This is for Georgehifi especially but others can chime in.

@cleeds   You made me laugh. Thank You. 

As Thoreau said, sometimes circumstantial evidence is very strong, such as when you find a trout in the milk.

@georgehifi  I’ll bite. I’m not a rich guy. What makes you say that these  to preamp’s are comparable? 

What makes you say that these to preamp’s are comparable?

Didn’t say they were comparable, but what I did say is the Freya has the better volume control system of the two.
And if you know me that’s what I’m heavily into with my product (passive preamps).
As most sources have enough output these days to make any poweramp run to full output (clipping). without a need of an active preamp with even more gain and noise that’s not needed.

A quote from Nelson Pass himself:
"We’ve got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more.

Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.

Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.

What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.

And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp."

Cheers George

I could not agree more with George hifi about the virtues of passive pre'amps' that are not even amps of course. In the old days, with sources of highly varying but often pretty low output level (plus phono that needed riaa equalization as well) you needed a pre amplifier to get all those different sources at the same level. On top, the preamp gave a switching facility and tone and balance control. These days, if you are only using digital sources such as disc players or a DAC, you usually have all signals at the same 2.0V of the Red Book standard, which happens to be the input sensitivity of many power amplifiers. If you are using a computer as a source, and a  DAC with variable output, you can do the tone and balance control on the computer (and more precisely than on a traditional pre amp). So depending on the sources that you use, you can save a lot of money, and get marginally better results. I am very pleased with my very simple desktop system: computer, ODAC, Emotiva Control Freak volume control, some inline attenuators because my Quad 40-5- amplifier has an unusual 0.5 Volt input sensitivity. Cost of the electronics: $125+$50+20+$200 (second hand, but refurbished) = $395. Speakers are Harbeth P3ESR, and hence by far the most expensive component.