Preamps

@georgehifi Freya is a great piece of equipment but a horrible tube amp. I have a collection of best 6SN7 ever made. Noiseless in my other preamps. Same tubes in Freya make noise. Same with microphonics. The thing somehow picks up all vibration in the room and directly transfers it to tubes. Great JFET buffer. I use it between sources and studio monitors, but as  tube preamp, it's worthless.

@ricred1 Long time ago I quite caring about HT bypass on preamps with a little box from Luxma, the AS4 RCA selector between preamp/processor and the AMP. About 100 bucks shipped from Japan. About as transparent as components can be. Probably quieter than a relay in a preamp. Now, you do have to get up and press a button. Save yourself some money, buy a Don Sachs preamp for $3K with all the options and have him install a large second coupling cap for subwoofer. I have both his preamp and a LS28 from ARC and both are about as good as it gets.

@wolf_garcia Of course you can blame the preamp for microphonics. Same tubes in Don Sachs preamp are silent. The tubes are Super Line grade VT231s from Andy at VTS. The chassis on Freya just picks up a lot more vibration than other preamps I've experienced.

As to noise, I'm not the only one complaining. The forums are full of Freya complains. It's unbearable into both pairs of my studio monitors. It's better into a pair of hifi speakers. 

Audio Research LS28 is a silent tube preamp. Stick your ears next to tweeters, nothing. In Freya, the tubes are a fun afterthought with $8 dollars worth of coupling caps. Like I said, amazing, transparent volume control with JFET buffer, but a tube preamp it ain't.

Freya and LS28 are not even playing the same game. I've got a ton Schitt gear (Freya, Saga, Gungnir MB, Yggy), I've got a ton of AR gear, I've got a ton of Luxman gear. I've had the Schiit integrated. I've replaced it with a Yamaha AS1100 for the same price used. Schiit doesn't even play in the same game as the Yamaha. Connect the Freya preamp to AR REF75 and the soundstage collapses both width but especially depth wide and even in JFET mode is more noisy. Same with Saga. They make great gear at a fair price, but to say it sounds as good as gear costing 10x is BS. Sure you can get a great preamp for not a lot of money, but it ain't Freya. It's Don Sachs model 14. Better or as good as LS28 for not much more $$$ than Schiit gear. The coupling caps Don uses cost half as much Freya does. Freya uses coupling caps that are $2 bucks a piece. You can't cheat when it comes to coupling caps in tube gear. You just can't.