Schiit amps, freya preamp

I'm pretty sure the Freya+ isn't fully balanced. It converts balanced to single-ended and back to balanced on the outputs. It's still a nice preamp for the money.

I owned one of the original Freya preamps for a little while and thought it had a nice sound with good channel-to-channel volume tracking. Some people might be annoyed by the loud relay clicking when the volume is changed.

I replaced it with a Parasound JC-2 which is admittedly quite a bit more expensive, but was also a nice step up in sound quality. 

Thanks,
checked and unclear when will be shipped if I order.  Strange that site does not say there are delays. So good I asked.  
Also looking at other preamps.  

I have a Saga+ and Aegir amp and am very pleased with them. The Aegir is only 20 watts/channel at 8 ohms (40 @ 4) so it is not a high power amp if that’s what you need. However, I am easily powering a set of Ohm 1000s to my preferred listening level of 80 to 85 dB and it does this using about 1/4 of its rated power. (I was curious if it had enough oomph for me so have it hooked up to a meter to watch power output while I’m listening. This gives me an accurate read of my power needs. I also use a sound level meter to get a good read of my actual volume level.)

I just sold my Hypex amp with over seven times the power of the Aegir as I prefer the sound of the latter.

Now, power/volume is a logarithmic relationship so power needs skyrocket quickly if one listens at 90 dB plus levels and has medium or lower efficiency speakers. This shows it is important to have a good understanding of how one listens to music and what it takes for your equipment to deliver YOUR preferred experience.

The Vidar has MANY issues with going into protection when speakers run below 4 ohms.

Well maybe into 2ohms, but this independent tested Vidar is quite respectable with both channels driven, giving 230w continuous into 4ohm, and 310w peak into 4ohm. https://ibb.co/k239HML no mention of shutdown or blowing up.

Cheers George

The Vidar has MANY issues with going into protection when speakers run below 4 ohms. There are countless threads to back this up. The Aegir is a lower power, sort of class a but not really that can’t drive anything challenging.
Neither will power magneplanars well. This has also been well documented. If an amp manufacturer doesn’t want to tell you what topology it is - run. Run away and take your money with you.

As for preamps, the Freya has good specs but has a host of issues that spans all of its revisions. Thought it has improved many still find the chassis rings, also gets hot, loose single ended connections, supplied tubes are unusable, and the volume ticking sound, which is a “feature”. The Saga is a solid state preamp with a tube buffer. It seems to be ok for what it is and what it costs.

This post is utter nonsense and it's too bad that trollers still frequent this site.  The chassis doesn't ring, the connections are fine and the tubes are wonderful.  It does get hot after an hour in tube mode, but it's designed to run like this.  And again, Stereophile lists the Aegir on it's Class A listing, right along side of amps costing over 100K(look up that list and prove me wrong).  I wonder why they did that?  Maybe because it sounds so amazing. 

Also, yes the Freya+ is fully balanced, for those who have fully balanced sources like the Bifrost and on up in their dac line.