Mark Levinson No.5909

The audiophile brand shoots for the top with its first pair of headphones, and Ed Selley finds out if they can live up to the asking price

- Ed Selley

THE NO.5909s are the first headphones of any description from Mark Levinson, and the company has elected to take the 'go big or go home' approach. Of the wireless models we've looked at recently, they've all resolutely stuck to sub-£500 price points. This pair blasts through that and comes in just shy of a grand - although perhaps that's to be expected from a company that sells stereo power amplifiers with five-figure tickets.

To justify the asking price of the No. 59095, they make use of the best Bluetooth implementation available - a v5.1 setup with LDAC, AAC and aptX Adaptive codecs supported. The former of those is the highest-bandwidth codec in common use and, so long as you have a compatible device to transmit from, it can (albeit with compression) handle 24-bit/96kHz material.

This wireless signal is then decoded and output to a pair of 40mm dynamic drivers. That's a fairly typical spec for a pair of portable over-ear headphones, except that these are made from beryllium, a material which is light and extremely stiff, but also expensive and a pig to work with. Presumably there's also been due care and attention focused on the driver housing and motor assembly, but Mark Levinson is reticent about digging too deep into its engineering here.