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friends you're looking at Dave King I'm still Steve Guttenberg this is the audio fili act Daily Show and Dave and I have a long history but I was thinking he's in New York and today and I thought we should talk about Mark Levinson you worked for Mark Levinson I did iconic a pioneer of high-end audio the man the legend and there's a good reason for all of that he had it's strong personalities I mean reputation aside just for my personal experience a very very bright person and very creative a very entrepreneurial very driven and you know he knew what he wanted and he really went after it so when and you you weren't there at the beginning at the mark levinson company you were there for no I guess the second company cello that's right yeah and was John Cross still a designer no he had he had Tom Colangelo I was his primary desire and then Paul I can't remember his last name right now was a secondary okay and those two designed ciao okay the speakers as well um I'm not sure if they had as much to do with the speakers honestly that I don't remember where the initial idea from that came from which is basically just lashing - acoustic research LS one's worthy okay together in a stacked pair and there were so heavy they had to make granite uprights the stands weighed you know hundreds of pounds right and when they were assembled and put together the whole thing probably weighed you know each side probably weighed 600 pounds or something so this is the late age so you didn't like scotch him into place yeah nowhere to put them no sketching speak so this is the late 80s was this at the time frame yes right yeah and it was a town house well so what I did for mark was I had been working for Dave Wasserman one of the great guys stereo exchange and you know I was kind of doing more what I wanted to do and he wanted me to do other things so we kind of had a parting other ways you know cordial parting and I was setting up turntables I don't know if you remember this I had an ad in The New York Times yeah and that was going okay and then Marc called me one day he said come up to New Haven I want to talk to you so he hired gave offered me a job I took it and basically he wanted me to do two things one set up the New York's showroom cuz he had a complete line of electronics and speakers at that point a system and he wanted to present that and you know do installations so I traveled around doing this deletion so somebody in Colorado for the system you would be an EP the setup really yeah go I'd go out and set it up and that was it that was actually a lot of fun though to me that was more fun than sewing equipment first of all there's no pressure about the selling yeah we just got to make the customer happy make sure it all works and every everywhere you went was interesting because you know you'd be in you know high in mastering studio and Switzerland or you'd be in it like a real fancy Parisian apartment just it was just a fun job Wow yeah it was a good job yeah so so you were in New York with her actually Marc wasn't in New York most of it now he was in Connecticut and it's New Haven factory and I was kind of manning the showroom all that well that lasted so do you get any good stories about interact because he's so quirky you know well he's you know he's eccentric you know the way a lot of bright people are he's you know he's he's everybody who's you know driven and smart is you know in their own way and he definitely used to say you know example of that not that many stories I mean we just had a working relationship and you know I can't I can't tell too many you know I used it I can't talk about soo hoo much it's not about even being sued it's just you know kind of respecting his brain and you know we're not we haven't been in contact really for quite a long time I understand he's living on a small island house at Venice now doesn't that make sense with a you know kind of a you know this spoke very high-end kind of boutique company and he manufactures components to order by a company in Switzerland it might be Stella Vox and I sure make some foreign you know that and yeah I can just see him on a you know one of those little you know motor launches going from Murano to Venice yeah yeah so you know if that's true and I heard that from somebody he knows him pretty well so yeah it seems like he's I mean I might have found his spot where he's I really see him at the at the very beginning with the high-end audio world you know him and well my K because it was that's true yeah hidden like a word you know they were they were extension and the absolute sound and Harry Pearson that's a good point you know I wonder if he could have launched that crazy expensive $2,000 preamp when everything else was five hundred or less if it hadn't been my K I know that was you know I was there for couple aside and he had lots of super wealthy customers and it was a great story and the bottom line is the bottom line it was much more expensive than other preamps at the time period right but it was better I mean it wasn't just people didn't buy it just go I want the most expensive nothing you're like why is it so expensive listen to it and if we think it's worth it you buy it if you don't think it's worth it you don't I don't think these things would work out I couldn't than that you know and I don't remember who built it for him but it might have been some company that just built you know hospital electronics or military electronics or something like that and though that's just not cheap you know you're just making a few like fifty or a hundred of them or something yeah so they they're there's expensive as they are and you know what's else it's funny to think about is the shape of the of the volume control and all the switches that round what we're doing that if you know what it looks like you know what it looks like but so many other companies copied that that knob shape that's true it ran it's true and that might have been a little remarks own is kind of aesthetic flourishes I don't really know the story on that could have been something that was on piece of herself haha right but it just looks so cool and of course by the time you entered the picture at cello the cello palette with the feel you're taking the oh my god heids yeah the volume control was well is a stepped attenuator people just talked about those knobs because no because the clicks the heard it they're they're a real real technical pleasure to use oh my god it was they I used to say hey could you just sell me the knob yeah I just want that I don't do the rest of your stuff I just know you'd have to buy a whole palette and you can take the knobs I want so the palette which talked a little bit about that so because that was a revolutionary idea basically an equaliser war band equalizer six bands six bands okay six bands and I'm trying to remember who designed it it was a very very well known designer just to my mind at the moment basically the idea of that you know you all these graphic you will I said you know 24 bands and you know you'd mess things up you get a prior to you I mean you didn't know how boy and you just wouldn't make the sound worse and you couldn't make it better and he finally just gave up put in the closet but this thing basically there was no way to screw the sound up with it everything you did made it sound better and then you knew when to stop her to back off and find that perfect yes very easy for consider anybody could use it yeah anybody could use it you could get the nine-year-old could use it you know whoever could use it and it compensated for tunnel deficiencies and anomalies and you know and everything had I mean everything has some room speakers recording this marks observation which was so true was that just play you know three different albums the Beatles and Keith Jarrett and Sonny Rollins the tonal balances of these records are wildly different they recorded in different studios oh yeah and you know one could sound bright the next one gonna sound dull and we just thought if I was just live with it he said well why should you live with it why not have it Chris didn't he sell so you could set up the palette right next to your listening chair so you could just tweak it cables from yeah system to not right next to your chair so you could just kind of like as you're listening and one record to the next you could just tweak it so that it was perfectly balanced and some records benefited tremendously and some just basically didn't really need much and it was if you remember $10,000 when $10,000 was a lot of money yeah that's the point yeah it's not anymore you got 10,000 - let me buy the loci for 129 I have that is it equal I have that it's a little mini cello palette that's what it is to me see that's the advantages of 21st century yeah but they sold I sound by singer where I work was briefly a cello dealer and we did sell pallets yeah did you so many of them considering the pricey I think we did meaning maybe six or seven yeah well you might have been as biggest dealer on it yeah so but anyway I think we've done it unless I'm missing something so we know that prattle on know maybe well maybe we'll we'll wrap up by saying maybe we'll really hear from Mark Levinson yet to get one or his lawyer will enough from this okay great pretty sure about that but he might have a pallet just sitting refuseniks if he's watching hey Mark good CIA yeah any more just talk a little faster work anyway thanks so much for doing this day my pleasure my name is Steve Guttenberg this is the audio fili act dailies daily show which does come up yeah hey wait as in seven days a week you know the daily show on Comedy Central is actually four days a week which makes me at least 50% better I think I mean to me a hundred percent better oh well thanks anyway thanks guys for watching see you again real soon all right bye