"Is it 'hot' or 'warm'?" Jurewicz asked via e-mail. "The main thing is [these are] high density-power electronics packed very tight. Think about an iPhone doing a lot of processing. It gets warm because it is so tight. The efficiency of the AMP is 88%, which means that at full power, 2 by 300 watts, it will dissipate up to 60 watts of heat, which will make it quite warm. So the heat dissipation is typical for class-D, it's just a densely packed amplifier. If you take the Brooklyn DAC off the Amp it will not be that warm, as the ventilation will improve." I did just that—and Jurewicz was right.
Listening to nothing
Forget about cassettes. The latest boon to my hi-fi listening experience is the 7" 45rpm single. I've long collected Beatles 45s—my Fab Four booty now includes discs from Japan, Mexico, Denmark, France, even Turkey. But now 1960s country music is forcing me to stock up on 45rpm adapters, thanks to the incredible Decca singles of Patsy Cline. Blasting through the Quad S2s driven by the stereo Brooklyn Amp, the swinging sadness of "Heartaches," "Walkin' After Midnight," and "Sweet Dreams" took on greater significance. Thanks to Decca's expertise in recording and pressing vinyl in the 1950s and '60s, the music was powerful and present, and delivered with a very low noise floor thanks to the Mytek. I'm Amped! My hunger for 45s could not be sated. At a recent lunch, my reviewer colleague Steve Guttenberg marveled when I showed him my postman's latest haul: singles by Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Glen Campbell, Loretta Lynn, and more Patsy Cline. Listening to 45s makes me focus—only three minutes or so after the needle drops, I'm left in silence, hungry for more music. Driven by the Brooklyn Amp, my smaller rig put me in hardheaded 45 Party mode. Power is a drug, and the Brooklyn Amp's absolute power of 300Wpc was the ultimate enabler of my 45rpm addiction. Those singles sounded sharply resolute. The Amp highlighted the difference between two editions of the Beatles' "It's Only Love": a mono 45 (French Odeon SOE 3775) focused with intense midrange clarity, while the same recording on a wide-panned stereo LP of Help! (Swiss Odeon SMO 84 008) sounded somehow slower, with less energy, less fun.
Jesus Just Left Chicago
I moved the Mytek into my big rig, where I gravitated to such Old Faithful titles as Antál Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Stravinsky's Firebird (LP, Mercury Living Presence SR90226), Kraftwerk's Tour de France (LP, Astralwerks ASW 91708-1), Beck's Morning Phase (LP, Capitol B001983901), Poll Winners Three! (LP, Contemporary S7576), and Collage, by Max Roach's percussion ensemble M'Boom (LP, Soul Note 121059-2), as well as newer vinyl from pianist Cathy Crier and FKA twigs. Words that will never be used to describe the Mytek Brooklyn Amp: lush, sweet, forgiving, diffuse, easygoing, plain Jane (can we still say that?). What the Amp gave up in such sweet kisses it replaced with a consistent sense of truthfulness, striking resolution that was never analytical, spacious soundstages, superb dynamics and some of the "blackest" backgrounds I've ever heard. The Brooklyn Amp was so quiet, so lacking in the sort of back-of-stage fuzziness you don't notice till it's gone, that its sound was sometimes eerie—but never cold. It recalled the perfect living machine: H.R. Giger's Alien. It sounded a tad spooky, leaving nothing to the imagination. With the right recordings, the Amp let me revel in its reproduction of the low end, with zero overhang or bloat, and profoundly impressive retrieval of micro- and macrodetail—but in doing all this, its touch was always light and never surgical. More than once, the Amp's fine resolution and superb timing startled me, as in Stravinsky's Firebird. After the ominous opening section, instruments that evoke birds of every size and shape dart across a wide soundstage. The Amp reproduced it all with levels of clarity, speed, smoothness, and dynamics I've seldom heard. Following instrumental lines through the Amp was exhilarating, even if it occasionally delivered fast crescendos and zippy dynamic swings with a mechanical grip.
One downside of the Amp's sharp-focused resolution and silent backgrounds was its merciless resistance to glossing over vinyl surface noise. I now heard minor surface crackle or groove wear from records I'd thought were clean.
