New user intro: some questions...

Hello,

An introduction, and some newby questions.

I have an old 1980's Denon DRA-345R Stereo Receiver, and some brand-new Elac Debut B6.2 speakers. I have an old Technics SL-D2 turntable, with a new Ortofon 2M Red cartridge installed on it. I also have an XM radio, a Panasonic Blu-ray player, for CD's, and my computer as my music sources. This is all set up in a small 12 X 12 bedroom (man cave). It sounds pretty nice to me, but needs upgrading; the receiver is old, and the pots are all noisy, despite cleaning with DeOxIt contact cleaner. I have a small budget to work with, up to around $4k. I have no requirement to spend it all.

I'm thinking of building a system around a Schiit Freya and 2 Vidars, but I have some questions. I still want to be able to use headphones, so I'll need a headphone amp, and I'll need a phono preamp. I'll also need a DAC, to get the most of my computer audio.

I'm thinking of bying a Schiit Jotunheim with multibit DAC, and a Schiit phono preamp as well.

I'm kind of enamoured of the idea having tubes in the system, thus the Freya, and I've never even seen XLR interconnects until recently, when searching around for what to buy. See, I'm a true newby.

Now for the questions:
The Freya has two sets of balanced inputs, and only one set of balanced outputs. These balanced outputs will go to the Vidars, but that leaves only single-ended outputs to go out to the headphone amp (Jotunheim?). This is probably OK, right? My most expensive set of headphones at this point are Audio-Technica M40X's.

The Freya has no tone control, and no balance control. I'm not used to that, but it seems that the current wisdom is the less you have in the signal path, the better. I've never used separate amp/preamp before, and certainly not in monoblock configuration. How much do I have to worry about the two Vidars having the same output levels? Is this a valid reason for buying 2 at once, as opposed to buying one and deciding later that I need to add a second? Would I be more likely to get matched units by buying them both now, or does that even enter into the discussion?

I know that if I only buy one Vidar, then that means I'll have to use the single-ended outputs of Freya to go to the Vidar. That's also probably OK too, right? I mean, this is all far superior to what I'm running now.

Thanks for reading...

Steve Boyer