The Levinson Sound?

FWIW…. I’d say so far, these posts are on point with the Levinson sound attributes.

I’ve only heard ML with ML pre & amp, using Maggie 20s.

IMO, being very blunt and a bit insensitive, listening to Levinson is like listening to an amp which has to have a sheet thrown over each speaker while the music is playing. Maybe that’s the ‘dark’ aspect. They sound ‘polite’. Deep resounding bass. But IMO just to civil and not keen on leading edge definition. However, not tube like.

I’d say they are surely accurate and musical, but the presentation for me, is not demonstrative or engaging enough. At least in the setup I heard. Imaging was spectacular, albeit mild mannered..

Their builds enable some fairly tuff load speakers to be driven surprisingly well.

Could be a solution for bright sounding speakers.

IMHO age is another consideration. There are loads of nice well mannered amps around that don’t have the Levinson name plate which are contemporary or recent . production.

The cap issue referred to earlier is fact with age. A friend of mine has had a couple of them and needed to get that work done on his.

Krell amps, for example, of the same vintage or era would be the antithesis of ML amps.

Look around. Have fun at any length. Good luck.

Hello jafant
I have not had the pleasure of the Mark Levinson 383, other than a audio show just for a couple of minutes.

"I've often heard that Levinson's amps have a "dark" sound to them. What does this mean?"  

Here you go 333jeffery... An Audio Glossary

https://www.stereophile.com/content/sounds-audio-glossary-glossary

dark... A warm, mellow, excessively rich quality in reproduced sound. The audible effect of a frequency response which is clockwise-tilted across the entire range, so that output diminishes with increasing frequency. Compare "light."