Mytek Brooklyn - Stereophile November 2016

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Mytek HiFi Brooklyn D/A PROCESSORÐPREAMPLIFIERÐHEADPHONE AMPLIFIER

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hen I moved to New York City about a year ago, I was prepared to dislike Brooklyn.

Judging it by its reputation as the apotheosis of cool, I envisioned the borough full of good-looking people engaged in pointless acts of mindless, stylish conformity, from man-buns to single-origin pourover coffee. (Anyone up for adult kickball?) As I’ve written before, about Portland, Maine1 —a hipster place much indebted to Brooklyn—I greatly prefer deeply committed idiosyncrasy to mindless conformity.

But I misjudged Brooklyn. It turns out to be big, interesting, diverse, and—yes—idiosyncratic. Sure, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn has its preening hipsters, but walk 20 minutes and you find yourself surrounded by signs in Hebrew and men in shtreimel. Walk in a different direction and the neighborhood is Mexican-Jewish. There’s an Arab enclave in the Bay Ridge neighborhood, and Brooklyn is

home to the largest Caribbean population outside the Caribbean. Brooklyn’s melting-pot character influences both the food—there is such a thing as kosher sushi—and, as I learned in writing this review, the music.

One rainy day earlier this summer, I emerged from a Metro station into a Brooklyn neighborhood I hadn’t been in before, one that mixes Thai, Polish, and Chinese influences. It’s the ’hood of Mytek HiFi, manufacturer since 1992 of digital pro- and, more recently, consumer-audio products.

I was here to chat with Michal Jurewicz, Mytek’s founder and chief engineer, and to pick up a review sample of their newest DAC, the Brooklyn.

A Pro in Consumer’s Clothing After earning a degree in electrical engineering at Warsaw 1 See www.stereophile.com/content/dispatches-other-portland.

SPECIFICATIONS Description Digital-toanalog converter with analog preamplifier, headphone amplifier, and MM/MC phono stage. Digital inputs: AES/EBU (XLR), 2 S/PDIF (RCA), S/PDIF (TosLink), S/ PDIF-DSD (2-channel pair), USB2 Type B (high-resolution audio). Analog/phono

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inputs: 1 pair single-ended (RCA). Analog outputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR), 1 pair single-ended (RCA). Headphone outputs: 1⁄4” stereo (2), convertible to 1 pair balanced. Formats/sample rates supported: PCM to 32bit/44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.2, 192, 384kHz; DSD; DSD (via

USB only) to 2.8224, 5.6448, 11.2896MHz. Dynamic range: 130dB. Analog output impedance (RCA and XLR): 50 ohms.

Dimensions 8.5” (216mm) W by 1.73” (44mm) H by 8.5” (216mm) D. Weight: 4 lbs (1.8kg).

Finishes Silver, Black.

Serial number of unit reviewed 03105-1605-101.

Price $1995. Approximate number of dealers: 25.

Warranty: 2 years.

Manufacturer Mytek HiFi, 148 India Street, First Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11222.

Tel: (347) 384-2687.

Web: www.mytekdigital.com.

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Technical University in his native Poland, Michal Jurewicz moved to New York and took a job at the Hit Factory, one of New York’s leading recording studios. Soon he moved to Skyline Studios, home at various times to David Bowie, Billy Joel, Patti Smith, and the Wu-Tang Clan. As Skyline’s in-house hardware guy, Jurewicz designed, built, and managed hardware used to make and monitor records by the B-52’s, Bowie, Maria Carey, Lou Reed, and James Taylor, among others.

