yeah and there were others but they got flushed!! lol
and there is still room for more!!! ha!!
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Well, the new pre-amp arrived yesterday and I’ve finally found a suitable replacement for the Freya+. PM me if interested either on the pre-amp or on some 6SN7 tubes.
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Schiit surely did something special here. I’ve got an $8.5k pre-amp in the house with stock tubes and the Freya+ with upgraded tubes managed to put up a good fight. It only loses on the Soundstage (and overall expansiveness of the sound) and top end refinement departments. I’m inclined to believe that I would fail to reliably pick them apart in a volume matched blind test.
For reference, the evaluation tool is as follows: SR1a paired with the HSA-1a amp and M Scaler+Dave with a LUMIN U1 streamer as source.
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What if the Freya was just stock tubes?
So a few minutes after my previous post I thought about the same thing, what about Freya+ with stock tubes??? I wanted to hear how much sound I was getting for the money from each preamp.
Well, the Freya+ with stock tubes (I received the JJ tubes not the Tung-Sol) becomes shouty and sibilant with some tracks, there’s also some graininess in the midrange and a slightly compressed stage. However, if you look at the MSRP of the two preamps ($899 vs $8495), we’re talking about 10x price difference. Is the Freya+ 10x worse than the other preamp?? HELL NO! On the contrary, I’m either almost getting the Freya+ Free of charge for the sound or the other brand is just straight overpriced for what is actually achievable in this day and age when it comes to tube preamps…or I’m not competent enough to discern the reasoning behind the 10x price difference in terms of sound quality.
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I’d bet more on the overpriced, but very few technical components aren’t these days. What was the preamp that bested the Freya+?
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I wonder if the JJs will relax with burn-in. Are they burned in? I don’t recall if you said.
I seem to remember the TungSol new prod Lyr 3 tube was kinda bad until i sunk 50+ hours into them, then they were better (but not great).
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The “other” preamp(s) is(are) the Balanced Audio Technology VK-33SE (and the Woo Audio WA33). Both were used with stock tubes for my evaluation. They pull ahead of the Freya+ by a noticeable margin with upgraded tubes…but the improvements are not proportional to the differences in price.
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Are JJ tubes in general hit and miss? Some people very much don’t like them others are ok with them 
.
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They were not burned-in, I replaced them after less than 2hrs in with them. So that could also be the reason for my observations.
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I’m always curious about gear so thanks for sharing.
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I just can’t recommend the Freya+ (with upgraded tubes) enough! No affiliation with Schiit, I’m just a music lover that is truly impressed with the ability that this product has to convey music to my ears at sub $1k price point! Simply unbelievable!!!
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If I were ever to venture into speakers I’d probably start with Schiit gear as preamp and amp. Freya and Vidar would probably be a very good intro.
@MrCypruz, do you think the Freya+ is a huge improvement over the Lyr 3? And if so, what would the improvement be? I’ve only had my Lyr 3 for a couple of months, and I’m happy with it, so I’m not looking to replace it just yet, but I did assume that it’s eventual replacement would be a lot more expensive, whereas the Freya+ isn’t that far off in terms of cost.
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I wouldn’t bet my money on the Vidar, based on my experience with it driving the SR1a (I’ve heard better but not for the same kind of money, I had to go at least 3x the price of the Vidar). Schiit has a plethora of affordable products and some are better than others, again based on my experience with some of their products. The Freya+ just seems to be one the best value for money that I’ve encountered in my audio journey so far, it just doesn’t have major compromises…reasonable build quality, great overall sound quality, and awesome customer service to top it off. It’s just amazing.
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Unfortunately I’ve never heard the Lyr 3 so I can’t give much of a useful advice. I’m not even sure if it has the same topology and/or internal parts as the Freya+…
Edit: I didn’t even know that the Lyr 3 was a headphone amp! Thanks @ProfFalkin for clarifying that below.
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Freya is a preamp, not a headphone amp. 
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Thanks so much @ProfFalkin, and apologies for my ignorance. I’d actually looked at the picture on the Schiit site, and there’s a black circle on the right hand side that I’d assumed was meant for a headphone. Oops.
Oh well, at least that’s one less piece of equipment I need to lust after.
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Until you get 6 headphone amps and only have 3 outputs on your DAC… then you’ll want one. hahaha. 
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If you get into speakers there are lots of amp/preamp choices. Ones that I have not had but have been impressed with are Conrad Johnson and Musical Fidelity. And of course some of the Macintosh gear is both striking and very nice. I’ve had everything from Dynaco/Dynakit through Sansui (the AU-919 integrated, I still haven’t parted with it - it is my backup). Presently I’ve gone for the price performance of Wyred4Sound STI-1000 integrated (Musical Fidelity phono amp). Wyred4Sound is class D done right. Maybe I’ll need something better after my next pair of speakers, but the old Rectilinear III’s are not high-end enough to make me upgrade.
The someday speakers? I like Magnepan 3.7i, the QUAD 2912, Wilson Audio (Yvette, or Sasha) or possibly Magico. In order of affordability.
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