I am using two external aftermarket power supplies. An upgraded MCRU from the UK with an Arcam irDAC (first generation with Burr Brown chip set and input circuits designed by DCS) and an upgraded Swagman “SE” version from Hong Kong feeding a Project Tubebox DS. Neither the Project nor the Arcam are close to list price of the Brooklyn, but linear power supplies noticeably improved the performance of both sources, and my experience might be illuminating.
There are at least three reasons to upgrade the power supply on the Mytek Brooklyn. First, get a potentially noisy switching power supply out of your power strip and outlets. This pays potential dividends across the board with all of your gear, not only the directly attached source. Second, the linear supply can and should improve the performance of the directly attached gear, even with a generic power cord. My experience has been lower noise/darker backgrounds, better bass, better speed, attack and decay, more natural sounding instruments focused in the midrange like guitar, horns, voice and piano and more convincing sound staging. And third, a linear supply allows you to experiment with different power cords, where you can really pull it all together. Like the removal of the switching supply, adding a well designed power cord to one component can, in addition to improving the sound and performance of that one piece, lower the noise floor of your whole system.
All three reasons given above pay important dividends for sound, and they are additive. In some ways the ability to shape the sound to your liking via using different PCs is the most important, and it wasn’t until I found the right cord that I fully appreciated the improvement possible with the linear supply. For example, I have tried six different cords with the MCRU/irDAC combination with very different results. For now, I have decided I like the sound of silver plated high quality copper core power cables with rhodium connectors with both the analog and digital power supplies-sources, and am using a shielded cord I assembled on the DAC and an unshielded one hand built by an Audiogon vendor on the phono pre. I may change my mind later, and the separate linear power supplies allow me to continue to customize the sound to my liking.
I have listened to a lot of very expensive gear, and to my ear, the combination of quality external linear supplies and well designed but modestly priced sources with high quality and well matched power cables is very satisfying and offers a very high level of performance/$ invested.
The s-booster is a well regarded linear supply, as are supplies from Swagman Labs, MCRU, Teddy Pardo and Paul Hynes. The latter is the maker of the power supply for Empirical Audio’s Overdrive DAC, which was the inspiration for me to go down this route in the first place, along with NAIM’s fanaticism for power management and external supplies.
Good luck,
kn
There are at least three reasons to upgrade the power supply on the Mytek Brooklyn. First, get a potentially noisy switching power supply out of your power strip and outlets. This pays potential dividends across the board with all of your gear, not only the directly attached source. Second, the linear supply can and should improve the performance of the directly attached gear, even with a generic power cord. My experience has been lower noise/darker backgrounds, better bass, better speed, attack and decay, more natural sounding instruments focused in the midrange like guitar, horns, voice and piano and more convincing sound staging. And third, a linear supply allows you to experiment with different power cords, where you can really pull it all together. Like the removal of the switching supply, adding a well designed power cord to one component can, in addition to improving the sound and performance of that one piece, lower the noise floor of your whole system.
All three reasons given above pay important dividends for sound, and they are additive. In some ways the ability to shape the sound to your liking via using different PCs is the most important, and it wasn’t until I found the right cord that I fully appreciated the improvement possible with the linear supply. For example, I have tried six different cords with the MCRU/irDAC combination with very different results. For now, I have decided I like the sound of silver plated high quality copper core power cables with rhodium connectors with both the analog and digital power supplies-sources, and am using a shielded cord I assembled on the DAC and an unshielded one hand built by an Audiogon vendor on the phono pre. I may change my mind later, and the separate linear power supplies allow me to continue to customize the sound to my liking.
I have listened to a lot of very expensive gear, and to my ear, the combination of quality external linear supplies and well designed but modestly priced sources with high quality and well matched power cables is very satisfying and offers a very high level of performance/$ invested.
The s-booster is a well regarded linear supply, as are supplies from Swagman Labs, MCRU, Teddy Pardo and Paul Hynes. The latter is the maker of the power supply for Empirical Audio’s Overdrive DAC, which was the inspiration for me to go down this route in the first place, along with NAIM’s fanaticism for power management and external supplies.
Good luck,
kn