Although marketed primarily as a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), the Brooklyn is also a preamplifier with volume control (digital or analog, you choose), a headphone amplifier (two jacks, one for you and one for a date2), and— get this—a phono preamplifier. In contrast to its namesake borough, this Brooklyn is small: in pro-audio terms, it’s a half rack wide. It has all the usual digital inputs: asynchronous USB, TosLink, AES/EBU, S/PDIF. It plays every digital format most audiophiles could wish for, up to and including quad-speed DSD, 32-bit/384kHz PCM, and MQA. DSD and PCM are handled independently and natively, but Jurewicz says a future firmware upgrade will allow upsampling of PCM to DSD. Via its USB connection, the Brooklyn is a 32-bit converter, a point Jurewicz emphasized during our meeting. Does it matter? The dynamic range of human hearing is widely

regarded as 120dB, or about 20 bits, and 21 bits appears to be close to the real-world resolution limit for conventional DAC designs, taking into account the physics-dictated noise floor—as John Atkinson’s measurements of digital gear have consistently shown. What possible difference, then, can an increase from 24 bits (144dB) to 32 bits (196dB) make?

Several years ago, Jurewicz and colleagues conducted careful listening tests; he documented the results in an article he wrote for Resolution, a UK pro-audio magazine: “32 bit sounds better than 24 bit,” read a subhead in that article.3 In addition to two headphone jacks, the Brooklyn’s front panel features an informative display (though it’s too small to be easily read at a distance) and a big volume knob. The same knob—push to select—and four small front-panel buttons grant access to the Brooklyn’s many programmable features via a well-designed, intuitive user interface. In addition to aforementioned inputs and outputs, those features include Balance, Phase (normal or inverted), Mono, MQA (off/on), Volume (digital or analog), Digital Filter (fast rolloff, slow rolloff, minimum phase), and others. You can even 2 Your date, however, will be listening in inverted phase—a small compromise that lets those two jacks, combined, drive balanced headphones via special adapters. I hope it doesn’t ruin your relationship.

3 Michal Jurewicz, “Beyond 24-bit.” Resolution, March 2014: http://mytekdigital. com/download_library/papers/Beyond_24_bit_Michal_Jurewicz_Resolution_2014.pdf.

MEASUREMENTS

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measured the Mytek Brooklyn with my newly recalibrated Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4).

As well as the Audio Precision’s analog and digital outputs, I used WAV and AIFF test-tone files sourced via USB from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0. I updated the firmware to v.2.2.1 before the testing, using the Brooklyn Control app running on my laptop. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the Brooklyn as “Brooklyn DAC” from “Mytek Digital,” its serial number as “031051605-101,” and confirmed that the USB interface supported audio recording as well as playback. The Brooklyn’s

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USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode, and Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that it accepted 32-bit integer data via USB sampled at all rates from 44.1 to 384kHz. Looking first at the behavior of the Brooklyn with digital input signals, I bypassed the volume control with the front-panel menu and controls so I could examine the intrinsic behavior of the digital circuitry. The maximum output levels at 1kHz were 9.84V from the balanced outputs and 4.9V from the single-ended outputs. The volume control remains active for the headphone output, and the maximum output level was 9.77V. However, a slight degree of waveform clipping was visible on

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Fig.1 Mytek Brooklyn, SR filter, impulse response (one sample at 0dBFS, 44.1kHz sampling, 4ms time window).

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Fig.2 Mytek Brooklyn, MPh filter, impulse response (one sample at 0dBFS, 44.1kHz sampling, 4ms time window)

the oscilloscope at this level; backing off the volume by 1dB eliminated this.

In practice, of course, the headphone output will never be operated near this level. The output impedance was 149 ohms from the balanced XLR jacks, 74.5 ohms from the unbalanced RCA jacks, and an appropriately low 1 ohm from the headphone jacks. The balanced and single-ended outputs preserved absolute polarity, but one of the headphone outputs inverted polarity when the Brooklyn was set to Phase Pos. The impulse response with 44.1kHz PCM data varied according to the reconstruction filter in use. (To select these filters, MQA playback must be disabled; for MQA, the filter is set to a fixed, minimum-phase, slow-rolloff type.) With the Slow Rolloff (SR) filter, the impulse response was time-symmetrical but extremely short (fig.1).

The Fast Rolloff (FR) impulse response (not shown) was typical of a DAC using a conventional finite impulseresponse (FIR) reconstruction filter, with the symmetrical ringing to either side of the pulse mapping the filter’s coefficient values. With the Minimum Phase (MPh) filter, all ringing occurred after the single full-scale sample, as expected (fig.2).

