Mytek - All in on Roon


Hi everyone!

Looks like Mytek is making significant changes to it's product line up, in addition to changing factories.  Uncharacteristically, their PR states they lost confidence in the previous factory in Poland.

Not only is Mytek producing a new Empire series but they are using a shared streaming platform based on Roon and Linux. All of their streaming products will now have Roon core built in, with no need for an external Roon core server.  Theres not much details here in terms of the CPU being used, but the DSP capabilities of Roon seem to be scheduled to come after initial product release.

Read the original information here:
https://mytek.audio/news
erik_squires
It always is a good idea not to pay for promises from audio manufacturers.
The integrated Roon core seems a great idea to reduce the box count needed to run Roon.
I wish everyone in this world only the best really. But people should be very careful about spending money you can't afford to lose on products from this company. They have a $20k DAC that is discounted before it's even shipped, and they want a preorder deposit of $7500 just to order, and then the other $7500 to get the thing. The same page has multiple products promised to ship this year, which is really hard to do all at once. And several products due this month, but still not available. I've shipped a lot of products, and the problem looks pretty clear: a visionary scientist who really needs to focus on one great product with broad appeal. And he needs to hand the financial reins to someone who knows business. I really hope they have a chance to make a turn-around like that, because the tech sounds amazing. In the meantime, I'd only buy products that are shipping, and without any proprietary technology like custom operating systems.
It's an interesting development that raises questions.
  1. Is a Roon license included, or does it become an additional cost for the owner?
  2. If Roon isn't included, can the unit be used without a Roon license (say, via OpenHome or UPnP/DLNA)? Or is it useless without Roon?
Does this mean my Brooklyn Bridge is a boat anchor? Should I gaze on it with loathing? Should I finally realize that my ears & taste are just plain bad? Talk about audio nervosa...