Mark Levinson No. 5909 - Headphones 

There has barely been a more strong name in the high end in the last 25 years of the last millennium than Mark Levinson.

However, over the last 20 years, the brand has become very silent, with new products only appearing on a sporadic basis. However, a product under the Mark Levinson label, which was launched on the occasion of the 50th birthday and which no one expected, is making people sit up and take notice: closed, dynamic, circumaural headphones with Bluetooth and Active Noise Canceling (ANC), the Mark Levinson No. 5909 for 1,000 dollars.

A thousand dollars is a lot of money for headphones, but in the brand's heyday, these headphones would have been considerably more expensive and even more attractive.

Mark Levinson was a true musician - and a long-time supporter of high-end sounds. He is believed to have played bass and flugelhorn with Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, and Sonny Rollins as a jazz musician, and he is a friend of North Indian classical music.

Since the early 1970s, the Californian has been implementing his taste for good sound at home, so to speak, from the can. Mark Levinson, on the other hand, had to close his company years ago due to financial constraints and devote himself to other activities in the audio industry.

Harman (now owned by Samsung) manages his legacy and the brand, which is now headquartered in Woodbridge, Connecticut. They have so much headphone knowledge in-house at AKG and JBL that such a great idea may easily be realized at the highest level.

The "No. 5909" suddenly arrives on the scene in the series of numbers of model designations such as "No. 585.5" (integrated amplifier) or "No. 519" (CD player): the first headphone from the Americans listens to this code.

The closed, dynamic headset is both a home player and an outdoor companion, it includes active noise cancellation (ANC) to decrease bothersome environmental noise, and it wirelessly receives Bluetooth signals from smartphones, tablets, or notebooks.

Let's take a look inside the cube-shaped box: it's perfectly embedded in the black inlay box. There is an elegant, stable travel box, as well as various connection cables and adapters for all cases, such as a USB-C charging cable, a USB-C/USB-A adapter, a 1.25/4 meter USB C-cable to 3.5mm jack, a jack plug (3.5/6.35mm), an airplane audio adapter, and a microfiber polishing cloth.

It was awarded the coveted "Red Dot Award" for design in 2021. The 5909 is a "lifestyle" product that attaches to the ears in three colors: "Ice Pewter," "Pearl Black," and "Radiant Red."

"The No. 5909 is Mark Levinson's first product built for the premium on-the-go lifestyle," said Jim Garrett, Harman Luxury Audio's senior director of product strategy and planning.

But one thing is certain: the noble headdress must fulfill the high expectations imposed on the brand. Particularly in terms of sound. When it came to sound tuning, the engineers were able to exchange ideas with other, more experienced colleagues under the large corporate roof.

Because JBL and the traditional headphone and microphone maker AKG are also headquartered in this city. They also integrated the so-called "Harman Curve" in the acoustic development, which is based on extensive investigations and listening experiments conducted by Harman mastermind Sean Olive and includes subjective sound sensations from numerous test subjects.

"As a first step, we developed some of these tests ourselves to assess what listeners agree on when it comes to what sounds really excellent through headphones," Olive says.

At this first stage, it became clear that getting precise and reliable data from listeners was critical. Once tangible samples of the described quality of listening experience were available, the team established the specific technological characteristics that linked with this perceived sound quality. "One of the challenges of this process is the fit of the headphones because this affects the uniquely desired sound quality," Olive explains.

Without recharging, the battery supplied 26 hours of listening enjoyment; with the ANC turned on, there were still more than 20. In addition, the quick charge function is specified, with a charging duration of 15 minutes for up to six hours of use.

In addition, the "Mark Levinson Headphones App" for iOS and Android is now available for smartphone control; PC/MAC versions should be available soon. At the present, the tool doesn't accomplish much, although it does allow you to set the bass capability, for example. The iPhone setup was quick and simple. The major controls for volume, phone, or ANC modes are via the little buttons on the handset itself.

One might be shocked by marketing strategists' techniques and answer the issue of whether headphones even fit into the ML portfolio with a shake of the head. Nonetheless, Harman (or the Harman subsidiary Mark Levinson) manages to provide a top-tier headphone that is great in every way thanks to its enormous degree of skill and nearly limitless production possibilities.