Fosgate and Musical Surroundings' Happy Pairing

Musical Surroundings, the distributor whose headquarters are in my notoriously crime-ridden town of Oakland, had multiple presences at AXPONA. One was on the mezzanine, where Mike Fajen was touting the pairing of the Fosgate Signature headphone amp ($1500) with Musical Surroundings' new MYDAC II (t1200). To these ears, the pairing is felicitous. Heard through revealing Sennheiser HD 800 headphones, the sound was exceptionally nice, warm, and lovely.

Mike reports that Jim Fosgate prides himself on designing simple and elegant circuits. In this case, his headphone amp uses two 12AX7 tubes, and offers both bass boost and a surround circuit. The MYDAC II, designed by Michael Yee, is claimed to digitally reconstruct the information that MP3s permanently lose in the ruthless compression process, and also rebuilds music streamed over AirPort Express. At least, that's what my scribble says.

Source : stereophile[dot]com