Dan, honestly - it may be my "all around" favorite pre-amp ever. Freya is very easy to listen to and it draws you into the music in a big way :-)

Thanks for the review(s). Nice to hear from an end-user as opposed to a writer/reviewer.
Just passed on a Bryston & a BAT preamp to give a Vidar a try with my Saga and have been wondering if the Freya would be a good upgrade. Think I'll listen to the Vidar to see what I think single-ended (no XLRs on the Saga) and then decide if a second Vidar & Freya are "in the cards" in balanced mode.

Glenn, will be interested in your conclusions. Saga -plus Vidar should be good! Reviewers have made various comments about that combo vs. Freya plus 2 Vidar's (balanced), but that 's a bit of extra coin for that bump up. Then again, with Schiit it won't "break the bank" to give it a whirl.

The Schiit folks says that Saga actually measures a touch better than does Freya (for whatever that is worth). I've used some killer pre-amps and I have to say that Freya is quite satisfying even with having owned some of the TOTL high $$$ pre-amps. Not sure how it would stack up side by side, but .... using Freya - I'm not feeling like I'm missing out on anything significant. I does run hot though! Careful where you touch it! And there is no channel balance control either (not missed it, but its not there). Oh, and being able to switch remotely between passive, JFET buffer and Active Tube stages - leads to some audio nervosa! I think I finally have it figured out though. I don't use the passive stage (good but not as good as the others), I use the JFET buffer for most recordings and the tube stage for recordings that lack a bit of "body" or have a "strident" character to them.

Though I placed my Vidar order early yesterday, have not received a schiip-date as of yet. I do like that the width of the Saga & Vidar are a match. Can set the Saga on top of the Vidar as the "great downsize" continues.

Haha Glenn, I like that!

Was wondering if anyone would notice. ;)

Did speak via e-mail with Schiit this a.m. and they gave me a 3wk ship-date. Looking forward to the Vidar as my Canton speakers need some power compared to the 20wpc tubes I've been using with them.

Has anyone tried other 6SN7s in a Freya? I ask because I have an amp which uses a 6SN7 driver tube. I have nearly 20 6SN7s and went through a long period of comparing them. The one I liked the least was the new Russian Tung-sol 6SN7. I like a lot of new re-issue tubes but not these. It sounded more constrained. My vintage Westinghouse, Sylvania, Hytron, etc., all sounded better.

In my case, my amp uses just 1 6SN7 so I don't have the issue of matching and it was relatively inexpensive to pick up a bunch of them to compare.

In my Cary amps and now the Saga pre-amp I find the Sylvania 'coin-base' to provide the sound I prefer over some of the other NOS tubes. Have not gotten around to rolling any re-issue 6SN7s.

Glenn .... how does the Sylvania 'coin-base' tube differ sonically from the Tung Sol ???

Been a while since I listened to the Tung Sols, so I went into my 'stash' and see one of the reason I don't use them is that they were quite short lived (I loosely track hours). I've tried a couple of flavors of RCA (black plate and red-base(?)), standard base Sylvania, GE and a couple of flavors (green & yellow lettering) Sylvania coin-base. But, to my ears the coin-base beat them all, so I've stuck with them. To me, they are smoother, bottom to top, and maybe just a bit tipped up in the mid-bass, which works well for me. Also, they offer the best on female vocals to my ears. The Russian 6N8S that comes in the Saga isn't bad. YMMV.