The SR filter’s slow rolloff above the

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make the faceplate logo light up with varying brightness in any of 14 colors. Most of these features (perhaps all) can be controlled with a standard Apple remote, which is included.

If you use a computer as a source, you can set everything via Mytek’s control-panel app, which runs on Windows or Mac OS; you’ll need the app to update firmware, but otherwise it’s optional.

The Brooklyn’s 30W power supply is of the switching variety, which, Jurewicz told me in an e-mail, “has many practical advantages.” For one thing, it’s compact: “The switching power supply we have now is [of higher capacity] than a linear one we could fit in this box.” On the other hand, switching power supplies can generate high-frequency electromagnetic radiation, which “could be a problem if it isn’t addressed by grounding/shielding.” But “in this design we were not able to measure any noise from it leaking to [the circuit] board.”4 A linear power supply would eliminate any possibility of high-frequency interference, Jurewicz told me; a “substantially larger” supply would also help—so he added a connector for a 12V DC supply. (The best 12V

power supply, he told me, is a car battery. He’s tried it, he says, and heard an improvement.)

Nor has Mytek skimped on the Brooklyn’s pro-audio features, including everything a DAC needs in a pro environment. It has pro-level line output (4dBu, reducible with internal jumpers, in contrast to the consumer standard of –10dBu) and a word-clock input and output. Its two S/ PDIF inputs can be set to receive two-channel DSD data from, eg, a Tascam DA-3000 Master Recorder. It’s also voiced for the pro market: “Sonically, [the] Brooklyn DAC is designed for the most accurate representation of the recording, so the mastering engineer can hear what’s recorded with confidence and make appropriate mastering decisions,” Jurewicz wrote to me in an e-mail.

Probably the Brooklyn’s most unusual feature—I’m again tempted to write committed idiosyncrasy—is its built-in, all-analog, moving-coil/moving-magnet phono stage. It’s 4 With my lo-tech RFI detector—a radio—I detected radio-frequency radiation near the power supply, but only when the radio was practically touching the Brooklyn’s metal case. That’s a good showing.

measurements, continued

baseband is shown by the red and magenta traces in fig.3, with the aliased image at 25kHz of a full-scale tone at 19.1Hz (cyan, blue traces) suppressed by just 10dB.1 Other images can be seen in the audioband and above, though the harmonics of the tone lie at –76dB (0.03%) and below. The FR and MPh filters both offer a very steep rolloff above the audioband (not shown), though the distortion harmonics of the 19.1kHz tone (cyan, blue) are slightly higher than in fig.3. With the Brooklyn

set to MQA decoding (fig.4), the rolloff is shallower than with SR, with a null at 44.1kHz.2 Many more aliasing products of the 19.1kHz tone are now evident (cyan, blue traces).

Fig.5 is a more conventional means of displaying frequency response, this time with data sampled at 44.1, 96, 192, and 384kHz and with the MPh filter engaged. (The FR filter behaved identically.) Note the superb channel matching, and that, at the three lower sample rates, the smooth rolloff above

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the audioband is broken by a sharp drop in output just below each Nyquist frequency (ie, half the sample rate).

With the SR filter, the Brooklyn’s output is down by almost 3dB at the top of the audioband.

The Mytek DAC offered a very low 1 My thanks to Jürgen Reis of MBL for suggesting this test to me.

2 This filter is identical to that used in Meridian’s MQA-capable Explorer2. See fig.4 at www. stereophile.com/content/meridian-explorer2-daheadphone-amplifier-measurements.

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Fig.3 Mytek Brooklyn, SR filter, wideband spectrum of white noise at –4dBFS (left channel red, right magenta) and 19.1kHz tone at 0dBFS (left blue, right cyan), with data sampled at 44.1kHz (20dB/ vertical div.).

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Fig.4 Mytek Brooklyn, MQA filter, wideband spectrum of white noise at –4dBFS (left channel red, right magenta) and 19.1kHz tone at 0dBFS (left blue, right cyan), with data sampled at 44.1kHz (20dB/vertical div.).

