Digital Processor Reviews

I want to share with you not what I heard from this CD, but what I noticed while listening to McDowell play "Shake 'Em On Down," a trance-inducing hill-country blues anthem by Bukka White. Unlike Chicago blues, which usually features guitar or harmonica solos, "Shake 'Em On Down" is groove-based. It begins with a hard-strumming boogie groove that carries the quickly mesmerized listener forward on a steam train of louder-harder-faster strumming, never slowing or backing off until it gently drops that listener off at its final destination. In "Shake 'Em On Down," the force and movement of energy are the poetic content.

Mytek's Manhattan II straightforwardly showed me every bit of that content. I could feel McDowell's fingers on the strings. I sensed his guitar's radiating surface. At several points, I noticed him lean a little harder into the rhythm. The pace and percussive force of his guitar reminded me of the distinctive West African heritage behind these country blues from the North Mississippi hills.

Listening to binaural MQA through headphones
These days, every audio person has an opinion about Master Quality Authenticated recordings, even if few have actually listened to their favorite music in MQA. I have no interest in and zero knowledge of the business aspects of MQA, and I only partially grasp the technology. But I've listened to a lot of MQA-processed material, and I believe it enhances the verity—and my enjoyment—of digital recordings. I think there's only one pertinent question about MQA's virtue: Does it make the playback of digitally encoded music sound more lifelike, or not? DSD and high-resolution downloads never sound completely right or real to me. MQA does.

Who knows? MQA may disappear in a few years. All I know is that Camille Thurman's new MQA-encoded CD, Inside the Moment (Chesky JD397), is the most lifelike, 3D-sounding recording I've ever heard. Featuring the tenor sax and voice of Thurman—with guitarist Mark Whitfield, bassist Ben Allison, and drummer Billy Drummond—this binaural recording of a concert at Rockwood Music Hall, on New York's Lower East Side, is outstanding among audiophile recordings because, all the way through, the band, the audience, and the listener at home all sound and feel as if they're in the same room. Plucked double bass, brushed and struck drums, and audience applause were all so hauntingly real that it was distracting. As I listened through headphones with my eyes closed, the air that vibrated around Chesky's binaural B&K dummy head as this concert was recorded felt as if it was vibrating around my head. The Rockwood audience was next to and behind me. In front of me, the band was tangibly present. The intensity of this experience of virtual reality compels me to ask: If you were contemplating the purchase of a new DAC, why would you not want it to include MQA processing?

Seven Samurai
Listening to CDs or PCM files through the Manhattan II, I discovered that it was best to disable MQA and its built-in minimum-phase PCM filter. With MQA enabled, PCM files and CDs sounded smooth and open, but maybe a little roundish and gray. But I didn't realize how important this was until after I'd carefully listened to each of the Manhattan's seven PCM filters

As you read these observations, keep in mind that each filter affects the signal damping and phase differently, causing varying degrees of timing and transient error, which in turn alter timbre and spatial cues. Because I trust the ears and A/D converters of Todd Garfinkle, founder of and producer of M•A Recordings, I verified the following impressions by listening to his recording of pianist Ito Ema playing J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (CD, M•A M024A).

1) BRCK (Brickwall): My experience says that not all brickwall filters are created equal. The Manhattan II's BRCK filter didn't sound as digital as most, but was surprisingly fresh and lively. That said, it did try to turn Ito Ema's grand piano into a harpsichord.

2) FRMP (Fast Rolloff, Minimum Phase): Fast Rolloff seemed to sculpt musical images, while Minimum Phase tended to increase the amount of air around those images. FRMP sounded both easygoing and punchy.

3) SRMP (Slow Rolloff, Minimum Phase): A gentle, dreamy guy, I was inclined to like the euphonic character of this filter even before I heard it. Typically, Slow Rolloff removed the little bite of Fast Rolloff, reducing punch—but not enough to hobble the elegant drive and weight of Ito Ema's big Steinway. SRMP seemed more present and colorful than MQA's default minimum-phase filter. Mytek's execution of minimum phase generated additional spatiality, imparted a beguiling luster to upper registers, and made music seem more whole than the other filters.

4) SRLP (Slow Rolloff, Linear Phase): Sometimes, linear-phase filters make me feel that something is not exactly right. They have a less developed sound than minimum phase, but more drive. Mytek's SRLP filter sounded weighty and clear, but didn't develop the piano's full palette of harmonics and overtones.

5) FRLP (Fast Rolloff, Linear Phase): The FRLP filter almost matched the BRCK filter at turning Ema's Steinway into a harpsichord, while actually losing some of the BRCK's energy. The sound was strong and rhythmic, but distinctly artificial.

6) APDZ (Apodizing, Fast Rolloff, Linear Phase): Supposedly, apodizing reduces FRLP's pre-echo. Theoretically, then, the Manhattan II's APDZ filter should have sounded more easygoing than BRCK—and it did. Smooth rolling, it was still firm and quite businesslike, but in a music-enhancing way. I enjoyed the edgeless body this filter imparted.

