Schitt Freya problem or Jolida amp problem?

You know what Ghosthouse, I think you solved it! Who would've thought to read the manual:). I swear I read it but I guess it didn't sink in. I guess it appears to be working correctly after all I say slinking away wth embarrassment. I wonder why Schitt didn't tell me that?

Well, I hope that’s the case, petware. Rather than the Freya maybe it is just something in how the JoLida is wired....maybe. If it "thinks" it’s going to get a balanced signal you can’t also feed it something unbalanced. It won’t take both balanced and unbalanced inputs simultaneously. Can’t say I’ve encountered that with any of my gear so might be something to confirm (or not) by a call to JoLida. Good luck. Hope you can at last get down to enjoying some music and not stressing (I would be) over whether your gear is broken. :-)

I'm pretty sure it's operator error and the Freya is fine. The Jolida has a switch on the back for balanced or unbalanced cables. You can switch between the two but I have unhooked the unbalanced cables just to confirm. If I'm honest I probably can't really tell the difference between the two except for the volume increase with balanced. 

Huh...okay, well then, sounds like you are good to go.  As far as comparisons between balanced vs unbalanced, if the JoLida incorporates true balanced circuity, try living with balanced for a while (a few weeks) then go to unbalanced and play a recording you know well.  Sometimes that's the easiest way for me to hear differences.  Short term listening and quick A/B testing isn't always as helpful.