Mark Levinson 32 and reliability

I have a Ref. No. 32 with a built-in phono stage. Mine has given me no problems whatsoever. It has worked silently and flawlessly for the past three years. Even when there has been lightning-induced power surges and outages, the unit comes back on and remembers all of its complex settings.

I should say that I am replacing mine with a tube linestage that sounds better to me, though I will be giving up some of the incredible flexibility and convenience of the ML remote control (the tube unit has a rather basic remote control). But, I still think the ML is quite good sounding, it just does not have the incredible "breath of life" and you-are-there quality of the tube unit -- the Emotive Audio Epifania. Still, incredible as this may sound, the ML is a lot cheaper than the Epifania.

Thank you guys for your precious responses! I should be able
to put my hands over this great preamp by the end of
this month. I think it'll be a BIG upgrade of my 38, do you
agree with me? ;))

Oh yeah, big upgrade over the 38, and you'll never have to wonder if your tubes are still good or gone microphonic!

I have a 32 with Phono. No trouble at all.
No desire to change it either.

Best,

Paul :-)

I had the ML 32 for several years. It was a superb pre-amp while in my system. I then upgraded to the Boulder 2010 which to my ears offered a much less dark and more open, airy presentation of music...albeit the Boulder was significantly more money as well. Most recently I sold my Boulder 2010 to get the darTZeel pre-amp and it is in a completely different league then the 2010 or any other pre-amp I have heard including VTL, Halcro, etc.

Bottom line, for the money the ML 32 is still a great pre-amp and I'm sure you'll be happy with it. I never had any reliability issues with mine...I blew a fuse once, that was it.