Mark Levinson No.30

by James Leahy

In 2010 the nearly twenty year old (US$14,950.00 - 1991) Levinson No.30 DAC is one of the most analogue and smoothest performing DAC's I have had the good fortune of testing.

Supremely built with no expense spared the Levinson No.30 DAC and all of it's subsequent incarnations use a separate power supply module for increased electrical A/C isolation. The digital section is comprised of two dual mono DAC's and a servo controller unit on the one chassis and each is housed in it's own triple shielded module.

The one problems that happens sooner or latter with all Levinson products of this vintage is they are famous for using hideous Sprague capacitors in all of their products.

Danger, Will Robinson - Danger!

They all end up leaking and creating a most time consuming mess to clean-up and due repair to the circuit board. Left un-checked further untold damage often results to the surrounding components that come into contact with this leaky mess.

The DAC will end up going into complete failure mode and refusing to lock on to any signal and /or even power up correctly without the error protection mode being tripped.

The best solution is to provide a full service for both the power supply and digital controller modules and change out all offending capacitors to higher specification units there-by providing and auditable up-grade at the same time while fully repairing and cleaning up any residue from the original caps.

The end result is a fantastic DAC that will provide many years of trouble free use.