Mytek Brooklyn Bridge

A DAC/preamp/headphone amp from Class A of Stereophile’s list of Recommended Components, updated with streaming and network-server capabilities—and it still sells for less than $3000? If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. (Har, har!)

Most Americans have heard that line before, but many may not know the story behind it—I didn’t. George C. Parker, a real American person born in 1860, is famous for perpetrating audacious frauds, specifically sales of property he did not own and could not possibly have owned. He is reported to have sold the Statue of Liberty, Grant’s Tomb, the original Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and—most famously—the Brooklyn Bridge, that last one twice a week for several years, at prices ranging from $75 to $5000. Or so some say.

There’s nothing fraudulent about the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge¹ ($2995). On the contrary, this Brooklyn Bridge offers apparently good value—not to mention great sound. The Brooklyn Bridge retains all the main features of the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+²—asynchronous USB; high-rez PCM and DSD-decoding; full MQA decoding; preamp functionality, with analog inputs and both digital and analog volume controls; and a very good headphone amplifier—and adds streaming and network-server capabilities, wireless and via Ethernet. As with the DAC+, there’s even a phono preamp that works with MC cartridges. The only thing it loses, as far as I can tell, is the DAC+’s AES/EBU digital input, that space being needed for the added Ethernet jack, Wi-Fi antenna, and USB Type-A port intended for connecting a hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD).

The Bridge’s enhancements provide a means of getting music from Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer, vTuner, Spotify, into the DAC over Ethernet or wireless using only an iPad, iPhone, or Android device—no computer or server required—while allowing convenient playback of music files stored in another room or in the cloud. Additionally (and with limitations), the Brooklyn Bridge allows similarly easy playback of music