"It was as if the L-590AX could render also the cigarette smoke, heavy curtains and a worn out carpet, fingers dancing on the strings and the ice, slowly melting in the last glass of whiskey..."
La délicatesse intégré…
Japanese Luxman may seem to be overprivileged to have another amplifier submitted for the audiodrom review, on top of that another Class A amplifier. I should probably say something about a coincidence but it was not definitely a coincidence that have brought the brand new L-590AX into my listening room. In the course of last two years I auditioned several Luxman’s amps and always with excellent results – no wonder that I was eagerly looking forward meeting the L-590AX.
The Luxman L-590AX successfully evolves the sonic philosophy of its predecessors - that is to flood a listener with washes of the sound that caresses, soothes, heals and brings nothing but pure enjoyment. You may have heard of Orpheus – the ancient gifted lyre layer and singer from Greek mythology. The legend says that when Orpheus touched his lyre’s strings then shepherds forgot about their daily worries, wild animals were enchanted and tamed coming near people’s dwellings, and birds ceased to flap their wings in the sky. Unfortunately many centuries have passed since then, however, if our ancestors have had the L-590AX available, it is likely they would not have mourned for Orpheus.
It is easy for the Luxman to make a proof of the presence of Class A circuitry inside the amp as you will feel it few minutes after switching the L-590AX on: the substantial waste heat does not cause the Luxman to glow at night, however, I would not recommend to build the amp in a bookshelf or closed rack still you are free to use it keep you cup of coffee or tea reasonably warm in winter months. For the L-590AX Luxman had to adapt the case’s ventilation to achieve proper convection and the dissipation of the heat.
Technically speaking…
…the L-590AX builds upon renowned L-590A II and improves on it especially with the new LECUA 1000WM attenuator (the LECUA stands for Luxman Electric Controlled Ultimate Attenuator and the WM stands for Weighting Matrix) and the circuitry that has been adopted from Luxman´s flagship C-1000f control amplifier and B-1000f mono power amplifier. Luxman claims the LECUA 1000WM to be the ´ultimate attenuator´ that aspires to be the first absolutely lossless attenuator ever. It converts the music signal from a voltage into a current, controls gain, and then reconverts the current into a voltage. A position of the volume knob is detected by sensors to be consequently evaluated by processor board that controls the current switches combinations, not unlike Accuphase’s AAVA volume control works. As the LECUA does not imply any impedance changes there is no deterioration of S/N ratio and frequency response remains totally uniform and there is virtually zero tracking difference between both channels. The entire process is carried out in analog domain including electrical suppression of RFI and EMI interferences.
The L-590AX keeps on using unusual negative feedback (Only Distortion Negative Feedback version 3.0A) that virtually feeds back only distortion components generated during amplification to extend the bandwidth of the amplifier to 20-100,000Hz and increase S/N ratio to to 107dB which is among the best for an integrated amplifier. The beauty of such a solution lies in feeding back only a ‘corrupted’ part of signal – should there is no distortion present in the signal the ODNS circuitry remains idle.
Principally, the L-590AX is a bipolar amp with push-pull topology in pure class A, achieving 2x30 sweet watts into 8 ohm load or 2x60W sweet watts into 4 ohm load. For the sake of the new ´X´line of its components Luxman had to adjust the dimensions of the L-590AX to the new (and narrower) Luxman standard of 440 (W) × 193 (H) × 463 (D) mm – it will come handy should you already own a Luxman’s SACD player to harmonize both components on your rack.
The rear panel of the the L-590AX shows typical array of connections: four RCA line inputs, two XLR balanced inputs, MM/MC inputs, a recorder inputs and a PRE-OUT option. With the L-590AX it is possible to use two pairs of speakers connected to switchable binding posts that accept any type of a speaker wire’s termination in case you manage to remove a tiny plug that seals them. I can tell you it is not an easy task but I succeeded in the end and so I could use WBT terminations of my Krautwire Fractal. The laziness of a listener is supported through a headphone jack output on the L-590AX’ s front panel and through an aluminum remote control that works well also with Luxman’s CD players.
For the auditioning I used Luxman’ s D-05 SACD player as well as Audio Analogue Maestro Rev. 2.0 CD player, competitive Accuphase E-560 and Accuphase E-450 integrated amplifiers, Dynaudio Confidence C1 standmounted speakers, Homegrown Audio DNA and Accuphase interconnects, the Krautwire Fractal speaker cable and power leads from Vincent. I started with moody blues numbers so lights were dimmed… by the way have you ever considered the influence that lights do have on our listening experience?
