This is a review and detailed measurements of the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II Roon Core, streamer, phono stage and analog preamplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $4999.
I really like the industrial design of the Mytek. It elevates the standard form factor of desktop DACs with that tasteful texturing on front and top. The box is quite heavy for its size. It houses an Intel i5 CPU based single board computer running Roon Core image. I think I read it uses linear power supply which would explain its weight. There are no fans which is very nice when so much functionality is stuffed in this little box. Back panel shows surprisingly complete functionality which even includes a phono preamplifier:
The labels are a bit hard to read but not a big deal. Connectors as you see are very good quality.
Back to the front, the touchscreen is reasonably responsible as to not be annoying but don't mistake it for your smartphone. The navigation is a bit hard given the narrow display but doable.
I was very disappointed to see that the controlling app is only available for iphone/ipad and not Android. I also didn't see a remote included which adds to the annoyance to someone in Android ecosystem.
Let's measure it and see how it peforms.
Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II Measurements
I connected the Bridge II using USB and adjusted the volume control to get nominal 4 volts output from XLR outputs:
Wow, that is one messy FFT spectrum. So much power supply and other spurious tones. Nothing other than the main 1 kHz spike should be there ideally and we are far from it. Combined energy of all those spikes shrinks the SINAD down to just "fair" category:
I disconnected the USB cable and tested just with Ethernet, hoping to see the noise and distortion go away but it did not (assuming it had leaked from my host PC):
Strangely, the gain is different from network interface to USB. They are both bit exact digital streams so why is the level varying?
Setting the volume control to max, we see that performance is what we measured up to max level:
In other words, we barely clear the bar for 16 bit content as far as distortion and noise.
Dynamic range is not great for class:
IMD test shows the impact of noise being too high:
There is a hint of ESS IMD hump in there which would have been more visible if noise were lower.
Jitter test shows same spurious tones and then some:
Multitone test performance is better if we ignore the constant spikes:
For compatibility with sterephile measurements, I ran their 50 Hz test:
Results are almost identical to what they measured which in our book, is poor. See for comparison our top of the line (near $1000) DAC:
That is whopping 40 dB of difference!!!
Linearity was poor due to interfering power supply noise at 180 Hz (test frequency is 200 Hz):
Back to stereophile review, their measurements noted that the filter setting would NOT change no matter what you did in the menu. The same thing was true in my sample:
That review was in September of last year. I checked my sample and firmware was up to date yet this bug remains.
Predictably, the poor filter impacts the high frequency wideband measurements of the DAC:
But notice how the performance is still not great (green) when I run at 192 kHz which removes the effect of the DAC.
At this point, I didn't feel motivated to run more tests.
Conclusions
I love the functionality of the Brooklyn Bridge II. It also comes in a compact and attractive packages. Sadly objective performance is not remotely where it needs to be with considerable number of $100 DACs beating its measurements. Seeing how they are not responsive enough to fix the filtering bug which they have known about for some 5 months, I would be super concerned about putting my trust in them to keep this product up to date (a requirement for a streamer). They seem to have gone after a marketing story of "high-end" audio than delivering on the promise.
I can't recommend the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I really like the industrial design of the Mytek. It elevates the standard form factor of desktop DACs with that tasteful texturing on front and top. The box is quite heavy for its size. It houses an Intel i5 CPU based single board computer running Roon Core image. I think I read it uses linear power supply which would explain its weight. There are no fans which is very nice when so much functionality is stuffed in this little box. Back panel shows surprisingly complete functionality which even includes a phono preamplifier:
The labels are a bit hard to read but not a big deal. Connectors as you see are very good quality.
Back to the front, the touchscreen is reasonably responsible as to not be annoying but don't mistake it for your smartphone. The navigation is a bit hard given the narrow display but doable.
I was very disappointed to see that the controlling app is only available for iphone/ipad and not Android. I also didn't see a remote included which adds to the annoyance to someone in Android ecosystem.
Let's measure it and see how it peforms.
Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II Measurements
I connected the Bridge II using USB and adjusted the volume control to get nominal 4 volts output from XLR outputs:
Wow, that is one messy FFT spectrum. So much power supply and other spurious tones. Nothing other than the main 1 kHz spike should be there ideally and we are far from it. Combined energy of all those spikes shrinks the SINAD down to just "fair" category:
I disconnected the USB cable and tested just with Ethernet, hoping to see the noise and distortion go away but it did not (assuming it had leaked from my host PC):
Strangely, the gain is different from network interface to USB. They are both bit exact digital streams so why is the level varying?
Setting the volume control to max, we see that performance is what we measured up to max level:
In other words, we barely clear the bar for 16 bit content as far as distortion and noise.
Dynamic range is not great for class:
IMD test shows the impact of noise being too high:
There is a hint of ESS IMD hump in there which would have been more visible if noise were lower.
Jitter test shows same spurious tones and then some:
Multitone test performance is better if we ignore the constant spikes:
For compatibility with sterephile measurements, I ran their 50 Hz test:
Results are almost identical to what they measured which in our book, is poor. See for comparison our top of the line (near $1000) DAC:
That is whopping 40 dB of difference!!!
Linearity was poor due to interfering power supply noise at 180 Hz (test frequency is 200 Hz):
Back to stereophile review, their measurements noted that the filter setting would NOT change no matter what you did in the menu. The same thing was true in my sample:
That review was in September of last year. I checked my sample and firmware was up to date yet this bug remains.
Predictably, the poor filter impacts the high frequency wideband measurements of the DAC:
But notice how the performance is still not great (green) when I run at 192 kHz which removes the effect of the DAC.
At this point, I didn't feel motivated to run more tests.
Conclusions
I love the functionality of the Brooklyn Bridge II. It also comes in a compact and attractive packages. Sadly objective performance is not remotely where it needs to be with considerable number of $100 DACs beating its measurements. Seeing how they are not responsive enough to fix the filtering bug which they have known about for some 5 months, I would be super concerned about putting my trust in them to keep this product up to date (a requirement for a streamer). They seem to have gone after a marketing story of "high-end" audio than delivering on the promise.
I can't recommend the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
