Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II Streamer Review

[Dialectic]

Shots fired...

Mytek Brooklyn Bridge ll with Roon…is it ever shipping?

I read this “review”. Unfortunately the SCIENCE at audioscienreview.com seems to be from the mid 20th century. We are now 70 years later and there is an ample science on brain and psychoacoutics that these guys seem not to even know about. ASR founder Amir WRONGLY assumes that low THD is the...

community.roonlabs.com

He will suffer the same sad fate as the TotalDAC guy.

 

[enricoclaudio]

Or put more generally, the art is the music, not the reproduction. Reproduce the art faithfully and you've done the work justice. Imagine going to a fine dining restaurant and obsessing over the plateware, I am puzzled and amused by marketing and consumer behaviors, and how easily consumers are wooed by absolute nonsense.

Brilliant response by @amirm on the forum which only prompted more childish nonsense and reaching by the Mytek founder. I will never buy any product from such a manufacturer, which I had considered recently. Glad I went with the Benchmark

Benchmark is in another league!! For me, Benchmark was and still is end game!

Some people mistakenly think that just because successful and reputable companies like McIntosh and Benchmark are from NY, Mytek would the same. Well, guess what… it is not.

 

[mps]

Shots fired...

Mytek Brooklyn Bridge ll with Roon…is it ever shipping?

I read this “review”. Unfortunately the SCIENCE at audioscienreview.com seems to be from the mid 20th century. We are now 70 years later and there is an ample science on brain and psychoacoutics that these guys seem not to even know about. ASR founder Amir WRONGLY assumes that low THD is the...

community.roonlabs.com

I was impressed that the replies in the thread (mostly) were not taken in by Mytek’s snake oil. If Michal was expecting for the thread to leap to his defense and bash ASR, he must be sorely disappointed.

 

[GaryY]

I was impressed that the replies in the thread (mostly) were not taken in by Mytek’s snake oil. If Michal was expecting for the thread to leap to his defense and bash ASR, he must be sorely disappointed.

I can't understand at all why he started debate in the thread with the title of "Mytek Brooklyn Bridge ll with Roon…is it ever shipping?". Not wise..

 

[BeeKay]

Parroting the usual, time and time again disproven high-end BS is one. But given his reputation and the dire customer stories which read like court worthy cases this kind of response is more than bold. Attack is the better defence? Well, good luck with that.

 

[enricoclaudio]

These two got me like

 

[lordhumungous]

they will be replacing the song London Bridge with Brookyln Bridge

 

[SKBubba]

Roon appears to be trying to be fair on their forum with regard to "allowing" the discussion, albeit with some moderation. On a thread complaining about Mytek delivery and fulfillment complaints, no less.

It seems, though, that roon has a business interest in the BB2 product, because the only streaming capability it currently offers is roon. Which requires a roon subscription. Which requires another subscription to tidal or qobuz for cloud streaming unless you just want to stream local files.

Mytek says "Within the next months and years, Mytek plans to add alternative players such as Spotify and Tidal Connect and features like Apple Airplay etc."

How many devices already have all that?

This is all pretty weird. A $500 pc/nuc can do all that with a $200 or less dac. I don't get it.

 

[Angsty]

Mytek is for mystics, evidently.

The thread on the Roon site has completely turned me off from ever considering a Mytek product, even if it performed properly.

 

[MacClintock]

He will suffer the same sad fate as the TotalDAC guy.

Wow, here is somebody from the "mob", this guy is much more crazy than I thought. So somehow he is claiming that all the noise and distortion is on purpose (if I understood his confused word salad correctly). I don't know if this is a better excuse than admitting that just the enigneering is bad or (as he also tries to claim) that the measurement was done uncorrectly. In any case, this post did not favour him or his company and will forever be held against him, What a poor schmock.

 

[GaryY]

Before talking about how linear power supply is good for sound, they need to give much more efforts not to change heat dissipation solution for running product.
With which heat sink did they test their product ?

Mytek Brooklyn Bridge ll with Roon…is it ever shipping?

Thx Ralphyman, Looks like the goal of cooling is NUC’s CPU (Intel i5) using copper pipe connected directly with the fun. It means also fan will not disappear what I thought will happen and it’s hum will still exist. Question how strong? On the picture I combined different versions of PCBs to...

community.roonlabs.com

 

[JSmith]

So somehow he is claiming that all the noise and distortion is on purpose...

Yes, basically an old audiophool adage of something being "voiced", by golden ears no less.


JSmith

 

[MacClintock]

Michal_Jurewicz1Michal Jurewicz Mytek Founder, President and Chief Designer

why analog tape measures worse, but sounds better than a CD

Here is my hypothesis, why analog tape sounds better than a 16 bit/44.1 digital (higher res digital, especially 192k+ and DSD can be superior) with factors in order of importance:

1. Analog 1/2" tape has more of finer resolution. Despite noise, it does seem to resolve the detail well below the 96dB threshold of 16 bit audio. Low level details of sound (ambience, air are better on tape than on even the best dithered 16 bit audio)

So this is why he thinks tape sounds better than CD. He does not seem to have a proper education. Probably any discussion with him is in vain. Common numbers for dynamic range are 65dB for LP and about 60 dB for reel-to-reel tape (see e.g. here https://www.prosoundtraining.com/2020/08/27/music-and-speech-compression/#:~:text=An LP record can have,, at 50-56 dB.). But maybe reel tape has 120 dB and all the sources I consulted are all wrong and I am just crazy?

