Tube Rolling Woes

Hello Glen -
I own the first gen Freya so am speaking from that experience. Hope it is relevant.

-Have you confirmed a proper impedance match between pre and amp?

-My next thought is be patient. 75 hours might be enough for the tubes but maybe not for the Freya to settle and "burn-in" (as recently controversial as burn-in time has become). Regardless that, my listening enjoyment benefits from allowing new gear adequate burn-in and settling time.

- It’s not unusual for installation of a new piece of gear to require "re-tuning the system" entailing (at least) adjustments to speaker placement. Knowing the rest of your gear and cabling would be helpful to members here. Maybe the Freya is just letting you hear a wider frequency range. Can you move speakers closer to the wall behind them? With some speaker types this can improve lower mid range and bass.

-I’m not sure there’s a way to accurately predict what impact tube rolling is going to have on your system sound to your ears. You might get some helpful advice from the likes of Jim McShane, Brent Jessee or Upscale Audio. Some vendors will allow returns on noisy tubes or if you just don’t like the overall sound (e.g., Brent Jessee but you’ll pay up front for the right to return, as I recall).

- I’ve run probably half a dozen different tube brands (NOS and new production) in the Freya. Some VERY inexpensive ($10/tube) Russian 6N8S that used to be a stock offering from Schiit did seem bright and harsh at the start but eventually settled down and warmed up tone-wise. Still not my favorites but did get better than they were out of the box.  (Right now listening with NOS RCAs in gain and current production Tung-Sols in driver).

-A bright top end (one that makes strings tough on the ears) is a personal bug a boo and something I battled for a long time given metal dome tweeters on the Totem Forests I have. This had nothing to do with the Freya.  Thin mids and bass, however, were never a problem even with brand new el-cheapo tubes.  Now, issues with high frequencies are all things of the past having made adjustments to speaker position, changes to cabling (including choices between upper vs lower binding posts vs which diagonal connection pattern) and installing an Aquarius power conditioner.

Hope this will give you some ideas to explore in addition to tube rolling.

That is the trade off, sometimes. Tone control through valves is tough and it takes someone that knows what they are doing. Tone control circuits were eliminated because of cost AND the noise they can add to the signal.

It is best if you plan to keep the unit, speak, listen and spend. Don't spend, speak and NOT listen.. I do the latter all the time.. Not so much anymore.. I find my pockets stay a little fuller and personally I stay a little calmer.. :-)

Talk the Brent Jesse and tell him that you have and what you want to do. SEE what it cost... That is what an OLD Mechanic would do...

Yes the little Freya + is a neat little unit. It is pretty transparent too. You are getting more than what you pay for MOST of the time. They are a good deal. NOT GREAT, NOT Perfect. But good and better than any at that price range... IMHO I like the look and weight too.. Heavy...

Ghosthouse nailed it. Audiophiles love to talk about expectation bias. Which is largely fake, by the way. Hardly anyone ever talks about recency bias, which seems to be hard-wired into our brains. You made a change, its not perfect, you assume all the imperfections are due to the change. It is equally likely to have had imperfections there all along, only you had a combination of components and setup that had kept you in the dark, so to speak. The new component in this case is not creating them but merely revealing them. What ghosthouse said is correct. 

That's what I think. Give it time. Tube rolling is not for fine tuning magic, not patching over shortcomings. 

First to everyone: THANK YOU for the great advice! Some have asked about what the rest of the system is:

Freya+
PS Audio Stellar S300 Power Amp
ifi NEO iDSD DAC
Denon Pro DN-500BD MKII DVD
APC H20 Power Conditioner
Bluejeans Cables throughout
Triangle BR03 speakers (waiting for Tekton Impact Monitors on order)

I completely get the risk of eBay. As usual, the cheap way doesn't work. 

Ghost: All great feedback. I'll try the patience thing - I'm going to put the OEM tubs back in and use them for a few weeks, leaving the pre on 24/7 and see how it goes. I listened to an Upscale Audio YouTube video and he was emphatic about all tubes - new or old need a minimum of 200 hrs. before evaluation is meaningful. I'll mess around with the speaker placement and see if that helps. I've played with the toe-in and it helped a bit. More work needs to be done there. 

OldHvyMec: Always good advice. So far, I did a lot of research, spent then listened... So I'm listening to you all now and appreciate the feedback. I'll let the OEM tubes settle in for a few hundred hours and see where I stand at that point. If the voicing issue is still there, Checking in with Brent, McShane, and Upscale and see what the options are. 

Miller: I've been lurking a bit and have always appreciated your comments. Thanks for affirming what others have said on this one. There's no doubt that my little system has all manner of flaws, and the Freya has likely uncovered some of them. With 2 kids in college, this is the budget I'm dealing with. It's a good reminder that tubes aren't effective tone controls.  As an aside, I have a pair of powered Tannoy nearfield studio monitors that I use in a small room system. While they are revealing, there is something in the upper midrange that goes right through me. So I purchased a Schiit Loki EQ (a very very poor man's Cello Audio Pallette) and learned that an EQ won't fix a speaker voicing that you hate...

Thanks All!

Are you experiencing similar issues (top end is bright, and the mids and bass are very thin) in the passive and/or buffer modes as you are in tube mode?