Fig.5 Mytek Brooklyn, MPh filter, frequency response at –12dBFS into 100k ohms with data sampled at: 44.1kHz (left channel green, right gray), 96kHz (left cyan, right magenta), 192kHz (left blue, right red), 384kHz (left green, right gray) (0.5dB/vertical div.).

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surprising to find a phono stage on a pro-leaning digital component, but from a consumer’s standpoint—some consumers, anyway—it makes a lot of sense: It allows this small-footprint DAC to serve as the core component of a compact, affordable audio system.

ADHD Listening During my afternoon at Mytek headquarters, Jurewicz showed me a neat trick you can do with the Brooklyn: Sitting in your listening chair with the DAC in your lap, you can toggle crucial settings—MQA, analog or digital volume control, choice of digital filter—and immediately hear the effects of the change. Audiophile gurus may recommend long-term listening to evaluate a component’s sound, but toggling back and forth at least gives you more confidence that the difference you’re hearing is real.

So I ordered up some long cables and tried this at home.

The Brooklyn sat on the little table by my listening seat, and power, USB, and XLR cables were draped all over the room.5 From these experiments I learned that MQA files sound much better with MQA turned on, and that the analog volume control sounds better than the digital one. I didn’t try toggling the digital filters.

Long-term Listening For most of my listening tests I ran the Brooklyn’s outputs straight into a pair of Lamm Industries ML1.2 monoblocks via Mogami Gold microphone cables, using the Brooklyn to

control the volume. I set up the server to loop a long playlist and left it running for about three days. Once the Brooklyn was well cooked, I did my usual format check and confirmed that it can play PCM up to and including 24/352.8 (and 32/96, the only 32-bit file I had on hand), and DSD up to 128. (I don’t own any quad-DSD files.) All played flawlessly, with one small annoyance: a loud thump through the speakers when I switched from DSD to high-samplingfrequency PCM. After that, the file played fine.6 Band in Brooklyn Forget Jay-Z: Brooklyn’s musical heritage extends back at least to George Gershwin, who was born here in 1898, and Aaron Copland, born two years later. Max Roach and Cecil Taylor grew up in Brooklyn. Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and Wes Montgomery lived together for a while at Slide Hampton’s house at 245 Carlton Avenue—hence “245,” on Dolphy’s Outward Bound album. It’s common knowledge that Brooklyn has produced its share of well-known indie bands and musicians: Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, The National, Sufjan Stevens, TV on the Radio, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to name a handful. But in reviewing the Brooklyn, I decided to feature Brooklyn artists who aren’t quite so famous. (I also 5 With the Brooklyn on the rack, you could accomplish the same thing by using the included Apple remote or the aforementioned control-panel software, but from a distance you’d have a harder time reading the Brooklyn’s small display.

6 Another operational glitch: Twice, the Brooklyn froze when I turned it on from Standby mode. Unplugging it and plugging it back in got things working again within seconds.

measurements, continued

level of self noise, with no AC-supply components present. Channel separation for the digital inputs was excellent, at close to 115dB in both directions at 1kHz and still almost 95dB at 20kHz. With data representing a dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS, increasing the bit depth from 16 to 24 dropped the noise floor by 20dB (fig.6), which suggests resolution between 19 and 20 bits. An undithered tone at exactly –90.31dBFS was reproduced with a superbly symmetrical waveform, with the three DC voltage levels well defined (not shown). With undithered 24-bit data at this low level, the Brooklyn output a

products with the slow-rolloff SR and MQA filters. With the FR filter (fig.7), the images of the fundamental tones are suppressed by 90dB compared with the 10dB offered by the SR filter (fig.8), but with both filters the secondorder difference product at 1kHz is virtually nonexistent.

Even in the worst case, the optical S/PDIF input, the Brooklyn featured superb rejection of word-clock jitter with 16-bit J-Test data. With 24-bit data, however, an idle tone can be seen at 9.8kHz (fig.9), though this is at an extremely low level in absolute terms.

