Mark Levinson No.5805

Mark Levinson isn’t known as a budget brand, and most people would not consider $8500 a budget price for anything short of a new car. One could argue, though, that Levinson’s new No.5805 integrated amplifier ($8500 with DAC and phono stage) is a budget component—combining high performance and build quality with a price tag that’s moderate by hi-fi standards. Plus, there’s a lot of functionality in one box.

Say you want to build a very good audio system in the fewest possible steps and boxes. The 5805 includes a digital source, MM+MC phono stage, a preamplifier, an amplifier, and a headphone output, all in one product. That’s five major functions at an average cost of $1700 per function—significantly less than the average cost in the relevant categories of Class B of Stereophile’s Recommended Components list—and think of all the money you’ll save on interconnects! The No.5805 starts to look like quite the bargain, assuming it works well and sounds good. So … does it?

The very model of a modern integrated amplifier

The No.5805 is large—a typical 17¼" wide, but deeper than usual at a shade under 20"—and distinctly heavy, at 62lb. It’s also nicely styled, its matte-black surfaces set off by red lights, hourglass-shaped knobs, and glass and brushed-aluminum accents.

But it’s the feature set that impresses most. The Levinson’s eight inputs are evenly split between digital and analog. The former include one USB 2.0, one coaxial S/PDIF, and two TosLink S/PDIF, while the latter include one balanced (XLR), two line-level unbalanced (RCA), and two phono (MM or MC, both RCA, although only one of them can be used at a time). There’s also the apparently obligatory home-theater