This is a Review and detailed Measurements of Mytek Stereo 192 DSD "mastering grade" DAC. It is on loan from a kind member and was released back in 2012 or so. Its market focus was for mastering engineers and hence that adjective. The retail price was $1,700 at the time. Someone should advise what it goes for used market today.
The unit won't win any beauty contests:
It screams old school with that 7-segment display. Machining looks hobbyist although the unit is quite heavy.
The unit strangely supports both USB 1.0 and 2.0 using independent inputs. Plugging in the unit didn't result in it working so I had to install its driver package which gave me the ASIO interface I need for my Audio Precision Analyzer to talk to it over USB. Alas, selection of Mytek ASIO driver would lead to the AP software crashing no matter how many times I tried it, or plug and unplug the USB cable, power cycling, etc. Oddly fortuitously, the ASIO4ALL software layer over the Windows driver worked and that is what I used for my testing. If you all want proof of why I hate installing drivers, here is another example.
For all of the measurements to follow, testing was done over USB and balanced output unless noted otherwise. For comparison, I pitted it mostly against Benchmark DAC3 which retails for over $2000. And of course it is a much more modern design.
Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard measurement:
This is respectable performance although as noted, I had to dial down the output using its volume control at -3 dB. Otherwise its performance would degrade.
Here is unbalanced output performance with level again reduced to nominal 2.0 volt that is common for that:
Overall SINAD numbers are pretty good. Here is the comparison to other units tested:
Let's dig into our 1 kHz response and see what we find as far as distortion and noise:
We see substantially higher second and third harmonic distortions. But then it skips a few and picks back up by 7th harmonic. All of this will either be mostly masked or be below threshold of hearing so audibly is not a concern.
While looking at spectrums, let's see how it does on jitter and noise:
We see that the noise floor is a few db higher than DAC3. But we also have fair bit of spikes around our main tone and a pair of symmetric ones likely indicating jitter. So definitely not as clean as it should be.
Next let's drill into harmonic distortion+noise versus frequency:
Low frequency noise or distortion rises which can be improved by dialing down the volume to -3 dB but it is no match for Benchmark DAC3.
The oddest results came in intermodulation distortion:
This is quite disappointing. We see a rise in intermodulation distortion at around -40 dB level and stays that way more or less until the output stage starts to saturate at -10 dB and distortion then rises again.
Last but not least is everyone's favorite, linearity test:
Here, I show both balanced and unbalanced performance. While I would like to see less variations toward the end, performance nonetheless is as good as it gets at -120 dB.
Conclusions
There are some oddities in the performance of Mytek stereo 192-DSD in intermodulation and at full level. Other than that, the measurements are very good and little to complain about. Because of the need for drivers and potential incompatibility with playback software I can't really recommend the unit. Given how old it is, you could face a situation where a future OS requires a driver and Mytek chooses to not provide it. If you are OK with this, I am not going to complain about you buying it.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
The unit won't win any beauty contests:
It screams old school with that 7-segment display. Machining looks hobbyist although the unit is quite heavy.
The unit strangely supports both USB 1.0 and 2.0 using independent inputs. Plugging in the unit didn't result in it working so I had to install its driver package which gave me the ASIO interface I need for my Audio Precision Analyzer to talk to it over USB. Alas, selection of Mytek ASIO driver would lead to the AP software crashing no matter how many times I tried it, or plug and unplug the USB cable, power cycling, etc. Oddly fortuitously, the ASIO4ALL software layer over the Windows driver worked and that is what I used for my testing. If you all want proof of why I hate installing drivers, here is another example.
For all of the measurements to follow, testing was done over USB and balanced output unless noted otherwise. For comparison, I pitted it mostly against Benchmark DAC3 which retails for over $2000. And of course it is a much more modern design.
Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard measurement:
This is respectable performance although as noted, I had to dial down the output using its volume control at -3 dB. Otherwise its performance would degrade.
Here is unbalanced output performance with level again reduced to nominal 2.0 volt that is common for that:
Overall SINAD numbers are pretty good. Here is the comparison to other units tested:
Let's dig into our 1 kHz response and see what we find as far as distortion and noise:
We see substantially higher second and third harmonic distortions. But then it skips a few and picks back up by 7th harmonic. All of this will either be mostly masked or be below threshold of hearing so audibly is not a concern.
While looking at spectrums, let's see how it does on jitter and noise:
We see that the noise floor is a few db higher than DAC3. But we also have fair bit of spikes around our main tone and a pair of symmetric ones likely indicating jitter. So definitely not as clean as it should be.
Next let's drill into harmonic distortion+noise versus frequency:
Low frequency noise or distortion rises which can be improved by dialing down the volume to -3 dB but it is no match for Benchmark DAC3.
The oddest results came in intermodulation distortion:
This is quite disappointing. We see a rise in intermodulation distortion at around -40 dB level and stays that way more or less until the output stage starts to saturate at -10 dB and distortion then rises again.
Last but not least is everyone's favorite, linearity test:
Here, I show both balanced and unbalanced performance. While I would like to see less variations toward the end, performance nonetheless is as good as it gets at -120 dB.
Conclusions
There are some oddities in the performance of Mytek stereo 192-DSD in intermodulation and at full level. Other than that, the measurements are very good and little to complain about. Because of the need for drivers and potential incompatibility with playback software I can't really recommend the unit. Given how old it is, you could face a situation where a future OS requires a driver and Mytek chooses to not provide it. If you are OK with this, I am not going to complain about you buying it.
-------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).