Schiit Freya plus. Is this an upgrade?

A preamp that seems whisper quiet in a typical system can suddenly have very noticeable noise (from seating position) when placed in a system with high-sensitivity speakers & amps. If your speakers are below 90 dB, your system probably won’t be a stress test for preamps, and you’ll be wondering about others’ complaints of noise. My speakers are 96 dB / Watt, 8 ohm, and amps output almost 300 Watts at 1V input. It is definitely a stress test for preamps. Impressively, the ARC REF 6 is whisper quiet here.

The Freya +’s noise spec of -115dB, if legit, is superb. Stereophile measured the REF 6 at -100dB, A-weighted.

Yeah - lots of empty space indeed! Those pics alone could score Freya+ the thunderdome victory - you know how superficial we audiophiles can be. 

I used headphone amps as preamps for a while. They can sound good, but a dedicated pre can be better optimized for that application because it never needs to drive loads below 10,000 ohms, which has implications for the choice of parts and design of the output stage. E.g. for many tube preamps that means the ability to use much higher quality, lower capacitance film caps (for output coupling) within budget.