Passive preamp

If your system is passive friendly (and you can search here to see what that means) a passive line stage is your best bet. There is no need to throw away gain when it’s not needed, I’ve had some very good active preamps up to around 8k and all of them were shown the door by one or another passive device. If you truly need gain, then disregard the aforementioned and buy the best active preamp your budget will allow.

I have a Schiit Freya + I occasionally use (well worth the $800 I spent on it) and with my class A mono's I prefer it in the active mode using the LISST  Tubes. However the passive mode is very musical also. It will be system dependent and I like having a little gain. 

Excellent idea to try the M3 as the pre going directly to my amp.  I would at least have something to compare against the passive pre. Unfortunately, I do have more than the one source (turntable and other) otherwise I would stay with the M3.  Happy to notify in this thread what my results but but it'll be a couple of weeks before I have things set up.  Cheers!

As you have more than one source and are forced to use a preamp, you need something better than that piece of Schiit preamp. With that Schiit in front of Bricasti dac you pretty much wasted your money. You’ll know what I mean when you run M3 direct. 

How does the Freya sound when using in different modes? Passive, buffered , tubes. I use mine in a second system 90+% of the time in passive mode. I actually went as far as selling a Freya+ a while back as a substitute was found and said to be superior. Used the superior unit for a couple of months, then bought another Freya+. Sold the superior unit as it was inferior to the Freya+. The Freya+ is tough to beat unless one spends sizable piles of cash. Your mileage may vary.