I bought the Brooklyn Bridge!

Audio Gear Talk Mytek
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Well, not the Brooklyn Bridge but a Brooklyn Bridge from Mytek. To go with my Brooklyn Amp. Too soon for a detailed evaluation, but so far, it’s great. Not as sweetly musical as the Conrad-Johnson amp and preamp they replace, but much more precise and powerful.

Two interesting things:

I am able to control the analog volume of the Bridge from my Roon remote, bit perfectly, using the same slider that previously caused the Signal Path to report not-bit-perfect transport. The Bridge also comes with a remote that controls the analog fader but I was surprised I could do the same from Roon. Maybe this is a benefit of the Bridge being Roon Ready, which my earlier Liberty DAC was not.

Also, I turned off MQA in favor of Mytek’s own steep linear phase filter. Unfortunately, you can’t have both, but I never liked MQA all that much in the first place, and I think the linear phase filter is audibly better.

Anyway, I’m not much of an expert, but if I can be of any help to anyone who’s purchased one of these, or is thinking about it, I’d be glad to try.

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Congrats! I’ve been visiting the Mytek shop page weekly since it was released, but hold off clicking Buy until I’ve got new speakers (in a new house).

Are you using a turntable? I’m really interested in how good the phono stage is, as I love the idea of the “all-in-one” factor of the Brooklyn Bridge + Amp combo.

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Thanks. No turntable, sorry. I use Roon to stream Tidal and play albums stored on a Mac. What’s really nice is the ability to connect the Bridge and Mac directly via Ethernet. No USB.

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I have the Manhattan with the network card and I am sold on streaming over ethernet. It is outstanding to be sure. Enjoy!

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I’ll bet that Manhattan is nice.

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I received my Brooklyn Bridge about a week ago, first batch. Very impressive. Glad I waited.

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Me too. Did you get a Mytek amp, or are you using something else?

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It really is and the preamp is outstanding. Mytek has some great products for sure :wink:

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McIntosh and Focal. If I had it to do over would have had an entirely different approach.

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I was just wondering if the preamp was good enough to ditch my current setup. So you don’t feel you need a separate preamp with the Brooklyn Bridge?

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I do not have the Brooklyn Bridge. I have the Manhattan Dac 2 with network card. I have no desire for a separate preamp with this unit. I think I would have to spend a lot of money to outperform the built in preamp. It really is very good

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I have a Brooklyn Bridge. I think it is excellent, both as a preamp and a dac. I’m using it with the Brooklyn Amp, which I also like.

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Thanks for that. I’m on the fence. It’s either the Bridge or a Zen Mini into a Chord Qutest. The latter will probably give the best results, but the Bridge is just so versatile that a small hit to SQ is maybe OK.

Thanks again

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Has streaming from Roon to the Brooklyn Bridge been stable and reliable?

I have the OG Brooklyn and have been very happy with it, but the combination of the DAC+ upgrade and simplifying my rack (I’m currently using a µR+LPS-1) is very appealing.

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I haven’t had occasion to use wi-fi, but streaming via ethernet has been completely trouble free (and sounds great).

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Great to hear. I would expect the streamer implementation to be solid considering they’ve had this functionality in the Manhattan. I currently have an OG Brooklyn, HQP (DxD / DSD u/c) and a µR (1.4) which I’ve been very happy with, but the streamer is interesting since it takes USB out of the equation.

I guess I’ll have to send this feature-request to Mytek, but the one thing that would really push the Brooklyn Bridge over the top for me would be a monitoring and control app. In my 2ch setup, the display is a bit too small to see from my chair.

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“Preamp” — it’s funny, I have several zones around the house and none have a preamp. And I don’t have the desire.

(Almost — the main rig with Meridian speakers had a Meridian 818 in front, but it does nothing, I have only one source, Roon, and the speakers have their own DACs and volume and tone control. The HT has a controller for multiple sources, but I never play music there.)

Some of the endpoints (DACs, headphone amps) have volume control, but even this time-honored function of a preamp is no longer needed since Roon can do it if necessary.

Ok, I’m perhaps a little extreme with only one active source. But it’s an interesting perspective. Reading the hifi press, with preamps and amps and passive speakers, I have no interest in any of that.

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I’ve tried running a DAC directly into the active speakers I use on my desktop system, but the volume control in Roon reset itself to 0db / 100% a couple of times without me noticing. This is definitely not something I want to replicate with the amp and high-efficiency speakers in my main rig. I did see that you can define a maximum volume setting for an endpoint in Roon, so I’ll have to do some experimentation when time allows. I still have to be careful since I am using the phono pre in my Brooklyn as well.

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I have had the Brooklyn Dac+ in combination with an Allo Usbridge. No I´ve switched to the Bridge. I am very happy, everything (Roon via ethernet/Tidal via USB/Qobuz/Spotify Connect/library with mconnect from iOS) is working troublefree without a lot of cables. No further problems with external streamers.

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Is the bridge an upgrade to using the Allo?