The question was to the general setup. It doesn't have to be the "tube" version man. Read the question. Maybe I shouldn't have even asked? Thought this was an AUDIO COMMUNITY? Should I say then, sorry for asking? geez.
cheers~
Even though ASR is an "Audio Community", it is different than most in that the general consensus of its members is to favor audio gear (and setups) that objectively measure well.
With that in mind, the folks who responded to you (including me) simply don't understand why you would start off with a compromised audio signal coming from your Denon's pre-outs, and then further degrade the signal by feeding it into
another pre-amp (the Freya). This can only introduce more noise and distortion, so it just doesn't make any sense unless your goal
is to add additional noise and distortion.
I guess convenience is the main factor for you, but you will get objectively better sound by bypassing the Freya and feeding the signal from the Denon straight into your power amp. Or even better, use the Freya as your source switcher, and feed the signal from the Freya directly to the power amp, bypassing the Denon.
If you want to maintain separate signal paths for the Denon and the Freya, you could use Y-connectors; one pair at the power amp so that you can feed the power amp signals from both the Denon and Freya, and another pair for each source component; one part of the "Y" would go from the source to the Denon and the other part of the "Y" would go from the source to the Freya. Just don't feed the Denon and Freya signals to the power amp at the same time.
If you are happy with your current setup, I would just suggest that you leave the Denon's volume control set to maximum and use the Freya to change the volume level; the Freya's stepped attenuator volume control likely does a better job maintaining channel balance throughout its range compared to the Denon's volume control (though if the Denon's volume control is digital, maybe not).