Mark Levinson N°326S front end and N°531H monobloc rear end
The Mark Levinson N°326S is the pre amplifier of the company and looks very nice with its stylish black housing and red Display. It’s got a completely seperated audiocircuit, control circuit and power circuit. It’s obvious the engineers did their very best during the development process, which the THD+N of 0,001 per cent proves. There’s no need for me to tell you that this results in a very pure display. On top of that the preamp has a frequency range of 10Hz-40kHz with a distortion of 0.2dB.
The N°326S front end is 7,4 cms big (3″), 45 cms wide (17 ¾”) and 35 cms deep (13 ¾”). With a weight of 14 kgs (31lbs) this results in a fairly compact but solid and robust apparatus. On the rear end we find an abundance of high quality inputs: 3 XLR and next to them 4 gold plated Cinch ports. It’s possible to upgrade one of the cinches to a Phonotrap for a mere 2000 euros extra. Output wise we find an XLR and a Cinch this N°326S is also equipped with a Link2 port. Thanks to this integration you can connect different Mark Levinson components to eachother, making them communicate with eachother.
In the setup menu it’s possible to give each input a unique name, and shut down unused inputs. This erases the inouts from the order of connected sources. One of the more interesting functions Is the Passthrough function of the N°326S. This evades the volume control which lets it integrate perfectly in a multiple channel audio system or Home Cinema, in which the Surround Processor controls the volume level of the entire system. With the input trim option it’s possible to match all input levels to get a very balanced music display. The front of the device is stylish black with silver buttons which makes the N°326S controllable without remote. The remote differs a bit from a traditional remote in the sense that it is nicely finished, and rather heavy. This gives it a very decent feel and makes it able to handle some roughness. This remote enables you to control all seven different inputs seperately, change the balance, reverse the polarity, use it in mono and change the red display’s intensity. Besides that theres also the possibility to record using an analogue signal. Whether this still belongs to this period of time is up for discussion, but the option makes the N°326S very complete and enables you to do virtually everything you wish.
