Preamp help for First Watt J2/ZU Omens combo

Good luck tk. Hope you find a good combination of tubes and wire for that Freya. There is a LOT of Freya discussion on HeadFi if you are interested. 81 pages ! (but they’re short ;-)

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-freya-impressions-and-tube-rolling-thread.832177/page-81

re my "mellow" comment...it’s definitely the combination gear, tubes & wire that gets it there. My sense coming from a 6H30/EZ80 tube preamp is that Freya is pretty neutral. I wouldn’t call it "mellow" as in slower with rolled off highs.  Hopefully it will open up and SQ will improve as well with further playing time; 10 hours is still pretty new.

+1 re jond suggesting trying SE vs XLR. I had an AQ Columbia XLR from DAC to Freya. Nice clarity but often too bright and/or lean with my gear. Tried a Cardas Parsec RCA from Freya to amp. I thought I heard a clear difference. Sounded better with RCAs which surprised me as I expected XLR would always be better. Much more relaxed sound. Not as bright. Of course had to adjust volume a bit. Could have simply been a preference on my part for Cardas vs AQ sound there but whatever the reason, another variable to experiment with.

Thanks Ghosthouse and jond!  I have sifted through the comments over on the head-fi site before.  It rambles on some but some good info in there.  I'll keep rolling with it for another week and see what happens. I am going to switch back to my SE cables and see what that does.  

Except for late night low volume listening, I also noticed the Freya doesn’t have the oomph in passive and FET modes to get the attention of my SEP 12 watt per side amp, but the tube stage has plenty of gain. My previous preamp has a 12 db boost/cut I clearly used on the "boost" setting so the Freya was initially worrisome...I only use the tube mode anyway so now I don’t care. I replaced the stock tubes with new Tung Sol 6SN7GTBs that sound fine (and I had an unused pair already) and it’s not fatiguing at all…it actually got better sounding as the Freya, the tubes, and a new pair of speakers possibly broke in somewhat. I might collect a little pile of NOS 6SN7s (I have couple of Amperex tubes I like a lot that I use in my power amp) eventually to experiment with, but the Tung Sols are staying for now. Headfi does have a pile of info which taken as a whole is a bit much.

I have a Nuforce st200 amp with Zu Omen Defs. When I was waiting on my Rogue RP-5 Pre to get repaired, I use my Pro-Ject S2 Dac as a pre (only digital inputs). I was really impressed how it sounded. In fact, if it had all the analog in's, I would probably be happy enough. Anyway, Pro-Ject has this preamp http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=PRMAPRE. AA has a good return policy. Overseas, (the Pro-jects come with universal plug adaptors for power any part of the world, this pre looks tempting: http://www.audioaffair.co.uk/pro-ject-pre-box-ds2-analogue-pre-amplifier?

This Preamp has gotten decent reviews: https://www.google.com/search?q=Nuforce+preamp&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS721US721&source=lnms&tbm=...

Good Luck

If you can pull it off, get the Linear Tube Audio MicroZOTL 2.0 preamp with the linear PSU option. It will be little more than your $1k budget but it is as good as any $20k preamp out there. I have just replaced my $18k Audio Note preamp with this amazing MicroZOTL 2.0 and I love it to the core. It will be a great match.