Mark Levinson No. 30.5
Fifteen thousand nine hundred fifty dollars for a converter that fixes the No. 30's one real weakness. The reviewers who heard it called it the state of the art.
Overview
The No. 30.5 was never a clean-sheet design. It is an upgrade of the No. 30, a converter already regarded as one of the three or four best at any price. The changes were concentrated almost entirely in the digital section, not the analog. Owners who sent a No. 30 back to Madrigal paid $3,000 for the conversion. Buyers starting fresh paid $15,950. The power supply and the discrete audio circuitry in the "towers" flanking the chassis were carried over untouched. So were the proprietary dual, balanced UltraAnalog 20-bit DACs, retained after extensive comparative listening.
What did change was the center of the unit. Three separate digital circuit boards collapsed into one four-layer p.c. board. That shortened signal routing considerably and, per Levinson's own documentation, introduced elements capable of up to 24-bit resolution. The 25-MHz pulse transformers of the No. 30 became 125-MHz parts for better time resolution. The record and monitor digital outputs moved to low-skew RS-485 chips to clean up the leading and trailing edges of the digital signal. Levinson claimed this improved compatibility with digital recorders and the sound of tapes made through the unit. The differential signal is selected and decoded by a Crystal digital interface receiver. From there it passes to a microprocessor-controlled NPC5842 digital filter with 24-bit throughput, where the predecessor's filter was limited to 18-bit.
The biggest change was clock regeneration. The No. 30.5 uses a DSP-controlled FIFO data buffer with custom voltage-controlled oscillators running at 256 times the sample frequency. The converter can reclock in a way that is far less sensitive to whatever transport or DAT deck feeds it. Levinson rated the incoming-jitter suppression at the 20-pS level or better, and the unit adjusts itself within seconds to the long-term clock rate of a given disc. Reprogramming the display name for each input also became considerably easier.
Audio (March 1995, p.78) put the No. 30.5 on the cover of its equipment profiles alongside the No. 31 transport, with Anthony H. Cordesman handling the review — and his verdict was that the changes had improved on the No. 30's strengths while correcting virtually all of its weaknesses. Where the earlier converter traded a little dynamic life, midrange warmth, and lower-octave energy for its upper-octave clarity, the 30.5 reportedly gave the clarity without the leanness. Cordesman judged its low-level definition and transparency better than the No. 30's, which he had regarded as the best he'd ever heard, and found it significantly more dynamic. Deep bass energy, he conceded, might not match his Krell Reference 64 or Theta Digital DS Pro Generation V references, but the definition down there was superb — "even bassaholics," in his phrasing, were unlikely to complain.
The same review is honest about the price ladder. Cordesman noted that the Theta DS Pro Generation V came very close at roughly a third the money. The Krell Reference 64, which rivaled the Levinson in price, came closer still on sheer detail, with a more mid-hall perspective, slightly less dynamic energy, and more space and depth. He also found the synergy between the 30.5 and its matching No. 31 transport to be real but limited, varying disc to disc. With a PS Audio Lambda transport at $1,795 the 30.5 was only slightly worse.
The record doesn't give production years, serial ranges, or a service history. Those aren't documented in the material available here, so treat any claimed run dates with suspicion until a factory source turns up. What is documented is the impression the unit made on reviewers. Audio (March 1995, p.80) described the internals as electronic luxury laid out well enough to qualify for a museum. The same issue's listening notes say the 30.5 does not perform magic, so a bad recording stays bad, but that it makes mediocre-sounding discs with good performances genuinely enjoyable.
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