Looking to completely overhaul my preamp section, knowledgeable people needed!

for under 2k, it would be tough to find a discrete preamp/dac combo.  I would prefer to get "good enough" and then put more money into speakers, if anything...but I don't have much credibility there.  I started with a nicely priced tube preamp and got stuck in a upgrade loop, ending up with my "dream" preamp, but spending way, way more than I wanted to.

@primarist. Lots of good advice to consider. As for the Freya and Emotiva, pretty much everything I’ll say should be qualified with "for the price." I think they are both very good, but neither are "giant killers." Sorry for the long post.

Emotiva--I bought it intending it to be a versatile center of a third or fourth system built with leftover/upgraded/evolved out gear. I had considered the Parasound p5, but went with and preferred the Emotiva. IMO, you get a lot of bang for the buck, but I’d agree with Auxinput that compromises are made. I’ve had several Emotiva pieces over the years, and mostly they are good "for the price." IMO, the pros are the versatility and the multitude of features---balanced in/out, decent tone controls, ok phones, ok phono, pretty good analog crossover, etc. I find it to be very transparent with a good volume control and adds just a bit of heft to the music without coloring or smearing it. I usually ran it direct, but the tone controls seemed good--if you really, really listened for a problem, maybe a miniscule tone-suck. That value, of course, diminishes if the features aren’t going to be used. As it goes, other gear, needing fewer of the features, and tube-love kept kicking the Emotiva down the line to really no fault of its own. It’s a competent piece and pretty solid. I prefer the XSP-1 to the Freya JFET. A very nice, lightly used XSP may be going up for sale, if I convince myself tubes are needed everywhere.

Freya--I bought this mostly to try a passive. It has currently earned a home in an unusual setup with roughly $20k in associated gear. It’s a good value for the features---balanced, passive, jfet and tube. The passive works great. The JFET doesn’t do much for me between the tubes and passive, but others like it---probably just due to gear and preferences. I find it to be quiet, but others have noted it to be noisy. In my opinion, the tubes provide a nice option at the push of a button, but it isn’t particularly tubey or fantastic. I didn’t like the stock tubes, and it took awhile to get a good tube match. It’s not as responsive to rolling as a Cary, for example. Some really great tubes were lost on the Freya. Cons--power switch is on the back; volume control clicky clicks which can be disconcerting at first; and tubes continue to burn in the other modes. I think it’s great for what it is. But, if one is looking solely for a tubed pre, I think there are others to consider. For example, I picked up a used Inspire pre for about the same money, and it’s a much better tube pre, but it’s not balanced.

Hope that helps, for whatever it’s worth. A budget-friendly combo I really like is the Inspire pre with a Denafrips Ares, if you can live without balanced and remote.

To anyone still following this thread, or someone with the same intentions as me, I wound up going with the (less expensive) Schiit Freya+Gungnir, and saved some money to put into an eventual amp upgrade. I'm happy with this decision as it allows me to upgrade my amp on a more reasonable time frame, for the price of a better preamp. Both the Gungnir and the Freya are massive upgrades from what I previously had, particularly in the stereo separation department as well as in overall detail and 'color'. It really is incredible the difference and I'm looking forward to seeing how much better a new amp will sound.

One thing I would absolutely recommend is to swap out the stock tubes ASAP. I used some of the money I had saved to purchase a matched quad of Tung Sol red base tubes and this yielded a very large sound quality increase. If you do go this route, make sure to listen to the stock tubes for a few hours, get a feel for them, then switch to the Tung Sols for a surprise ;)

At risk of sounding cliche, the Tung Sols really gave a nice 'holographic' effect and made the soundstage appear deeper. It is also a very quiet tube stage, with the hiss barely audible from an 8 foot listening position.

I also seriously considered an AudioGD piece for a very long time before making the decision and they look to be an excellent company with strong design principles, and I hope to hear one some day. Thanks for all the help everyone!

Thanks for the feedback. Good luck with your future endeavors. 

been looking at the p5 also for several months.
seems like a good bargain
i do get tired of this erik guy, bashing it everytime i sit at the computer to research them.
seems thats all he talks about.
whats with that ?