Or build their own ...It's something I'm frequently asked about by customers but simply can't give an answer because we just don't have the data.
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Schiit Freya S Preamplifier Review
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Yep. And it's easy to fix: just use several resistors in series; it reduces voltage over each resistor which reduces distortion accordingly.
I don't think so. @amirm did measure with attenuation of -6 dB in low gain. He should remeasure at max volume (and maybe -6dB input voltage?) to see if THD goes down.
It’s,s bougth used so how old is it really .? So one channel is probably broken ?
How robust are preamps can you destroy them by shorting an output for example .
Are the rca output broken in a similar way ?
How robust are preamps can you destroy them by shorting an output for example .
Are the rca output broken in a similar way ?
Listening tests are absolutely fine, it's performing them without controls and sighted which makes them unproductive and misleading. Measurements don't suffer from bias etc.
Your personal "enjoyment" is irrelevant to anyone else and the actual equipment performance.
Measurements will always be more informative than sighted uncontrolled listening.
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Schiit Sega?
First one yes. It does help. But the difference between good and mediocre resistor can be tens even hundreds. So using 2 or 3 pretty good not best resistors is pretty good choice.
Second one, i think I meant passive path. Active path tho, who knows what schiit does to the signal. It's too large of distortion to even begin to discuss at this level.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #88
How is this for measurement at different gains? Input is at 4 volts (XLR; will use 2 volts for RCA):
OP
- Thread Starter
- #89
How long as this model been out? I don't think that long.
And no, it is not broken. It is just out of spec, if there is a spec.
phoenixdogfan
Major Contributor
Not me. I already know the answer to that one.
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In your opinion is it similarly perfect , when tasked with reproducing music ?
If its not perfect reproducing music, can you contribute why that might be - and can you possibly identify if you have time, which part of the schematic is causing that disagreement with measurements then countering listening experience.
GeorgeWalk
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I have a Parasound New Classic preamp that works great. A lot less than $2000
https://parasound.com/200_Pre.php
Perfect
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If you have time, what are the distortion measurements at low to medium listening levels, with normal consumer audio sources- if possible please ?
Looks good. Sadly lowering the volume doesn't seem to help. One use case for a Freya could have been to avoid using digital volume control on the DAC. You set the DAC to 0dB and then control the volume on the Freya. But this kind of performance sort of defeats the purpose, one will be better off using the digital volume control on the DAC. Except maybe the passive mode, but it could lead to other issues. Not that the performance is unreasonable, but not a good match for the recent DACs we've seen that reach 120dB SINAD. If one needs to switch several inputs some are balanced I guess the Freya delivers a decent performance-feature/price value. It also converts between balanced and SE in both directions which can be useful.
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Does its measurements also reflect as 'works great " in its ability reproducing music - if so can you describe what you think is good about it relative to other preamps and other forms of attenuation, that you have tried.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
That's good Amir.
Reviews of amplifiers and preamplifiers used to give worst case noise figures and comment on where in the volume pot range that occurred. i.e. was noise worst at typical input/output settings and whether it increased or decreased towards the full volume position.
As proper preamplifiers typically had a 150mV for rated output, this tendency to use a high input voltage (4V) will either overload some preamplifiers from the past, or give them artificially better S/N at low-med volume settings than they would otherwise achieve. For modern preamplifiers with lower gain and rated 2V or greater inputs, fair is fair.
Pretty much all my preamplifiers are 150mV sensitivity for the line inputs (SE). Even so, they can easily take up to >10V without overload in many cases, but they are rated and all their specifications are based around 150mV for line.
If you're not comfortable trying your luck to get a good measuring unit on both channels skip it
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