Turning to the Brooklyn’s analog

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Fig.6 Mytek Brooklyn, spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS with: 16bit data (left channel cyan, right magenta), 24-bit data (left blue, right red) (20dB/vertical div.).

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well-formed sinewave.

Harmonic distortion was very low, even at full scale, with the third harmonic the highest in level at –104dB (0.0006%), dropping to –130dB when the signal was reduced by 6dB. This was with the high 100k ohm load; with a demanding 600 ohm load, the second harmonic rose almost to the same level as the third; but at –90dB (0.003%), both are still very low in absolute terms. Testing for intermodulation distortion with an equal mix of 19 and 20kHz tones, I reduced the peak signal level to –3dB, as the usual fullscale signal gave rise to a lot of aliasing

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Fig.7 Mytek Brooklyn, FR filter, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–30kHz, 19+20kHz at –3dBFS into 100k ohms, 44.1kHz data (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

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Fig.8 Mytek Brooklyn, SR filter, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–30kHz, 19+20kHz at –3dBFS into 100k ohms, 44.1kHz data (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

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listened to many tracks I’m more familiar with.)

Not one of the five members of jazz collective Brooklyn Aliens is from Brooklyn; two are from Spain, and the others are from Germany, Sweden, and Chile. They met in Brooklyn, though, and all were granted US visas in the category of Aliens with Extraordinary Ability—hence the name.

Their eponymous first album, released earlier this year on a Swiss label (Unit UTR 4696; I heard it on Tidal at CD resolution), is jazz with a touch of third-stream character.

Track 3, “Miniatura,” could almost be an audio test track: 96 seconds of double-bass notes repeating under simple tones from flute, clarinet, and what sounds like a marimba playing octaves with a piano. The Brooklyn DAC differentiated the characters of the wind instruments—a fairly easy test—and also the characters of the piano and marimba playing together. (That’s harder.) Bassist Lars Ekman’s light plucks produced natural, thready transients followed by sustained notes with woody resonance and a little fuzz. The simplicity of the music focuses the listener’s attention on the contrasting colors and textures of the various instruments—surely what the Aliens intended—and the Mytek DAC delivered.

The Washington Post described violinist Colin Jacobsen as “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene.” He and his brother Eric, a cellist, grew up in Brooklyn playing music with friends and eventually formed Brooklyn Rider, a string quartet. Among the quartet’s albums is A Walking Fire (CD, Mercury Classics B0018309-

02; I listened to a 24/96 download from HDtracks), which sandwiches Bartók’s String Quartet 2 between contemporary works, one of which—Three Miniatures for String Quartet— Colin composed. Fire is a good example of how a revealing DAC can spotlight a recording’s flaws: This thoroughly enjoyable album is recorded so close it might make you feel like opening a window. True, its in-your-head character can be intoxicating, especially but not only with headphones, but it isn’t natural.

Brooklyn is also home to excellent and interesting recording engineers, including Barry Diament, the purist mastermind behind Brooklyn’s Soundkeeper Recordings label.

Diament recorded and mastered Equinox, the album by Markus Schwartz and Lakou Brooklyn (CD, Soundkeeper SR1002) that was Stereophile’s “Recording of the Month” for February 2011.7 (Schwartz, too, lives in Brooklyn.) Equinox is a superb and enjoyable recording, but I focused on a different Diament project: Confluence, by Brooklyn-based singer Jason Vitelli (24/192 AIFF download, Soundkeeper SR1003A).

Confluence is seriously, committedly idiosyncratic, for the production and for the variety of music it encompasses. One track features electric guitar and bass, acoustic guitar, drums, main and background vocals, French horn, celeste, and a real grand piano—all captured by just two mikes. (Need a little more piano in the mix? Just move it closer.) Musically, each 7 See http://tinyurl.com/l3d9psd.

measurements, continued

input set to Line, this offered unity gain at the RCA output jacks and 6dB of gain from the XLR and headphone jacks. The input impedance was a low 3.3k ohms from 20Hz to 20kHz, the frequency response was flat from 10Hz to 100kHz, and the signal was in inverted polarity from all three sets of outputs.

