December 2017

Great Audiophile Gift Ideas For The 2017 Holiday Season
Enjoy the Music.com celebrates our 12th annual gift ideas to give your audiophile!

Synergistic Research MiG 2.0 Balls

  I've been fascinated by the beneficial effects of footers and tested many over the past two decades. I'm also a tube lover and relish the three-dimensionality, air and bloom they provide to the music. The original MiG footers enhanced my components in those directions and were my 'go-to' choice for most components. (The AmCan Audio Isolator Footers in last year's Gift Guide remain my choice for turntables with their adjustable leveling feature and not being prone to sliding with their broad silicone contact area.) But for heavier components that will stay put on the MiGs – that's the way I go.

And I prefer the two pointing down/one pointing up orientation for maximized resolution, although you may prefer just the opposite to maximize ambiance. So here again, Synergistic Research comes up with an improved model in the Synergistic Research MiG 2.0 ($249, set of three). I compared them under my DAC and another DAC I borrowed. As my friend Tom said of the MiG 2.0 under his Direct Stream DAC, the music went from sounding like a very good recording to feeling like you were listening to live music. And as I mentioned in my comments on the Synergistic Blue fuse, the combination of the Blue fuse with the MiG 2.0 took me out of the hunt for a new DAC.

My digital playback was now sounding pretty much between the Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC 2 and the PS Audio Direct Stream DAC that I recently compared at the TAVES show. High in resolution like the Berkeley, yet liquid and with sufficient bloom to relax me. If you already own a bunch of MiGs, should you upgrade? Unlike fuses that are size and electrical value specific for each component, the original MiG footers can easily be rotated to other equipment, or even sold off. By combining one of their HFT High Frequency Transducers with the MiG balls in the 2.0 version, Synergistic Research has made a great footer even more effective and desirable. As with the Blue fuses, a couple of hundred dollars spent here can equate with thousands of dollars if you were to try and achieve the same result by upgrading a component. And most likely, even then you couldn't.

Recommended by Enjoy the Music.com's Rick Becker.