With the stereo Brooklyn Amp mated to the Brooklyn DAC's excellent phono stage and preamplifier, I spun that percussion masterpiece, M'Boom's Collage. Unfortunately, through the Amp this album's drums and percussion instruments lacked the weight conveyed by my Shindos, or even by lesser amps I've had in house. Although images were immaculate and detailed, there was no sense of flesh-and-blood musicians playing the notes. But what the Brooklyn Amp lacked in weight it made up for in speed and lucidity: I could hear things I never had, such as clashing rhythms among various bells and blocks. The Amp fared better with Poll Winners Three!, by the stellar trio of jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Shelley Manne. This recording's wide stage was re-created with excellent immediacy and sense of swing—I could hear far into the soundstage, all the way back down the studio corridor to the 25õ-a-cup automatic coffee machine—but, again, lacked ultimate weight.
Up to this point, the Brooklyn Amp had performed with the grip of a NASA space walker and the soul of a gentle commando, so I rocked some ZZ Top its way. While "Waitin' for the Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago," from Tres Hombres (LP, London XPS631), didn't have much fortification down low, the music's boogie timing was first rate, accompanied by commensurate fist-pumps and crouching Chuck Berry knee shuffles from me. Procol Harum's Home (LP, A&M SP-4261) seemed a good choice, but the Amp reduced the band's conceptual blues-rock to a brew too muddy. Bass boomed, but cymbal and piano transients were MIA. The Amp excelled at illuminating every dark and lonely corner of Beck's Morning Phase, exposing every sonic chemtrail on that album's huge, airy stages.
Twice the boogie, twice the fun?
Now running two Brooklyn Amps in bridged mode, I dropped M'Boom's Collage back on the Kuzma. All was more than well. Images were larger, and the weight behind those images had increased at least fivefold. ZZ Top now stood before me. Double-bassist Dave Holland's Triplicate (LP, ECM 1373), a fiercely swinging trio session with saxophonist Steve Coleman and drummer Jack DeJohnette, was revealed in all its big-staged glory. Firebird's already densely populated soundstage now filled the room, placing me practically in the orchestra. And Poll Winners Three! was more as I remembered it, its images substantial and immediate, with no loss of tonality. The bridged Amps retained the basic solid-state sound I'd heard from the single stereo Amp, never approaching the illuminating transparency of my Shindos. The bridged Amps created a deep well of sound, from their super-silent backgrounds through their high-resolution exclamations. This was evident when I listened to Anouar Brahem's Blue Maqams (LP, ECM 2580), an engrossing blend of oud, piano, double bass, and drums. Sounding dark and immense, these instruments swung buoyantly on a glistening stage—an ECM trademark—swelling and swaying like a growing hurricane. Conclusions
Mytek's Brooklyn Amp is an unusual amplifier that brought the instrumental details of various discs to the fore in a cool-headed, involving, often surprising way. Allying one or two Amps to Mytek's Brooklyn DAC+ makes a serious combo with a future. And because all Mytek products are said to be upgradeable via firmware downloads, you can be sure to keep up to date with the Amp's continuing evolution. Blossoming from an extremely low noise floor, the Brooklyn Amp's reproduction of my music was revelatory. It exposed the focused surge of my favorite 45rpm singles as well as instrumental details I'd somehow missed, and its sound was consistently immediate and dynamic. Using two Amps in bridged-mono mode greatly increased the flesh and blood of the sound of a single Amp, with no loss of dynamics. Now if Mytek could somehow combine all those strengths in one box, they'd really be on to something.
Forget about cassettes. The latest boon to my hi-fi listening experience is the 7" 45rpm single. I've long collected Beatles 45s—my Fab Four booty now includes discs from Japan, Mexico, Denmark, France, even Turkey. But now 1960s country music is forcing me to stock up on 45rpm adapters, thanks to the incredible Decca singles of Patsy Cline. Blasting through the Quad S2s driven by the stereo Brooklyn Amp, the swinging sadness of "Heartaches," "Walkin' After Midnight," and "Sweet Dreams" took on greater significance. Thanks to Decca's expertise in recording and pressing vinyl in the 1950s and '60s, the music was powerful and present, and delivered with a very low noise floor thanks to the Mytek. I'm Amped! My hunger for 45s could not be sated. At a recent lunch, my reviewer colleague Steve Guttenberg marveled when I showed him my postman's latest haul: singles by Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Glen Campbell, Loretta Lynn, and more Patsy Cline. Listening to 45s makes me focus—only three minutes or so after the needle drops, I'm left in silence, hungry for more music. Driven by the Brooklyn Amp, my smaller rig put me in hardheaded 45 Party mode. Power is a drug, and the Brooklyn Amp's absolute power of 300Wpc was the ultimate enabler of my 45rpm addiction. Those singles sounded sharply resolute. The Amp highlighted the difference between two editions of the Beatles' "It's Only Love": a mono 45 (French Odeon SOE 3775) focused with intense midrange clarity, while the same recording on a wide-panned stereo LP of Help! (Swiss Odeon SMO 84 008) sounded somehow slower, with less energy, less fun.
