Mark Levinson 23.5: camac or RCA?

Tab110s,

so you listened to the 23.5 with RCAs and camac and you are saying the RCA were sounding better?

Thank all of you for all past answers and in advance for the next ones. All this info is of great help in my search.

Camac / Lemo connectors are used in nuclear and laboratory instrumentation mainly because they are small and reliable and can be inserted and picked easily many thousands times.
The same hardware that costed a few bucks for laboratories was sold for audiophiles at much higher price. Although there is no firm evidence that they sound better than other audio plugs, they do not break the earth path before the signal one and are self-locking.

To clarify matters, Levinson used single pin Lemos for unbalanced signals, Cello used Camac three pin ones for balanced signals and Krell uses four pin Camacs for cast (current mode) signals.

If you do not mind the extra work and mutilating the original back plate, fitting a RCA connector to the amp is the best solution. But if you accept that a Cardas RCA plug sounds different from a Neutrik the choice is not easy ...

Microchip,

thank you for your answer. I would not think of using Cardas RCA's. In my experience, they are far from "neutral". I'd prefer WBT's. But this is another subject.

As far as changing the camac for RCA's, it seems the engineer at Mark Levinson agrees with you. He told me that I MIGHT gain a LITTLE with RCA's, but that the modification process is long and complex to do a good job.

So for now, I will follow yours and ML's suggestion and use the LEMO's. I will think about changing to RCA's if I realy like the sound of the 23.5.

Best regards,

Pierre