Mytek has provided me with over a year of audio enjoyment (a modern day record for me).
You are not going to believe this, but it was Mytek that made me try vinyl. Not because the DAC+ was bad and I decided to go the LP route instead. On the contrary - precisely because it was so good, just like you wrote. You see, a DAC (Digital to
Analogue Converter) is supposed to make digital files sound just like they are being played on a turntable, as an analogue record. The better the DAC, the more natural it will sound. The better the DAC, the better turntable it will sound like. The more I thought of that, the more I wanted to try vinyl. Cut out the middle man. Go straight to the source, so to speak. Don't convert, I thought. Play it.
Here is the thing. it doesnt have to be too expensive on the turntable end. I mean you can upgrade the Brooklyn a hundred times, up to a four chassi $110,000
dCS Vivaldi with its FPGA instead of a particular DAC chip, and that digital system will still be lagging (as a source) behind a $2,000 turntable with a decent cartridge. Naturally, after I got the Brooklyn I went the vinyl route to try what the DAC actually tried to impersonate (convert). God works in mysterious ways.
That little excursion into a pure analogue territory lasted a couple of months and then stopped. I ended up with a little LP collection (around 600) that is only 10% heard. Why did I stop? After all, it should have sounded like a $100,000 dCS or better, rigth? Well, it did. For only 6-10 LPs. The rest sounded identical or worse. Plus there was that small matter of getting up and and flip the record every 20 minutes. But for those 6-10 LPs (mostly
Sheffield Lab and
Stockfisch Records) the Mytek only came close to the turntable sound. If there was a way to calculate it in percentages, the Mytek had only reached 75% of how good they sound. I know there are people who say vinyl is king and the other kind that think LPs are obsolete and stupid. It depends. Which LP? Through what gear? As compared to what?
But still, the Mytek came as close to even those few records as I have ever heard. The other DACs - granted my experience with them is limited - didnt sound even remotely analogue like. With them it was just a different degree of digital. Rough, noisy (I mean the jitter, not the actual audible noise) and not engaging. When I spoke with the Mytek folks, they said they decided to concentrate on the analogue section while designing the DAC+, instead of jumping up to the latest Sabre chip that was already available at the time. That was a smart decision. That shows. The chip version by itself is only a small part of the equation. There are more important thing in analogue conversion.
Here is the analogue set up, BTW: