Mytek scored enormously with the Brooklyn DAC and preamp
and introduced a 10% more expensive mark 2 recently.
And they introduced the 1000 euro MQA enabled Liberty DAC and headphone amp.
This is the subject of this review.
But first shortly on the Brooklyn 2: I was able to compare it to my original Brooklyn
and if there is an audible difference, it must be minute.
Then now the Liberty DAC.
From a conceptual standpoint it differs from the Brooklyn 2 in that it is no pre-amp, has
no analogue inputs, has no SDIF II inputs, has no choice of filters, has one single headphone
output and thus no balanced headphone provision, has no remote control, doesn't have a volume
control that can be bypassed or controlled from player software like Roon and uses the
'old' ESS Sabre 9018K2M DAC chip like the original Brooklyn.
But does that make it an uninteresting product.
Don't think so.
Let's take a closer look.
The construction of the cabinet is identical to that of the Brooklyn and thus very sturdy.
It measures 140 by 216 by 44 mm.
On the front left the 6.3 mm headphone jack, the LED that indicates whether the source
material is PCM, MQA or DSD.
Then five LED's that normally indicate the volume settings by colour and number, but
double as input indicator during input selection.
That is done by pressing the rotary encoder.
Every press takes you to the next input and pressing for a longer time will put the Liberty
in sleeping mode.
Rotating the knob obviously is used for setting the volume.
On the rear, left, the IEC mains connector, the 12 volts DC input for if you want to use
an external power supply, the USB 2 input, the optical input, the AES/EBU input, two
SPDIF inputs, two single ended analogue outputs on RCA and two balanced analogue outputs on
6.3 mm TRS connectors.
The mains inlet, bottom right, already has a mains filter before it feeds the switching
mode power supply in the metal case.
Might you be afraid of switching mode power supplies, this section cleans up and stabilises
the power for the separate parts of the audio electronics.
When we look at the input section we see the well known XMOS chip, plus, remarkably, two
clock crystals.
Then the ARM processor that - I presume - does the filtering, including MQA and the very
tiny ESS Sabre 9018K2M DAC chip with - very close - the clock oscillator.
Finally the analog section that converts the current coming from the DAC chip into a voltage.
This section also appears to have separate power regulation.
The USB input is USB Audio Class 2 and thus will work without a driver on all computers
with the exception of Windows.
A Windows driver can be downloaded from the Mytek site.
Over USB the maximum sampling depth is 32 bit and the maximum sampling rate 384 kHz.
DSD over PCM up to DSD256 is supported too.
Over AES/EBU, SPDIF and Toslink 24 bit and 192 kHz are the limits.
This means that DoP is limited to DSD64.
And that's simply since these digital busses have their limits.
MQA is supported and I suppose the MQA circuit is always in the chain - as is the case with
the Brooklyn when the MQA function is switched on.
This means that, despite the fact you can't choose other filters in the Liberty DAC, you
do get the best one as standard.
My Brooklyn is always set to the MQA mode.
Operation-wise there is not much to tell: select the input by pressing the volume knob
and set the volume.
Like with the other Mytek DAC's you can update the firmware using the free Mytek Control
Panel
This is the interesting part for many.
The Liberty DAC uses the same ESS ES9018K2M DAC chip as my first generation Brooklyn,
so it sounds the same.
Right?
Wrong.
I have listened to both DAC's, connected to the SOtM sMS-200 Ultra and the Allo USBridge.
Obviously the SOtM gave by far the best result and then the Liberty has less tonality in
the lows, is somewhat less transparent in the mid range and is slightly more glassy
in the highs - like with a glockenspiel or triangle.
Using the USBridge shifts the sound quality somewhat more downwards with the Brooklyn
and slightly more with the Liberty.
Much of this is the influence of jitter and this is where audio wise a difference between
the Brooklyn and the Liberty lies: a femto clock at 1 pico second in the Brooklyn and
a10 picosecond clock in the Liberty.
Now we know that there is a difference between the two, how big is that difference?
It's always difficult to quantify that.
But I'll give you my opinion, for what it is worth.
As you might know, I find my Brooklyn easily worth double the money sound wise, certainly
in combination with the sMS-200 Ultra.
But if I had to choose between the Brooklyn with USBridge or the Liberty DAC plus sMS-200
Ultra, I would go for the latter.
Luckily I don't need to make that choice for although the difference is not shocking,
you do get used to very high quality.
How good does the Liberty DAC sound when compared to other DAC's in this price range?
Well, it performs nicely in the lower half of my setup 1.
In other words it is a fierce competitor, very fierce.
The Liberty DAC costs less than half the price of the Brooklyn 2.
For a large part this is due to the lacking functions I mentioned in the beginning of
this video.
The Brooklyn's are really very good pre-amps too and are really able to drive power amps
directly.
This is not standard for every DAC, unfortunately.
Furthermore the phono MM input is of high quality.
The Liberty DAC is the DAC for those that already have proper amplification and just
need a DAC.
Offering a large part of the sound character of the Brooklyn, offering full MQA decoding
and rendering but leaving out the pre-amp functions and extra filters for half the price
does make it a very attractive product.
Feed it with a clean signal and chances are you will be very happy.
Nevertheless I keep looking out for alternatives so if you want to stay up do date, subscribe
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I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com.
And whatever you do, enjoy the music.
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