7) HBRD (Hybrid, Fast Rolloff, Minimum Phase): With the HBRD filter I heard the enlarged space of minimum phase and the image sculpting of fast rolloff—but with a noticeably mechanical movement and tone. My feelings about this filter choice were mixed.

"That is nice."
When I first installed the Manhattan II in my system and began playing music over speakers, using the SRMP filter, I kept mumbling to myself, "Wow! That is nice. Damn!" I played Mantra, Karlheinz Stockhausen's pivotal 1970 composition for two pianos, performed by Yvar Mikhashoff and Rosalind Bevan with periodical ring modulation by Ole Ørsted (CD, New Albion NA025). The two pianists not only masterfully play their keyboards; they also perform on wood blocks, chromatic cymbals, and a shortwave radio that generates Morse code.

At this early point in my Stockhausen studies, I perceive Mantra as a sensuously pulsing, meandering, yet mathematically concise composition that must be visualized as much as heard. It requires a high level of pattern recognition. Forward momentum is easy to appreciate with the hypnotic blues of Mississippi Fred McDowell; it's even more captivating in a work such as Mantra, in which notes and sounds are separated by repeated silences of unpredictable duration. Imagine an invisible force strong and tangible enough to hold a listener's rapt attention during extended stretches of silence. Imagine a sensed energy that makes waiting for the next sound exciting.

Not only did the Manhattan II make Stockhausen's poetic silences come alive, it made the morphing and modulation of his 13-note mantra sequences and their inversions easier to comprehend. The Mytek let my mind rise and then look down on the musical stream, to observe the matrix of its notes and silences. More than the moderately priced Brooklyn DAC, the Manhattan II enhanced my ability to recognize and sort out musical unfoldings. With PrimaLuna's ProLogue Premium preamplifier and power amp driving the Stirling Broadcast LS3/5a V2 speakers that JA reviewed in 2007, the infinitely varied piano tones in Mantra felt real and satisfyingly organic. The Manhattan II delivered denser, more succinct piano tones than do the Brooklyn or Schiit Yggdrasil DACs. Also better than either, the Manhattan exposed the instruments' keyboards, soundboards, pedals, and Stockhausen's ring-modulator effects. The Manhattan II's transparency was like a pitch-black corner in deep outer space.

I didn't fully grasp the quality of the Manhattan II until I used it to listen to Fred McDowell's "Shake 'Em On Down" through Zu Audio Soul Supreme speakers driven by the ProLogue Premium preamp and Bel Canto Design REF600M monoblocks. I'd just listened to the CD through a friend's system with the same speakers, a lower-powered amp, and a different but equally expensive DAC. In my friend's room, the track sounded hard, shallow, thin—barely listenable. In my bunker, it sounded richly toned, dense, and soulfully engaging.

The combo of Mytek Manhattan II, PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium preamp, Bel Canto monoblocks, and Zu Soul Supremes put Mississippi Fred right there in front of me, his guitar and voice ballsily urging and communicative.

Against the Schiit Yggdrasil
Recordings played through Schiit Audio's Yggdrasil DAC, which I reviewed in February 2017, display a punchy, tight-bass vivo, natural tone, and conspicuous musicality. Schiit's reference DAC would be my reference DAC—if only it had MQA and emptier empty spaces. In contrast, Mytek's Manhattan II is the most transparent and grain-free DAC I've used.

The Yggdrasil makes "Red Book" CDs sound a lot like MQA. But real MQA, via the Manhattan II, delivered cleaner, stronger, more obvious versions of all the Yggdrasil's strengths. Compared to Mytek's own Brooklyn DAC, the Manhattan II made MQA recordings feel as if they were emerging from vaster, deeper, more silent emptiness. And silent vastness is what we audiophiles must always pay extra for.

The most conspicuous differences between the Manhattan II and the Schiit Yggdrasil and Mytek's own Brooklyn: The Manhattan II delivered music of greater transparency and image solidity, and generated a stronger force field that let instruments and voices stand out with greater physical presence.

Sing Hallelujah!
All I want from my stereo is an open door to the music on my recordings. I don't want to just peer in that door—I want to walk straight through it and sit down close, to grasp the full nature of their sounds in that space. I want a hint of reality. Mytek HiFi's Manhattan II DAC–preamp–headphone amp let me do all that. It's one of those rare, forceful beasts that realistically express the energy behind the music and proactively enable pattern recognition, doing so with beguiling ease and morgue-like silence.

It also sounded uniquely non-digital. Which is not to say it was analog-like, because that would be like saying that an apple was so good it tasted like an orange. Instead, the Manhattan II reproduced recordings in a manner that seemed devoid of mechanicalness or electronic artificiality. Class A all the way.