The origin of his confusion is most likely that if you compare modern, digital masters that were produced in loundess war fashion and heavily compressed (which obviously does not apply to all modern digital masters) to greatly produced music before the digital era that was stored on reel-to-reel tape, that the reel-to-reel tape sounds better. But that has clearly nothing to do with the storage medium and just the way of how to create the master.

 

[ExUnoPlura]

I gave a couple of minor critiques on the Roon site (note that the thread has been moved to Off Topic: Audio Science Review if you get confused). I mostly enjoy trying different styles of argument and perspective on places like Roon and Audiogon, to see what has some staying power. I also like to try to learn from various voices and found these ideas worth a bit more of an intellectual dive:

(1) There might be signal hiding in the noise. This is a curious concept. If the noise is correlated enough to be a signal, it shouldn't be stochastic grass.
(2) Pre-echo is evolutionarily bizarre to our ears because it's a time reversal or something. Sure, we know it has effects in certain audio compression codecs, but I'm not sure where he is going with this line of discussion other than to build a fusillade of smart talking points that mean "trust me, not those other guys."

He claims we slowpokes don't know all the deep AES science. I admit to being careful (if not slow) but I don't see much evidence for these kinds of discussion points.

 

[JustJones]

He must of found a cache of old laptops from 20 years ago to get enough of those blowers for the one on the right.

 

[Axo1989]

View attachment 353838

He must of found a cache of old laptops from 20 years ago to get enough of those blowers for the one on the right.

Anything in a compact case using an Intel chip to do significant work (to perform as a Roon core in this instance) is going to take some cooling. Those fan types are used a many modern offerings. Some are very well-engineered in terms of noise level and frequency profile. The review here didn't measure that category of noise, but review sites like notebookcheck.com do so. I have no information on Mytek's implementation and make no assumptions, but for an example of a well-engineered fan cooling implementation, here's the average noise under load for a MacBook Pro M3 Max 14"

Apple obviously pay attention to audibility (fan blade spacing is asymmetrical for example) and avoid both high levels in the most sensitive frequency bands as well as resonance peaks etc and have done so for some time. The point is that air cooling and that general fan type is capable of very good noise performance. As for Mytek's component choice, that would be worth testing (same for any of your audio devices that use fan cooling).

 

[pseudoid]

Yes, basically an old audiophool adage of something being "voiced", by golden ears no less.

There is a newer adage from another industry that is more appropriate: "It is not a bug, it is a feature!"

 

[Geert]

So this Mytec guys starts his defense with the argument that ASR knows nothing about audio science ("Unfortunately the SCIENCE at audioscienreview.com 3 seems to be from the mid 20th century. We are now 70 years later“), and since then drops argument after argument that has zero scientific support, or even contradicts the scientific concensus. One of his latest arguments is that digital audio needs to be high res to sound acceptable. That same high res that not a single scientific study has proven to make a difference (in practical application).

In a larger company than Mytec this would be the point where the CEO steps in and calls for a communication stop to avoid further damage to the company's image.

Edit. Another extraordinary claim presented as a fact:

"Nothing beats the ears- We can hear things that we cannot measure and this is another problem with Amirs approach. He misses all this that cannot be measured today. Rob Watts of Chord claim that he can hear filter difference down to almost -200dB actually surprisingly is true, but you can’t measure this with AP".

Time to come up with some evidence. How else can we work on our lagging knowledge?

 

[Mnyb]

I gave a couple of minor critiques on the Roon site (note that the thread has been moved to Off Topic: Audio Science Review if you get confused). I mostly enjoy trying different styles of argument and perspective on places like Roon and Audiogon, to see what has some staying power. I also like to try to learn from various voices and found these ideas worth a bit more of an intellectual dive:

(1) There might be signal hiding in the noise. This is a curious concept. If the noise is correlated enough to be a signal, it shouldn't be stochastic grass.
(2) Pre-echo is evolutionarily bizarre to our ears because it's a time reversal or something. Sure, we know it has effects in certain audio compression codecs, but I'm not sure where he is going with this line of discussion other than to build a fusillade of smart talking points that mean "trust me, not those other guys."

He claims we slowpokes don't know all the deep AES science. I admit to being careful (if not slow) but I don't see much evidence for these kinds of discussion points.

There is weird obsession with digital filters slow or apodizing without pre ringin .
It seems to get people who should know better due to thier engineering education.

The pre ringing only happens with the test impulse !! , it does not happen with real music ! It’s misleading marketing just like the stair steps images .

The test impulse is not bandwidth limited like any valid signal that gets into the music production. It’s exist for engineers to test different filter behaviours .

 

[KSTR]

The pre ringing only happens with the test impulse !! , it does not happen with real music ! It’s misleading marketing just like the stair steps images .

The test impulse is not bandwidth limited like any valid signal that gets into the music production. It’s exist for engineers to test different filter behaviours .

"Illegal" signals can, and will appear with highly processed or electronic music.
Not that it matters, though.