I’m not name calling anybody, I’m describing their behaviour on that forum. One guy actually said it made his weekend that the review was so negative. Not my kind of people I’m afraid.
And we can agree to disagree about measured performance. There is obviously a place for it, but I prefer to trust my ears overall.
But it’s all good, i’m not looking to fall out with anybody. I don’t even have the product they are slagging off.
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I can understand why the guy who said that it made his weekend would annoy you. Others on the forum were also annoyed by it. I think for those on a very limited budget, seeing expensive gear “taken down” is satisfying because on other forums they are told their system is bad because the DAC is too inexpensive. I just ignore stuff like that.
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Somebody from ASR posted up measurements from another site that showed the BB II in a positive light. Looked to be a lot less detailed that the ASR guys evaluation but nobody shot it down.
I noticed that there are several posts in that thread on ASR that are screenshotting posts from this very thread on Roon where we are discussing the BB II and ASR. Can only be a matter of time before a hitman turns up at my door!
You don’t need to hear it to see that this thing isn’t worth the price, from technical standpoint. For something that is being sold as a high-end device it is, quite objectively, badly designed (there are pictures of the insides posted), and has mediocre performance. Ratings look quite accurate from that standpoint.
If you manage to get one, it actually works, and you like the look and sound, no one is stopping you from enjoying it. For those for whom $5K isn’t pocket money, ASR results are far more useful than the advert from Stereo.de .
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I don’t see any screenshots? I do see a link to this thread as an example of unhappy Mytek customers, which seems accurate.
I don’t think anyone over on ASR really gives a s*** about you personally.
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To clarify, I know you were joking about the hitman. My point is that to most of the ASR crowd (there are always a few nuts on every site), this is not about people like you with different ideas. It is about the manufacturer and their marketing claims vs the measured reality.
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This is a BIG part of the overall bad vibes being directed towards Mytek and its mis-management team.
Edit: Business 101 “Underpromise and Overdeliver”
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Also “Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets.”
Mytek’s brand is compromised. They’ve missed deadline after deadline, have a demonstrated history of treating at least some customers poorly, and have had engineering issues ranging from overheating to poor performance measurements.
People root against brands like this - they want them to fail. Mytek is experiencing what seems like a natural consequence of their actions and inactions. I don’t feel sympathetic, though I do hope they get the message and recognize that they won’t flourish without a combination of stronger engineering and an investment in brand recovery.
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That too, of course. Plus they advertise it as having some secret-sauce custom audiophile juju that, as it turns out either does not do anything at all (because it ain’t working) or or actively hurts (because you need actual engineers to design stuff, not just a marketing team)…
Does Mytek actually have engineers, wasn’t the design and manufacturing outsourced to some other company in Poland, which is now selling their own devices directly?
I read ASR and like the way they present their findings on audio products. I am by no means a tech person, but its interesting to me nonetheless. I agree that it is preferable to listen before you buy. I live out in the boonies, which makes it difficult to get to a decent hifi shop. I was recently in need of a DAC, so I went to ASR looked at some reviews and purchased an inexpensive unit that had good ratings. The DAC arrived and it works very well for me. Maybe it was luck, or maybe because it tests well. I don’t know, but if I was in need of another product, I’d consult with ASR again as one source of information.
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Here’s some of the back story, seems to me that the breakup was the start of Mytek’s problems due to a tough transition finding a new partner.
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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.
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wasn’t the design and manufacturing outsourced to some other company in Poland, which is now >selling their own devices directly?
No, it was not. The other way around. HEM Electronics was created in early 2000 to manufacture Mytek when they knew nothing about audio. All designs are ours (mostly mine). We tough them the ADC/DAC and audio craft and worked together until 2020 when we split following their boss bizarre business moves (attempts to register our trademark as theirs etc etc, big legal fight). Ferrum Audio DACs are, in large, copies of Mytek original circuits in new rusty boxes. It’s true that our business had a disruption in manufacturing in 2021 because of this, we had to rebuilt manufacturing capabilities.The BB2 is now manufactured also in Poland with another large and legitimate contract manufacturer. The delays in delivering BB2 are partly a result of this unfortunately. But as of today BB2s are being made coming off assembly like , although maybe not fast enough but we are ramping up.
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Taken me 30 years of buying audio to hit the sweet spot with BB1 and Brooklyn power amp in my system. There will be better equipment out there, and possibly cheaper too, but it’s what I have and I’m happy no matter what the measurements may look like on paper. Thankfully my ears don’t care about measurements.
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Thanks for sharing the correct story of the problematic situation with the manufacturer change. I will be watching to see how Mytek responds and moves forward. Your customers are your most valuable asset, good luck.
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If you measured everything that mattered, this idea might have validity. But the simple fact is that measurements, especially THD and SINAD, don’t tell you a whole lot about the actual sound.
ASR does way more harm than good is populated by people that don’t understand what is important. This is why DACs, like the Topping, that measure great don’t actually sound great. Yet Amir thinks they are awesome and lead his minions down the wrong path…
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There’s a world of foolishness in the Mytek response. For instance, of course we know that tape and vinyl are terrible by current standards, but the role of a DAC surely shouldn’t be to add additional distortion and noise to those old recordings, or to enhance current ones with a special sound signature. Some folks might like add modeled distortion, I suppose, out of a kind of nostalgia, but I like to learn all the details as best can be reproduced from the original recording.
This notion of dynamic measurements is a curious one, too, whatever he may mean by that. This is a streamer/DAC, not a power amplifier, so the FFT actually does capture the way in which high frequencies are rendered and they are associated with dynamic time-domain aspects of the signal. I’d be curious to learn what kind of tests would conceptually give us better insights into audio devices like this.
I’d suggest the company just build better products with better engineering rather than complain about the messenger!
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I’m not having a conversation with someone who begins with insults. Really, what is the matter with you guys?
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The sacred cow of “it is expensive, it MUST be good” has been insulted. Can;t have that! 
They tell a lot, just not everything, and if you actually read what’s written on ASR you’d know that it is well accepted there that past a certain point (which even something as badly designed as BB passes) SINAD does not really matter other than for bragging rights.
And you will be able to confirm that in a blind test? I’ll wager a beer that you would not…
So, HEM, on their own web page, are lying about their history?
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You are being far nicer than I ever could…
I think I will stay as far away as possible from a company that claims that there is GOOD distortion.
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