This Hi-Res headphone amp is made for your MagSafe mobile – Fosi Audio keeping things neat and tidy

(Image credit: Fosi Audio MD3 attached to a dark grey iPhone against a gradient blue background)

Quick Summary

Fosi Audio has announced the MD3 headphone amp/DAC, which attaches magnetically to your phone – via MagSafe on iPhones, for example.

It's also launched a gamer-friendly amp/DAC with 7.1 spatial audio.

Fosi Audio took some interesting new products to the CanJam Dubai show this month, including two portable headphone amp/DACs. The most interesting of the two is the MD3, which is a very compact and good-looking device that attaches magnetically to the back of your phone.

The MD3 is based on the ESS ES9039Q2M DAC, which is paired with four ES9603 headphone amplifiers in a true balanced circuit design.

There's an aluminium shielding plate to prevent interference from the magnetic attachment and it features dual USB-C ports that enable simultaneous use and charging. There's a rotatable 1.28-inch LCD display for monitoring and controlling, and physical buttons for pocket-friendly operation.

Power output is 75mW into 32 ohms on the 3.5mm output and 180mW on the balanced 4.4mm output.

Fosi Audio DS3 with IEMs on a black surface — Fosi Audio's DS3 is a portable headphone amp/DAC that's good for gaming

Fosi Audio MD3 and DS3: key features

In addition to the MD3, there's also the new Fosi Audio DS3, which the company says is the world’s first XMOS-powered DAC/amp in a battery-free dongle design.

It features a 16-core XMOS processor clocked at 1.6GHz and promises low power consumption and high precision clock management. It has the same ESS DAC as the MD3, supporting PCM up to 32-bit/768 kHz and native DSD512, and delivers up to 220mW of power.

The DS3 has been made for gamers as well as phones, and it has a dedicated Game Mode with UAC 1.0 compatibility for consoles as well as selectable sound modes including 7.1 spatial audio.

Fosi's own FPS sound engine amplifies footsteps and gunfire to help you better hear your enemies and personal equalisation controls are coming soon in a firmware update.

We don't yet have pricing or availability for the MD3, but the DS3 is available now for $139 (about £101 / €117 / AU$200).

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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