Jesus Just Left ChicagoI moved the Mytek into my big rig, where I gravitated to such Old Faithful titles as Antál Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Stravinsky's Firebird (LP, Mercury Living Presence SR90226), Kraftwerk's Tour de France (LP, Astralwerks ASW 91708-1), Beck's Morning Phase (LP, Capitol B001983901), Poll Winners Three! (LP, Contemporary S7576), and Collage, by Max Roach's percussion ensemble M'Boom (LP, Soul Note 121059-2), as well as newer vinyl from pianist Cathy Crier and FKA twigs. Words that will never be used to describe the Mytek Brooklyn Amp: lush, sweet, forgiving, diffuse, easygoing, plain Jane (can we still say that?). What the Amp gave up in such sweet kisses it replaced with a consistent sense of truthfulness, striking resolution that was never analytical, spacious soundstages, superb dynamics and some of the "blackest" backgrounds I've ever heard. The Brooklyn Amp was so quiet, so lacking in the sort of back-of-stage fuzziness you don't notice till it's gone, that its sound was sometimes eerie—but never cold. It recalled the perfect living machine: H.R. Giger's Alien. It sounded a tad spooky, leaving nothing to the imagination. With the right recordings, the Amp let me revel in its reproduction of the low end, with zero overhang or bloat, and profoundly impressive retrieval of micro- and macrodetail—but in doing all this, its touch was always light and never surgical. More than once, the Amp's fine resolution and superb timing startled me, as in Stravinsky's Firebird. After the ominous opening section, instruments that evoke birds of every size and shape dart across a wide soundstage. The Amp reproduced it all with levels of clarity, speed, smoothness, and dynamics I've seldom heard. Following instrumental lines through the Amp was exhilarating, even if it occasionally delivered fast crescendos and zippy dynamic swings with a mechanical grip.
Twice the boogie, twice the fun?Now running two Brooklyn Amps in bridged mode, I dropped M'Boom's Collage back on the Kuzma. All was more than well. Images were larger, and the weight behind those images had increased at least fivefold. ZZ Top now stood before me. Double-bassist Dave Holland's Triplicate (LP, ECM 1373), a fiercely swinging trio session with saxophonist Steve Coleman and drummer Jack DeJohnette, was revealed in all its big-staged glory. Firebird's already densely populated soundstage now filled the room, placing me practically in the orchestra. And Poll Winners Three! was more as I remembered it, its images substantial and immediate, with no loss of tonality. The bridged Amps retained the basic solid-state sound I'd heard from the single stereo Amp, never approaching the illuminating transparency of my Shindos. The bridged Amps created a deep well of sound, from their super-silent backgrounds through their high-resolution exclamations. This was evident when I listened to Anouar Brahem's Blue Maqams (LP, ECM 2580), an engrossing blend of oud, piano, double bass, and drums. Sounding dark and immense, these instruments swung buoyantly on a glistening stage—an ECM trademark—swelling and swaying like a growing hurricane. Conclusions
Mytek's Brooklyn Amp is an unusual amplifier that brought the instrumental details of various discs to the fore in a cool-headed, involving, often surprising way. Allying one or two Amps to Mytek's Brooklyn DAC+ makes a serious combo with a future. And because all Mytek products are said to be upgradeable via firmware downloads, you can be sure to keep up to date with the Amp's continuing evolution. Blossoming from an extremely low noise floor, the Brooklyn Amp's reproduction of my music was revelatory. It exposed the focused surge of my favorite 45rpm singles as well as instrumental details I'd somehow missed, and its sound was consistently immediate and dynamic. Using two Amps in bridged-mono mode greatly increased the flesh and blood of the sound of a single Amp, with no loss of dynamics. Now if Mytek could somehow combine all those strengths in one box, they'd really be on to something.
