But I misjudged Brooklyn. It turns out to be big, interesting, diverse, and—yes—idiosyncratic. Sure,…
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When 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 pour-over coffee. (Anyone up for adult kickball?) As I've written before, about Portland, Maine—a hipster place much indebted to Brooklyn—I greatly prefer deeply committed idiosyncrasy to mindless conformity.
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 (footnote 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 M1.2 monoblocks via Mogami Gold microphone cables, using the Brooklyn to…
Keith Aschenbrenner, proprietor of Auditorium 23, based in Frankfurt, Germany (footnote 1), has long been associated with the people and products of Shindo Laboratory: From the early 1990s until the EU's 2006 implementation of the RoHS 1 regulation, which banned the sale of various old-style electrolytic materials—and thus most of Shindo's products—Auditorium 23 was the brand's European distributor and, arguably, one of its most empathetic and enthusiastic retailers worldwide. Throughout that time, and continuing through to today, Aschenbrenner has also worked as a designer and manufacturer…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Digital-to-analog 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 inputs: 1 pair single-ended (RCA). Analog outputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR), 1 pair single-ended (RCA). Headphone outputs: ¼" stereo (2), convertible to 1 pair balanced. Formats/sample rates supported: PCM to 32-bit/44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.2, 192, 384kHz; DSD; DSD (via USB only) to 2.8224, 5.6448, 11.2896MHz.…
Jäckle also designed the amplifiers for the Cinemas' bass enclosures, which share real estate with the speakers' crossover elements: a 7kHz high-pass filter for the treble horn, and a 300Hz low-pass for the midrange horn—both executed with paper-in-oil capacitors—along with 6dB/octave low-pass filtering in front of the bass amplifiers, behind the secondary windings of each input transformer. No electronic equalization is provided.
Crate to plate
The Hommage Cinemas are shipped from Germany in lightweight padded crates; the AcousticPlan power supply is shipped separately, also from…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
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 CX-7eMP CD player; PS Audio DirectStream DAC.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard step-up transformer, EAR 834P phono stage, Parasound Halo JC 2 preamplifier.
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Mytek Brooklyn with my newly recalibrated Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It"). 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 "03105-1605-101," and confirmed that the USB…
Photo: Jason Victor Serinus
Exactly what did Bob Stuart (above) say at that press event earlier this month at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF)? Stuart—CEO of the company MQA, short for Master Quality Authenticated—made an announcement about the Warner Music Group's (WMG's) transcoding of their catalog into MQA format, a project announced last May.
But what exactly did he say? I didn't attend RMAF and accounts I found in the audiophile press were incomplete and contradictory. Is WMG finished with the project? Has the catalog been converted? All of it or just some? What exactly…
In honor of the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death at the age of 35, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation have together issued a whopping 24-lb box of recordings and commentary called Mozart 225. Billed as the most complete and authoritative edition of Mozart recordings ever assembled, the $480 box, in an edition limited to 15,000 copies worldwide, includes 200 CDs with 240 hours of music.
As you can see here, the contents amount to every completed work by Mozart, including the Handel and Bach arrangements; over 100 fragments, completions by other composers,…
Does marketing work? You betcha! Micah Sheveloff, who handles Bryston for WIRC media, sent me an e-mail reminder of Bryston's presence at TAVES 2016. (Just to be sure that I got the message, he also sent the same e-mail to John Atkinson.) So when I arrived at the show, it seemed only natural that the first exhibit I checked out would be Bryston's.
Bryston is on a roll. After making their reputation with built-like-a-tank power amplifiers, the company followed up with preamps, digital components (DA converters, digital players, etc.), phono stages, speakers, headphone amplifiers,…