The No. 519 is a ‘Swiss Army knife’ sort of audio player, and it promises to play pretty much everything you can throw at it (within reason).
There is a slot-loaded CD drive. Fancy streaming? No problem. You can do it by ethernet, wifi or aptX Bluetooth. Services supported include Spotify Connect, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Rhapsody and Napster, plus internet radio stations and podcasts.
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Got your own material? Play it from USB hard drives or networked storage devices. The No. 519 supports high-resolution audio up to 24bit/192kHz from PCM, as well as DSD. For low-res MP3s and the like, Harman Clari-Fi processing promises to ‘rebuild’ detail lost in compression.
Next we have the Mark Levinson No. 526. This is a dual-monaural preamplifier, which features a hi-res DAC and phono stage. It offers connectivity to accommodate ‘any analogue and digital music source’.
It has two balanced analogue and three single-ended analogue audio inputs, plus six digital inputs including asynchronous USB, AES/EBU balanced, optical and coaxial.
Like the 519 audio player, this preamp is capable of hi-res digital decoding up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM (plus DSD).
The Mark Levinson No. 519 audio player will be released in July 2016, while the No. 526 preamp comes out in May. Prices have yet to be announced.