Edgar Kramer of SoundStage! Australia reviewed a Mark Levinson № 526 preamp with a № 534 power amp and settled on one word, order. He wrote that the pair presented music "in a highly organised way where all seems in clear balance" and that its purity was "like breathing mountain air." The company calls its approach Pure Path. The signal travels through individual transistors rather than integrated-circuit chips, with nothing extra in its way between the stages, and the two channels of the № 526 are built as mirror images of each other. The power amplifiers are built for hard work, and Kramer heard the № 534 cruise through the demanding bass of his Wilson Alexia Series 2. Mark Levinson suits listeners with demanding speakers who want neutral, detailed sound from gear built to last for decades.

Start with the № 5805. What Hi-Fi? calls it "pretty much the entry point into the company's amplifier range," and Stereophile's Jim Austin counted five components in the box, among them a DAC, a phono stage for both kinds of cartridge and a headphone output. What Hi-Fi? says it will drive difficult speakers to high levels. Give it air and a sturdy shelf, since it weighs 62 pounds and gets hot. Austin notes a standby mode that spares you an hour of warm-up. The step up is the № 585.5 integrated, and Mark Gusew of StereoNET found its phono stage "staggeringly good," with cartridge loading set from the menu instead of tiny switches. He found it kept improving past its first hundred hours and that the speaker pairing shapes the tonal balance, so audition it with your own speakers. For vinyl newcomers, Michael Fremer says having the Ortofon cartridge factory-installed, as on the № 5105 MC turntable, is essential.

Mark Levinson had hoped for a career playing jazz on flugelhorn and double bass before film sound work drew him into audio. In 1972 he and a couple of friends were building mixers for location recording when one suggested listening to some music, and they realized they had no preamp. Levinson turned to Richard Burwen, the engineer guiding him, and the result was the LNP-2, the company's first product. It appeared in 1973, and Greg Chapman of Hifidelity writes that it had its panel labels engraved and filled with white paint and sold by the thousand, mostly to professionals. Levinson told Stereophile in 2002 that the aim was long-lasting preamps and power amps that performed on a par with medical and test instruments, in boxes that were "very simple, very Spartan." The ML-2 of 1977, a 25-watt class A monoblock weighing 80 pounds, set the pattern for the company's monoblocks. The ML-50 of 2022, 100 pairs made for the 50th anniversary, takes its name from the ML-2.