Mytek’s Liberty DAC (£895, $995, €995) was reviewed by me (here) and put in a stellar performance, more than holding its own in the company of an Ayre AX-7e (£2,750) and Harbeth C7/2 speakers. The Liberty mates the ESS9018 chip of the original Brooklyn (review here) with the output stages […]
On my office desk sits a most well-connected DAC — a book-sized slab of electronics with options for MQA, DSD, analogue or digital volume attenuation, Apple remote control hijack, single-ended or balanced outputs; on the rear panel for connection to an amplifier (like the Mytek Brooklyn Amp) and on the […]
Half the size, half the functionality, half the price. Sort of – bear with me. Does the Mytek Liberty DAC (preview here) deliver half the sound quality of the Brooklyn DAC (review here) and Brooklyn+ DAC (review here) on which its design was based? Neither was on hand for comparison […]
Let’s cut to the chase: listening to both models side by side over a number of weeks, the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ (US$2195, preview here) sounds slightly better than the standard Brooklyn DAC (US$1995, review here): slightly better image focus, slightly better stage depth, a little more punch (especially from its […]
Subtraction. Take the Mytek Brooklyn (and not the Plus). Shrink the box volume by a factor of three to remove the colour LED display and dancing signal level meters but maintain balanced outputs by converting the associated rear panel socketry from XLR to TRS (and offer TRS-XLR adaptors as an option). Keep hold of its […]
There are many reasons to dig Mytek’s Brooklyn DAC (US$1995): a full suite of digital inputs including USB support for 32bit/384kHz and DSD256; Apple remote-controllable volume (analogue and digital); a full colour display with dancing signal level meters; balanced and single-ended outputs; a single-ended input doubles as (a very decent) […]
Clean&direct. That’s how we might best describe the personality of the Mytek Brooklyn DAC (reviewed here). You don’t buy the Brooklyn because of its full MQA support but in spite of it: a powerful headphone amplifier; a decent-sounding MM phono stage; an analogue volume control; a compact chassis. At Munich High-End 2017, Mytek Digital launched […]
Want the best performance from your headphones? Unlikely that the 3.5mm socket found on the average smartphone, PC or Mac will cut it. Third party DAC/headphone amplifiers, like Mytek Digital’s Clef, are where sound quality starts to come on song. However, Mytek’s latest product announcement is also story of two codecs: MQA and AAC. […]
Intra-DAC deltas are often small. Small enough that an afternoon’s A/B testing isn’t sufficient. The qualitative differences between DAC A, DAC B and DAC C take time to surface. These differences, no matter how small, are what audiophiles pay for. At US$2000, the Mytek Brooklyn isn’t quite as sonically excellent […]
One of the main advantages of attending shows like Munich High-End is the additional incidental information that spills forth from designers and their colleagues once you get chatting. Mytek Digital’s Brooklyn was previously detailed here. The TL;DR is a D/A converter that offers an MM/MC phono stage, dual mono topology, (balanced) headphone […]
UPDATE July 2016: The Mytek Brooklyn has been reviewed here. Mytek’s introduction of its Stereo192-DSD DAC in 2011 made a splash at that year’s Rocky Mountain Audio Festival because it was the first DAC to bring DSD decoding under the US$2k threshold. That was the headline. Buried in the small print was news […]
You’ve heard the old saying “Never judge a book by its cover”? That’s exactly what I did on a recent trip to Mytek Digital. Located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn — Greenpoint to be exact — Mytek HQ resides on a typical urban street behind a crumbling brown […]
Phil Wright
John H. Darko
Ken Micallef