Vintage Levinson DACs

Sorry Guys, it's just personnal taste, but I beg to disagree, I had the reference ML DAC and transport pieces in my system for over five years and they were terrific at that time. However, what digital front end I have now in my system is so much more musical/natural sounding then the Levinson pieces ever were. The best piece, in my opinion that ML ever built was the 31.5 transport, which is still a great piece, but just does not sound quite as good as the newer reference transports.

Hi George,

I can honestly say that I have never bought a new piece of gear because it's the latest and greatest. I'm always curious about new stuff, but take all the hype with a grain of salt. I have had now for close to four years my AA Tube Hybrid Reference DAC and have found none of the new DACS to sound better, maybe different, to purchase a different DAC. Also I had the great fortune to score the reference MBL transport, to replace its smaller brother, which sonicly lead to an improvement that was quite noticable.

I think the ML pieces are "classics" and at the time were built to beautiful standards, however, they sonicly are not on the same level in their performance compared with the top reference level digital gear now.

I don't change gear very often but when I do it's only because I believe I'm getting more of the illusion of real music in my system, not because I need a new toy to play with.