When I set the analog input to MM Phono, the input impedance was close to 47k ohms across the audioband, the output was still inverted, and the gain at 1kHz was now 55.6dB—on the high

side for moving-magnet cartridges.

Even so, the overload margin was very good, at 16.5dB at low and middle frequencies, dropping slightly to 13.6dB at 20kHz; the wideband, unweighted signal/noise ratio was also excellent, at 72.5dB ref. 1kHz at 5mV. I then set the input to MC Phono: the gain at 1kHz increased to 72.6dB, the input impedance dropped to 990 ohms, and the overload margin was close to 20dB across the audioband.

The unweighted S/N ratio (ref. 1kHz at 500µV) was now 58.6dB, which is still good, especially when you consider the very high gain and the presence of

much digital circuitry in close proximity. RIAA error consisted primarily of a small plateau in the treble in both channels (fig.10), though the right channel (red trace) has 0.25dB more midrange energy than the left. Harmonic distortion via the MM and MC settings of the Analog input was also low (fig.11), as was intermodulation distortion (not shown).

The Mytek Brooklyn’s measured performance is superb, and not least when you consider how much functionality and versatility are packed into its small case. Color me impressed.

—John Atkinson

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Fig.9 Mytek Brooklyn, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal, 11.025kHz at –6dBFS, sampled at 44.1kHz with LSB toggled at 229Hz: 24-bit TosLink data (left channel blue, right red).

Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz.

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Fig.10 Mytek Brooklyn, MM analog input, response with RIAA correction (left channel blue, right red) (0.5dB/vertical div.).

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Fig.11 Mytek Brooklyn, MM analog input, spectrum of 1kHz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 6V into 100k ohms (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

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track on Confluence is fairly conventional, but the conventions are all over the place: There’s more than a little Morrissey here, perhaps a bit of Broadway musical (although the sensibility is decidedly dark)—and then the guy starts playing 1970s album rock. If you like to put all your pigeons in one hole, this music might not be for you, but open-minded listeners are likely to love it. (Or not: Even Diament, in an email, called it “an acquired taste.”) Anyway, whether or not some or all of the music resonates with you, this is the kind of recording that, when played through a good system—including a high-quality DAC like the Brooklyn—can provide musical and aural pleasure.

Nico Muhly, who composes operas and other genres of contemporary classical music, is hardly obscure; his Two Boys made its North American debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Yet his Mothertongue (CD, Brassland HWY-018) doesn’t sound as if it was written by an opera composer: it’s a weird juxtaposition of Elizabethan music, Jean-Michelle Jarre’s Zoolook, and who knows what else. It’s also sonically spectacular. At one point while listening through the Mytek, I heard a clicking sound that seemed to emerge from my laptop, which was sitting in my lap while I sat in front of my two loudspeakers; the clicking was, of course, on the recording, and emerging from my speakers. But spatial tricks are not the point: this is a weird and wonderful album, committedly idiosyncratic and highly recommended.

Muhly works with a lot of pop musicians. He wrote string arrangements for Ane Brun’s Changing of the Seasons (CD, Cheap Lullaby CLR-028), a record I’ve listened to many, many times and know extremely well. Through the Brooklyn, Brun’s voice in “True Colors” (this track appears only on the US edition), with her Cyndi Lauper quaver, was creamy and close, with a good measure of breathiness and chest. In the title track, the guitar was big and woody, with a soft touch on the strings. In the title track, Brun’s lines about the challenges of living are surely correct—“It’s hard to be safe / It’s difficult to be happy”—but listening to this disc through a good system can at least help with the latter.

