Schiit Freya +
What am I doing with a vacuum tube preamplifier? I haven’t owned a tubed preamp since I bought a Sonic Frontiers Line 3 preamplifier at the turn of the century. I set that aside within a few years as I moved into multichannel because multichannel tube-based electronics were, and still are, rare. My last home experience with a vacuum tube was with a PS Audio Stellar M1200 monoblock power amp, which is a hybrid with a 12AX7-based input stage. But why not? As I wrote in reviewing a tube preamp1 back in 1997, “if the results are worthwhile, why should I care if the designer builds an amp powered by rats on a treadmill?”
The Freya’s sound in solid state buffer mode is what I expect from a good preamp in a good system.
I included the Freya + when I began looking around for a simple, inexpensive, deadly clean preamp that met my basic requirements: balanced inputs and outputs, a relay-switched resistive-ladder volume control, and a remote control. The solid state Freya S ($599), which lacks a vacuum tube mode, also qualified, but I relished the opportunity to re-expose myself to vacuum tubes.
The Freya + ticked all the boxes. It has two pairs of balanced XLR inputs, three pairs of unbalanced RCA inputs, one pair of XLR outputs, and two pairs of RCA outputs. In the active modes, the XLR output signals are balanced
