[bequietjk]

I haven't had experience with the Ember. My opinion on the Polaris is that it has a kind brightness and warmth to it. Perhaps someone can chime in who has used both the Ember and Polaris?

 

[Th3Drizzl3]

its not identical to the ember but it is a warmer sounding solid state.

 

[Tuneslover]

its not identical to the ember but it is a warmer sounding solid state.

Perfect! That's what I would like, not identical but slightly different from the Ember. Yeah I'm getting tired of the bright Jot, I think I'll have to consider the Polaris. Thanks.

 

[Tunkejazz]

I have both, one at home one at work. The sound signature overall is rather similar, but there are subtle differences. Both are excellent all-rounders.
In my opinion, the Polaris has a better defined bass. Not necessarily thinner nor fatter, just more articulate, you hear it slightly more defined in the deepest tunes.
With the Ember, once again in my opinion, the sounds is perceived with more depth, and the upper mids a bit more polished, but in both cases we are talking about subtle effects.

You can tune the Polaris a bit more and it certainly has a pitch dark background compared to the Ember with certain tubes. None of the two are bright or dull. The right amount.
If you want to hear the Ember at its best, I would recommend a good 6SN7 (+Jeremy's adapter) and be done with it.

I have a bit of a weakness for tubes and I listen to a lot of acoustic, blues and rock. I find the Ember a bit more enjoyable with those types of music.
With electronic and heavy metal I would pick the Polaris. With Polaris you also can forget about the great can of worms that tubes bring on the table...

I use both with HD650,HD800 and HE400i and I had absolutely no problem to drive them to ear melting/ground shaking levels if that is a concern to you.
I don't think I can discern with my ears a lot more than what I wrote here, even if I would like to start describing something that reads more like wine tasting

Good luck!

 

[hallflourish]

Does anyone experience hiss on the Project Polaris? I tried using my Dunu-1000 (Impedance: 10Ω | Sens: 98 dB) with it and I hear a high frequency hiss or noise. I'm not sure whether it comes from the power supply, but changing wall outlets does not help. Has anyone had luck with eliminating this noise by using a better power supply?

Settings: High BW, Impedance: 0.1Ω, Attenuation: Yes, Gain: Low. When I switch to the medium impedance setting (32Ω), the hiss disappears.

 

[dakanao]

Can you connect the Polaris/Ember/Sunrise etc. to the laptop? If so, how?

 

[OldDude04]

Can you connect the Polaris/Ember/Sunrise etc. to the laptop? If so, how?

You can use on of THESE.

 

[dakanao]

You can use on of THESE.

Is there not a quality loss this way?

 

[OldDude04]

Is there not a quality loss this way?

The cable simply takes the signal your laptop's DAC is sending out through it's headphone jack and converts it to RCA to plug into your amp. The quality of the sound will depend upon your laptop. The Amp won't improve that sound, only make it louder.

 

[dakanao]

The cable simply takes the signal your laptop's DAC is sending out through it's headphone jack and converts it to RCA to plug into your amp. The quality of the sound will depend upon your laptop. The Amp won't improve that sound, only make it louder.

I see, so there's no point in getting the Polaris, if I'm going to plug it in the headphone's jack to drive the HD650? Because right now I have a Chord Mojo, but it's been recommend to me that the Polaris would be a better match for the HD 650, but if the Polaris connected to the laptop is only going to make the sound louder (which isn't necessary, because my laptops headphone out is loud enough) than it wouldn't be worth it to sell the Mojo, and get the Polaris instead (I can only have 1 device)

 

[OldDude04]

I see, so there's no point in getting the Polaris, if I'm going to plug it in the headphone's jack to drive the HD650? Because right now I have a Chord Mojo, but it's been recommend to me that the Polaris would be a better match for the HD 650, but if the Polaris connected to the laptop is only going to make the sound louder (which isn't necessary, because my laptops headphone out is loud enough) than it wouldn't be worth it to sell the Mojo, and get the Polaris instead (I can only have 1 device)

If you're getting loud enough sound and you like what you're hearing, then I wouldn't buy the Polaris. The Polaris would color your sound a little, as it is a slightly warmer sound than the Mojo, but you could get the same result by EQ'ing with your current set up.

