New Schiit / Preamps and Power Amp (was Putting the Schiit Signal Up)

Any impressions about the Saga yet? How it affects sound as a pre-amp, etc.

 

See the SBAF Impressions subheading in the first post of the Compendium at the link in my sig.

 

Hm, so sounds like the Saga is like the Valhalla, where it's not very tubey sounding. I'll wait for Freya impressions before I make any decisions, I suppose. Thank you!

 

How many outputs does Freya have ? was it 3 SE output and 1 BAL output (total 4 outputs)?

 

Created the Compendium so we did not clog up the main thread with questions like this.

Output: 1 XLR, 2 RCA (see picture of Freya's rear in the RMAF Pictures subheading in first post; Freya section of Preamps post).

 

Two SE RCA, one Balanced XLR. Pic here:
http://www.theaudiobeat.com/rmaf2016/rmaf2016_schiit.htm

 

The tube stays powered in any mode on the Saga. Probably not a huge deal given the low(ish) 200V rails.
Saga will work when no tube is inserted (passive only, duh.)

Freya will shut down the tubes when used in passive or JFET buffer modes. Makes more sense, since there's 4x of them running on 300V rails.

 

My noobness will be showing here but... I honestly don't understand the various modes in the preamps and what they mean.

I've thought about tinkering and adding a tube preamp to my Hegel H360. Problem is the only way to do this is through one SE input.

Given the two preampse mentioned here, what is the best avenue to obtain the most tube sound?

My DAC I could put in the system is a Gungnir Multibit.

 

Thank you, I also got a socket saver which will increase the height even more. I may need to put mine on the bottom larger shelf of my rack.

 

Hi There, I'm thinking of getting the Freya - because I'd love to experiment with proper, yet affordable Tube sound.

Before Schiit came out with this I believed 'the most transparent pre-amp is no pre-amp' - and had my only source (Yggdrasil) go balanced directly into my power amp (ATI 6002); I have a pair of Rothwell -30dB attenuators before the power amp - and I'd fine tune the volume via Jriver on RPI - my source, currently I probably attenuate an additional -10dB on average digitally.

I wonder how what the effect of using Freya in passive mode (without the attenuators obviously) would be compared to the attenuators? I can't help thinking I would be adding another device, another set of balanced IC etc...

What do you think? Would it sound better, worse or the same?

 

For reference, a pic of the remote. Happened to see this and grabbed it out of a video.
Maybe someone with a Saga could take a nice pic?

 

Will do when I get home tonight...

(Sorry I didn't do this earlier. Duh...)

 

Hello all,

New here as of today. Very interested in reviews of this preamp. How does it sound? Is the build quality as good as other Schiit components? I currently own the Valhalla 2 headphone/pre. I am thinking this may be what I would like to have in place of the Valhalla 2. Especially since it is an actual preamp ( with a remote).

Currently running my turntable through a Little Bear t10 to the Valhalla 2 then to my Dynaco ST35 amp out to my Klipsch Kg4's.

Thanks for the thread. I enjoyed reading it.

Bakerman

 

My Saga arrived today. I decided to move the Jotunheim into the speaker rig as well in order to listen to vinyl on headphones should I so choose. I've had it turned off since I got the Andromeda/ZX2 and given that I have a GOV2+ Infinity at my desk anyway the Jotunheim felt like it was wasted on the desktop.



I haven't done any specific A/Bing of the Saga versus going directly into the power amp. Going from audio memory, since I've been running direct into the power amp for a while, it certainly doesn't seem to sound any worse, and may be fuller but it's hard to say beyond simply saying it sounds good. Sorry for not being able to really pinpoint the specific ways in which it changes the sound or presentation.

I did take a photo of the remote since I know some people wanted to see it:


I have to confess I can't hear much of a difference at all between the tube and passive output modes. For now I'm leaving it on tube. So far the only two issues I'm having are that I've had to turn my amp up to max in order to not hit the volume max on the Saga, which I think is likely due to my speakers really needing more power than the amp has. As they are just temporary speakers until my Orcas come in, and the Orcas are far more efficient, I don't think it will be an issue once I have the Orcas, hopefully within the next two weeks. The other issue is that it doesn't auto detect whether an input is being used, so I have to cycle through all five inputs to go back to a previous input, which is a shame but not the end of the world. It's not like I'd normally be bouncing quickly back and forth between multiple inputs anyway. I don't know if that is normal for most preamps or if it was one of the ways Schiit was able to keep the cost down.

 

Hmm, I'm also hearing a constant low pitch hum when I have nothing playing and the volume turned up. Surely that's not normal, is it? Could that be a ground loop?