Mark Levinson Speaker

inchley313 · November 25, 2019

So I spent most of the afternoon yesterday replacing the N/S door mirror on my 2004 Lexus Rx300 that was booted off by some p!$$ head a few weeks ago and decided that while I had the door card off, now was a good time to replace the blown Mark Levinson front door speakers that have been farting at me for months thanks to my love of rather loud dance music.

I already had backing plates to change the speaker size to 6.5" as there are some much better quality low wattage speakers available in that size to go with a standard head unit, modified the wiring to suit the new speakers, put everything back together and she sounded absolutely amazing! ...for about 10 minutes...

Just as I pulled up to my workshop, feeling rather pleased with myself, a bass drop happened in the JFK PaSSion set I was streaming and my drivers door speaker started making a horrendous noise with smoke bellowing out of it!!!

So my question is, before I spend even more money on speakers, does anyone know the specs of the original ML door speakers, what wattage and resistance they are so I can replace with something as close to the originals as possible. I think I read somewhere that the ML setup is 8 ohm, I used 4 ohm speakers as almost all car stereo setups are 4 ohm so maybe this is the problem.

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Herbie · November 25, 2019

51 minutes ago, inchley313 said:

I think I read somewhere that the ML setup is 8 ohm, I used 4 ohm speakers as almost all car stereo setups are 4 ohm so maybe this is the problem.

The words 'nail' and 'head' come to mind here 😉

Are there no markings on the one you took out to tell you what it is?

leelacey17 · November 25, 2019

Not sure about the speakers but will congratulate you on the tunes.

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inchley313 · November 25, 2019

The words 'nail' and 'head' come to mind here [emoji6]
Are there no markings on the one you took out to tell you what it is?

Hi Herbie, no markings, just a part number that I can look up online and get conflicting information about.

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inchley313 · November 25, 2019

Not sure about the speakers but will congratulate you on the tunes.

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Thank you very much!! If it's not loud, it's not worth listening to!! The Mark Levinson setup always sounded half decent for this type of music but I felt it was lacking bass so thinking about using 6.5" house speaker woofers in the doors if they turn out to be 8 ohm...

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leelacey17 · November 25, 2019

Thank you very much!! If it's not loud, it's not worth listening to!! The Mark Levinson setup always sounded half decent for this type of music but I felt it was lacking bass so thinking about using 6.5" house speaker woofers in the doors if they turn out to be 8 ohm...

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I had the Mark Levinson in my old is250 and it did indeed sound very good. As you said did miss a bit of bass but more than made up for it for me with clarity.

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Herbie · November 25, 2019

23 minutes ago, leelacey17 said:

Not sure about the speakers but will congratulate you on the tunes.

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There's a saying in the computer industry - GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out.

To get the best from a Mark Levinson system it needs to be fed with really good stuff from LED Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who, AC/DC, Jethro Tull and David Bowie, to name just a few. You'll never realise its full potential otherwise :laughing:

leelacey17 · November 25, 2019

There's a saying in the computer industry - GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out.
To get the best from a Mark Levinson system it needs to be fed with really good stuff from Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who, AC/DC, Jethro Tull and David Bowie, to name just a few. You'll never realise its full potential otherwise

Then I would suggest the computer industry is where that list of music stays [emoji6]. Its probably just a generation gap [emoji2960][emoji23][emoji23]

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inchley313 · November 25, 2019

There's a saying in the computer industry - GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out.
To get the best from a Mark Levinson system it needs to be fed with really good stuff from Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who, AC/DC, Jethro Tull and David Bowie, to name just a few. You'll never realise its full potential otherwise

I do also on occasion have rock music playing through them! A bit of Kansas, Queen, Metallica, Nirvana, the Eagles etc. I love all types of music but it's the progressive nature of electronic music that takes me on a journey!! I do tend to listen to different genres of music depending upon my mood.

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inchley313 · November 25, 2019

What was removed and what was fitted in their place!

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Herbie · November 25, 2019

Use a multimeter on the Ohms scale and put the probes across the two terminals to measure the resistance, which will be a very close approximation of the impedance.

Illogan · November 25, 2019

8 hours ago, inchley313 said:

What was removed and what was fitted in their place!

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Looks like a Chemical Brothers self-assembly kit

( 🙂 )

inchley313 · December 16, 2019

**Update** move over Mark Levinson, Ian Inchley is in the house!!

I managed to run a multimeter across the original Mark Levinson 6x9 speaker and got a reading of 7ohms.

Using this knowledge I bought some 8ohm 200w Blow 6.5" woofers from amazon for about £11 each and can confirm the sound quality is out of this world!! I am convinced I have successfully improved on the original sound for a mere £22 total!!!

So happy with the result!! Mark is sacked and I'm hunting for his job!!

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genkakuzai · December 17, 2019

The Mark Levinson system in our RX 400h sounds absolutely brilliant. And I'm definitely what would be considered an audiophile, as well as a musician.

Barry14UK · December 17, 2019

I can understand there are a number of reasons why people wish to change some/all of their speakers, particularly if they spend a lot of time in their car listening to music and the type of music means a non standard speaker gives the listener better results. (Of course one could spend enormous amounts of money upgrading car speakers and indeed amps and systems) I don't listen to such an amount of music in my car as to justify changes to the ML one installed. However, I faced the same situation in my property and it was a bit of a compromise finding a system that would be good for the sort of music I enjoy but also be reasonable if not quite so good for playing DVD's over the TV in surround sound particularly for action movies. (Ideally, one would have two separate systems.)