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 ultimate goal in audio which unfortunately, for anybody with experience in audio recording or listening, is an utter nonsense. Mytek does not design products to satisfy ASR bench measurements.
Instead our goal is to have the customer smiling and their foot tapping when they press play on Brooklyn Bridge. And they do!, someone up this thread says “BB2 sounds darn good”. This is what matters to our customers and to us.
Ontop of that Amir is not infallible, he made errors in measurements, for example it looks like the HAT tm function which increases DAC 2nd and 4th harmonic content (2nd by about 12 dB) is on. (HAT makes DAC sound warmer by increasing even harmonics in the DAC current source output stage- the effect is same resolution and sound stage but groovier sound). This setting alone would have lowered SINAD the measurement by at least several dBs. If Amir was a pro, he would reach out to manufacturer and verify information before publishing it, just as any reputable journalist verifies their information at the source.
Audiosciencereview.com has a bizarre format that on a surface tries to pretend to be independent and legitimate, but when you dig deeper there is nothing under. You have a boss with superficial understanding of audio who happened to invest in Audio Precision and a mob of angry fundamentalists revering the God of Sinad (inverted THD nr), who, it seems, are not able to comprehend much about these audio measurements. And then there is a “voting system” which, when Amir says “not good”, results in a subsequent public execution by the mob.
And the end result is that you get recommendation where an $9 apple dongle IS BETTER for you than a $14k respected high end DAC. Hardly a service to audio community.
By ASR Sinad standards a 1/2 inch 30 IPS studio master tape with its dynamic range of 60dB will also be way worse than that $9 apple dongle. And mind you, 90% of music on hi res Qobuz is from these tapes. And vinyl market does not have a right to exists - why would you try to play your vinyl when your Apple dongle gives you cleaner , better sound???
At some point , when I have a moment I may comment there, but for now I’ll wait a bit til the mob cools down a bit.
BTW Mytek is in good companion, Weiss which is making digital since late 1980s , Chord with their proprietary FPGAs DACs and elaborate filters, etc, they were also shot down by Amir followed by overwhelming “poor performance” vote.
This forum represents a complete misunderstanding what good sound is about, how the music is actually recorded and produced and how it can then be reproduced. These guys have no respect for any of this and I’m just happy to leave them enjoying their $9 apple dongle while we design something that actually sounds like music. It’s unfortunate, it’d be great to have educated dialog, I’m sure we could tell them a lot of interesting stuff about our 30+ years experience with sound, but how do you have a conversation with an angry attacking mob? It is what it is.
Mytek next stop is the Canjam in New York , March 9- if you want to hear the world best headphone setup with Stax 9000 and the Empire DAC please come and listen. We will also have BBridge 2 with wonderful choice of planar headphones. I could and at some point will go on about that good sound can be and why, but mind you I have studied electronics and acoustics, worked for many year in largest NY City recording studios and ran Mytek for 30 years where we are known for best professional converters and later excellent award winning hifi. There will always be challenges like this one, but these people come and go because they have nothing to add really, we have an Audio Precision too. Mytek will continue doing a good work that our customers appreciate. BB2 sounds excellent and better than BB1. Empire is our best DAC ever.
Best Regards, Michal, Founder and Chief Designer.
And here is another perspective on ASR: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/audio-science-review-the-better-the-measurement-the-better-the-soun
PS: If you were to built a system based on ASR Amir’s recommendation you’ll end up with the most boring, strangled and clinical sounding playback. The site is useful for checking the general FFT specs of gear but that’s about it. It says nothing about sound quality.
For starters there are BAD and also GOOD distortion, that’s why THD/Sinad is useless in describing the “sound”. And then there is the key dynamic sound performance which Amir does not measure because it is difficult. As a matter of fact time domain performance seems to be the better approach. And milion other things about audio and audio perception that ASR happily misses because they already know better with their simplistic audio world view.