Lexus And Mark Levinson
I like listening to music really loud, but that doesn’t make me an audiophile. I listen to the same things almost all the time: '60s, '70s and '80s rock, and sometimes a bit of pop. (The older I get, the more I find myself listening to talk radio too.) But even though I can’t tell whether a particular note sounds truer on one audio system than on another, I can always tell when I’m listening to a high-quality system. I don’t know how, but I just can.
My first contact with a “real” car audio system was when I test-drove the 2005 Lexus LS 430 and learned a new name: Mark Levinson. Last week, at the launch of the Lexus RX line, I had the chance to chat a bit with representatives of this high-end audio brand.
But first, a bit of the interesting history of the Mark Levinson brand. First of all, Mark Levinson is a real person, not just a company name dreamt up by a marketing team. But we know very little about who this Mark Levinson is (the company’s public relations department doesn’t even provide his photo). His biography says that in the mid-1960s, before he was even 20 years old, he played bass and trumpet with great jazzmen such as John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Chick Corea (that would make Levinson about 70 years old today). During that same decade, he also played a series of concerts with pianist Paul Bley in Europe. Later on, Levinson would attempt to reproduce the rich sounds that this duo created on the stage.
In 1969, Levinson turned up at Woodstock, where he built the mixing board that was used for the three days of the famous music festival. In 1972, he combined his passions for music and technology to present his first commercial product, a low-noise pre-amplifier known as the LNP-2, which made the Mark Levinson name famous around the world. Other high-end amplifiers and pre-amplifiers followed.
In 1984, Mark Levinson Audio Systems Ltd. was purchased by Madrigal Audio Laboratories. Contrary to what you might expect, product quality didn’t go down, it went up. In 1995, Madrigal was acquired in turn by Harman International Industries, still without impairing the very high quality for which the name Mark Levinson had become famous. In fact, Mark Levinson soon became Harman’s luxury product line.
The beginnings with Lexus
The first time a Mark Levinson audio system was featured in a Lexus (Toyota’s luxury brand) was in an LS 430, the flagship Lexus model, in 2001. Thousands of hours of research and engineering went into finding the perfect arrangement and adjustment for the system’s components. In 2002, the Lexus SC 430 convertible was equipped with a Mark Levinson system that played differently according to whether the top was up or down. In 2006, Mark Levinson systems were added to the Lexus IS luxury sports sedan.
When the production model of the Lexus LFA supercar rolled out, it featured a new Mark Levinson super audio system, with the new Harman GreenEdge technology, which saved energy and reduced weight and heat despite the system’s 12 speakers and their 1,000 watts of total power. A Mark Levinson system with the most recent generation of the Harman GreenEdge technology was unveiled in the Lexus ES and GS in 2012 and added to the Lexus IS in 2013.
When you come to think of it, the relationship has really been just as beneficial for Mark Levinson as for Lexus, each brand profiting from the excellent reputation of the other.
Mark Levinson produces home audio systems as well as automotive ones. Of course, Mark Levinson quality does not come cheap. A Mark Levinson home audio amplifier can easily run over $15,000 or $20,000. Needless to say, at that price, the speakers hooked up to the system won’t come from Walmart! According to www.marklevinson.com, the only firm distributing Mark Levinson products in Canada is Erikson Consumer of Baie-d’Urfé, Quebec.
To the lucky few who can afford a Lexus or a Mark Levinson home audio system, all I can say is, I envy you!
- To find out more about the Lexus LS
- Or the Lexus SC
- Or the Lexus IS line
- Lexus LFA sport supercar
- Lexus ES
- Lexus GS
- Lexus RX
