great deal and I can only really compare it with a ML 31.5/30.6 combination. While I have heard the Esoteric and the Krell, I have not heard those in my system.
The 512 sounds very good, I am NOT yet ready to say great. It has to be broken in and I need time to just enjoy it. My surprise is how well the CDs sound. The ML 31.5/30.6 sounded a bit darker, meaning the bass was not as refined as it here. There is great detail, but the high end is what prevents me from saying great. But that may come when it is on for a few more days, it has in the past. New machines always sound a bit shrill to me.
The SACDs sound fine also, with a somewhat deeper sound with better placement coming from the ability to hear each instrument more individually. The bass is also better. When I first turned it on I would give it a B-. Now it is a B+. In time (just a day or two) it could certainly be an A.

It’s two weeks later and I have reached my conclusions about the ML 512. First, it is very sturdy and uses a different remote than I have associated with ML.
After two weeks, some of the sounds are startling. First, the quiet is so quiet when it is quiet that I first thought something was wrong. There is no shrillness whatsoever; the highs are wonderful and believable. I heard instruments, not speakers or equipment. The strings were startling real. I loved the “bass strings” and certainly heard things I never heard before. I even felt the piano keys being hit.
My comparisons are with the ML 31.5/30.6 and Krell DVD players. I have trouble, I think, expressing this, but the ML combo gave me great detail, the new combo gives better fidelity. It not so much detail it is realism. It did take me a while to get used to that. I hope that makes sense. The soundstage was superb. I listened to classical music, opera, jazz and movie soundtracks.
I found it took ten days to two weeks to really warm up and play well. I left it on overnight and the music got better and better. We are certainly are in grade A territory, perhaps A plus.
I know it sounds silly, but I haven’t had the time yet to go through a lot of discs, that may take a while. The CD sound is so wonderful that the distance between that and the SACD is not humongous. Again, that is because it is playing the regular CDs so well, NOT because the SACD part is lacking anything. Again, it actually sound is taking me a while to get used to. It is so uncolored and natural (and quiet).

I need to put out some friendly advice for my friends online who are considering buying a Mark Levinson product. Let me tell you what has happened with my Mark Levinson 502 and 512.

First I had had trouble with my Mark Levinson 40. I live in New York and there are no longer any Mark Levinson dealers in New York or New Jersey. I decided to trade in the Mark Levinson 40 for the 502. I did want the upgrades, I also want to get rid of the problems I had with the 40 that’s a Mark Levinson company was not equipped to fix. They kept promising me resolutions such as a new or refurbished unit and I never got it. The only reason I decided to get the other two products was that a friend of mine worked for Harman Kardon and said that they have straightened things out and that they were moving to New York. Within six months of their move to New York they announced that they were closing down their New York offices. Had I known that….

Mark Levinson 502: the first two units I got would not turn on. The third unit is slightly quirky but works. I do have to reboot it every couple of weeks. It may not be its fault, but I don’t know.

When I first got the Mark Levinson 512, a sacd/cd player it was the best sounding unit I ever heard. However, the first unit did not work the draw would not open or close. It is the second unit that sounded wonderful. Until a month later when it failed completely. I was told that virtually all of those units made had to be recalled. The third unit also failed. in addition to having sound problems the software was not correct for the machine. It had Esoteric software and not Mark Levinson. Let me be clear, the menu functions did not fully relate to the functions of the machine. I do not know if that is what affected the sound. I have waited almost ½ a year for the next unit to be sent to me. They don’t have any in reserve. When they got in new ones in it took about a month for them to be able to ship it.

A poster mentioned that he was informed by his dealer of the grounding problem that took out the machines. He mentioned that the dealer enabled him to get the part and the instructions to put it in. This confirms the universal problem. I used was just not assessable. I couldn’t get a loaner machine, more than that, he had a new machine that worked well but would not give it to me. Eventually he had told me that he was giving up on the Mark Levinson line and he would only help me if I were to buy a Krell unit, which had not been released. If he was local I would have gone in and complained loudly. Sadly, he had speakers that I might have wanted, but I have gone somewhere else.

At any price this is not worth the time the trouble the aggravation and the lack of a CD player. These can be great products but my great suggestion to you is to wait until the company is straightened out, that they get more dealers (which means that they are working with dealerships to get customers) and they have a reservoir of units to replace those that are defective. They are behind, that their own website does not list their current products, like the 512. Many people are surprised that the 512 is out there because it’s not listed anywhere.

But let me be clear: once I got to ML they were professional, friendly, helpful and basically terrific. They were frustrated too. HK is going through reorganization. I am just suggesting that you wait until there are done!

Sorry this is long, but I wanted to share this.