*Edit* Also, if you're currently using the DAC of the Mojo, then going to the DAC in your laptop and getting a Polaris might be a dip in the quality of your sound.

 

[AnotherN00b]

Howdy Pardners! I have a Polaris on its way as a birthday present which will replace my Magni 2 Uber (will be replacing the Modi 2 with a Topping D50 next but that's beside the point). I'm primarily upgrading to the Polaris because I recently picked up a HE-560 and wasn't happy with how bright and thin it sounded from the Schiit stack. I'm posting to see if I can get jumper recommendations from any of you who have paired the Polaris with the phones below [I realize an amp isn't going to magically change all my headphones signatures and capabilities but I made some notes on what aspects I would ideally like to improve if possible but really mostly looking for what has worked for y'all]:

HE-560 (would like to improve the bass/mid-bass impact, give the mids more body/presence, and tame the highs a bit)
M1060 (pretty happy with the balance but would like to improve overall clarity and tame the 5k harshness on some recordings)
TH-X00 (would like to reduce the bass muddiness, bring mids more forward, improve linearity and clarity)
HE-400i (seem darker, less clear and open than the M1060 and HE-560 so more detail and openness would be welcome along with more bass impact perhaps)
T50RP mkII (modded) (probably looling for the same enhancements as the 400i more or less)

Thanks in advance for sharing any settings that have worked well for you!

 

[Tunkejazz]

Howdy Pardners! I have a Polaris on its way as a birthday present which will replace my Magni 2 Uber (will be replacing the Modi 2 with a Topping D50 next but that's beside the point). I'm primarily upgrading to the Polaris because I recently picked up a HE-560 and wasn't happy with how bright and thin it sounded from the Schiit stack. I'm posting to see if I can get jumper recommendations from any of you who have paired the Polaris with the phones below [I realize an amp isn't going to magically change all my headphones signatures and capabilities but I made some notes on what aspects I would ideally like to improve if possible but really mostly looking for what has worked for y'all]:

HE-560 (would like to improve the bass/mid-bass impact, give the mids more body/presence, and tame the highs a bit)
M1060 (pretty happy with the balance but would like to improve overall clarity and tame the 5k harshness on some recordings)
TH-X00 (would like to reduce the bass muddiness, bring mids more forward, improve linearity and clarity)
HE-400i (seem darker, less clear and open than the M1060 and HE-560 so more detail and openness would be welcome along with more bass impact perhaps)
T50RP mkII (modded) (probably looling for the same enhancements as the 400i more or less)

Thanks in advance for sharing any settings that have worked well for you!

I have a Polaris and the He400i. The latter are not very different in bass character compared to the 560s to my understanding. I use Polaris with the lowest output resistance and full-bandwidth. That way the bass hits a beet deeper in my opinion. The problem of the He400i is that they have a peak around ~9 kHz and you cannot do much about it with the bandwidth settings as it is not hight enough in frequency. So if there are instruments with a lot of presence around that frequency, you will feel the peak a lot, even if the headphones keep the rest of the treeble under control. I guess the 560 are better in this respect looking at the comparison plot between the frequency response of the two: https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/hifiman/he-560/ (see second plot of the measurements, where the 560 does not have the peak).

Perhaps not what you are looking for, but as a complement to my Ember/Polaris I bought a Kameleon inline filter some time ago and the effect was much larger than changing jumpers around because it addresses the issues of each particular headphone from measurements. The designed of the Polaris used my pair to perform his measurements (mine is the older version SMC connectors, described in the second half):
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/hifiman/he400i/

You can also see the effect of the filter in the frequency response filter: more quantity of deep-bass, it balances a bit the hole in the mids and tames the peak in the upper mids.
The problem is that the price of the kameleon is (sadly) not low.

 

[AnotherN00b]

Thanks for the input -- much appreciated!

 

[cinisi]

Hi guys!

Question. I received a 2nd hand Polaris from a fellow head-fi'er. It works great but the volume knob isn't straight. See picture. Is this something I can easily fix by redoing the soldering on this knob? Anyone have experience with that?

Thanks!