[MohawkUS]

It is good to be back, I worked my way up the price ladder for headphones a few years back and then switched over to speakers and now I'm building up an affordable rig mostly for use in sampling music on youtube & non-competitive gaming. Onboard computer sound has come a long way in the past few years.. or so I thought. I decided to compare my new Beyer T70s hooked through a vintage receiver into my DAC ( Ultra-Fi DAC41 at present) and now my thoughts on the onboard are as follows "Notes play at the right frequency and at good timing.. but they are just notes. Glossy balls of sound with little definition to them." With the stereo receiver there was music under a terrible noisefloor, attenuation artifacts, and a hopelessly incompetent treble performance, graininess. Problem: Nothing in my stereo chain has a headphone amplifier and the vintage amps I used to use don't mate with sensitive Tesla drivers.

To get to the point I need an affordable-ish amplifier so that I can take advantage of the DAC I already own and get off the Realtek. I want to avoid high-gain/power where I'll need to turn down the volume and experience channel imbalance(I struggled with a pair of flagship Ultrasones in the past to find a modern amplifier which performs with sensitive dynamics.) This I have to emphasize as my DAC has a hot 4V out. My priority is maintaining the endless treble extension of the T70s which is outshining my stereo right now. Mids I am good with so long as they're not excessively forward or scaling up the size of instruments, T70s are a tad hollow to start so a subtle thickening would be fine. I don't tune in much to the lows so long as they remain definition and don't become over impactful. Soundstaging is what it is, I find I can adapt to different presentations easily so long as it doesn't take an extreme presentation(on stage performance or endless depth.)

I'm aware it will prove simpler to pick a low powered tube amplifier, I don't have enough experience with them to determine if treble rolloff is a byproduct of using tubes or transformer coupling. Or tuning. That's my concern there. I find analytical presentations less offensive than most so I'd pick SS over tube all else being equivalent, more a preference than rule. Budget is <$600 and because I would like to buy a new monitor this year cheaper is better. Every audio component here is pre-owned so I don't mind continuing the trend. As its the most obvious choice I've come across I should say that I am not considering the Lycan due to failure of a Burson amplifier I owned in the past.

 

[k4rstar]

I would recommend checking out the Project Polaris solid state amp from Garage1217.

 

[MohawkUS]

I would recommend checking out the Project Polaris solid state amp from Garage1217.

I see you have the Polaris, how are you liking it? Did you compare it to other choices prior to purchase? I read up on it and it seems it is designed more so for natural sound than for maximum clarity which isn't likely to line up with my taste.

 

[k4rstar]

I see you have the Polaris, how are you liking it? Did you compare it to other choices prior to purchase? I read up on it and it seems it is designed more so for natural sound than for maximum clarity which isn't likely to line up with my taste.

 
I posted my impressions in the Polaris thread, but I am enjoying it very much so far. I was also considering the Schiit Asgard 2, Lake People G109 and Meier Corda Jazz-ff as other solid state contenders. I ultimately chose the Polaris because I like the design, customization and have heard good things about it's pairing with HD6x0. It also runs cool and has a smaller form factor compared to something like the Asgard 2 which  matters to me.
 
I haven't heard enough amplifiers to comment on the clarity, but I don't have any complaints thus far.