MQA and Vinyl Unable to find MQA recordings by Brooklyn-based artists— I’m pretty sure there aren’t any yet—I turned to something familiar: Bjørn Solum and Kristin Fossheim’s recording of Beethoven’s Sonata 2 in g for Cello and Piano, Op.5 No.2 (SACD/CD, 2L 2L-079-SACD; I listened to the MQA download). In the Rondo: Allegro, Solum’s cello tone reminded me of a good prime rib; I could almost feel the juice running down my chin. Fossheim’s fortepiano stole the show, however: there was so much richness from the transients that in my mind I saw sparks fly—bright, multicolored sparks. With MQA switched off, the sound was still far beyond reproach, but much of that sparkle was lost.

The Brooklyn’s onboard phono stage wasn’t designed to be a giant-killer, Jurewicz told me, but to play a necessary part in a complete package. The Brooklyn “is a product for someone who wants something compact,” he said at our meeting. “They have their computer, some music on their hard drive, maybe they log in to Tidal for some streaming— and they have a turntable and maybe on the weekend when their girlfriend comes they play a record. So the idea was not to design the best-ever phono preamp, but to design a very good one.” He brought in several well-regarded phono stages ca $2000, listened, and tried to make something better.

I’ll leave it to my more vinyl-focused colleagues to take 64

A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Analog Sources Thorens TD 124 turntable reconditioned

by Schopper AG; Oswalds Mill Audio slate plinth; Ortofon RMG-212 (rebuilt), Thomas Schick 12” tonearms; Ortofon 90th Anniversary SPU cartridge; Sony XDR-F1HD AM/FM tuner.

Digital Sources MacBook Pro computer (early 2015); Intel NUC with SSD drive running RoonServer; Meridian Explorer2 USB DAC; Benchmark DAC 1; Ayre Acoustics CX7eMP CD player; PS Audio DirectStream DAC. Preamplification Auditorium 23 Standard step-up transformer, EAR 834P phono stage, Parasound Halo JC 2 preamplifier.

Power Amplifiers Lamm Industries ML1.2 monoblocks.

Integrated Amplifier Leben CS-600.

Loudspeakers DeVore Fidelity The Nine.

Headphones Sennheiser HD-650.

Cables USB: AudioQuest Carbon & Cinnamon & Coffee, Comprehensive Connectivity. Interconnect: Chord Company (UK) Chorus & Chameleon Silver Plus, Q Cables Tao, Mogami Gold (XLR). Speaker: Auditorium 23. AC: Belden 14-gauge shielded; HOSA 14-gauge, 15’ IEC; stock IEC. Accessories PS Audio Power Plant P10 power conditioner; Chilton’s Durham media console in cherrywood. —Jim Austin

the full measure of the Brooklyn’s phono stage against the state of the art, but I thought it sounded very good. It wasn’t overbright, it deemphasized groove noise, and it never lost its composure. It gave up a little color, in MC mode, to my usual tube phono preamp (EAR 834P) plus step-up transformer (Auditorium 23 Standard), but not much. And when I switched to MM and reinserted the transformer, I’m not sure it gave up anything. And the Brooklyn was much quieter.

Summing Up The Mytek Brooklyn was not an easy component to get a handle on; I had to listen hard to take its measure. When I did, I heard bass instruments reproduced fully and cleanly, with much texture and character. Aural images were precisely positioned in space. The soundstage was deep and layered, with musicians clearly laid out from front to back.

The sound was very open—except, of course, with claustrophobic-sounding recordings. MQA took it up several notches, providing richer textures and better transients.

Apart from all that, there are two things you need to know about the Brooklyn. First, it’s basically a pro DAC. It has all the features the audio professional needs, and it will play exactly what’s on a recording, including what you might not want to hear. (I hope that doesn’t sound forbidding: One Friday night, after I’d finished all of the listening and most of the writing for this review, I let Roon Radio take over my server, choosing tracks at random. I had a drink and enjoyed the music uncritically—and I had a blast.)

Second, it has a consumer-friendly feature set: In a single, small device you get not only digital conversion of every relevant audio format, but also phono equalization and amplification, component switching, and remote volume control. Add a compact amp, speakers, and a turntable, and you’ll have a system worthy of any upscale Williamsburg studio apartment. n November 2016 n stereophile.com