Their aim is to bring wired-standard sound to wireless convenience. Target acquired…
We wonder how many headphone and hi-fi manufacturers saw a green light beam in front of their eyes when, at the end of 2020, Apple announced a pair of wireless headphones – the AirPods Max – costing twice as much as the then-current premium competition. Whatever the answer, there has been a glut of more expensive wireless headphones of late. Among them are the T+A Solitaire T, the forthcoming Bowers & Wilkins Px8 – and these Mark Levinson No. 5909.
The Mark Levinsons enter our test room as the most expensive wireless pair we have tested and therefore do so with a weight of expectation on their shoulders. Can wireless performance ever be so good as to justify such an expense (roughly three times more than the Sony WH-1000XM5)? That’s the question this review aims to answer.
Bluetooth with real bite
While there is more to most products we test than their specification, you would expect a pair at this price to tick the right boxes – and the right boxes the No. 5909 do indeed tick. Wireless connectivity comes in aptX Adaptive and LDAC flavours, which are essentially the best-quality Bluetooth codecs currently in use. Qualcomm has come up with a next-generation aptX Lossless solution that can supposedly wirelessly transmit lossless audio uncompressed, but it is not likely to reach a decent number of devices until 2023 at the earliest. So, high-quality Bluetooth support: tick.
Cancellation culture
Active noise cancellation is another box ticked and comes in three modes: ANC High, Adaptive and ANC Low. An Awareness mode designed to let noise in for temporary convenience is available in (effective) Voice Pass and (more effective) Ambient options too. You can set your preferred ANC and Awareness settings in the accompanying Mark Levinson app.
That is arguably the biggest justification for using the app, which otherwise simply lets you activate on-head detection so that music is automatically paused when the headphones are taken off/put back on (which works well); set an auto-timer to turn the headphones off after a period of no music playing; and choose between Neutral (default and, we find, preferred), Enhanced and Attenuated EQ sound profiles. For many, following initial experimentation, the app will be surplus to everyday listening needs.
Noise cancellation is well implemented, albeit more functional than forceful in its intensity. That’s not a criticism exactly; the Mark Levinsons physically block sound more than most
