Preamps

I don’t think Ayre is out of business,  I exchanged a few emails with Gary about a week ago and they just updated their instagram today.  Try posting on their Facebook page.  

@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 do you agree with this you have one???

"@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."

Cheers George

"Is Ayre out of business? Every time I try to call, NO-ONE answers the phone! Its all voice mail!

ozzy"

They moved and had somewhat of a nightmare dealing with the phone company and getting their calls forwarded to the new location.
Hope this helps.

Nonsense. I also have a large collection of 6SN7GTBs and they're dead quiet in my Freya, and the thing is as quiet as any SS preamp I've owned over the decades...or quieter. I guess I got lucky! I have a Loki EQ in the path and it's usually off, but a good test for noise is to crank the highs in the Loki and put my ear right at the tweeter horn on one of the Heresy IIIs...no tube noise at all, and really a very quiet, virtually noiseless preamp. I'll note the obvious that microphonic tubes are THE TUBES, not the amp, and to claim a preamp itself is responsible for tube noise issues from microphonics is strange indeed. I toss noisy tubes in the bin, so to speak.