The Rhea is noisy. No doubt about it. However, in my opinion, you can quiet it down substantially with the right tube complement and as reward, you get a unit that punches way above its price class in musical expressiveness, tone density, instrumental texture, palpability, and 3D realism. No, I haven't compared it to any other tubed units in my system, but that is the point, neither have I felt the need or desire to. The Rhea has created such a wonderful synergy with my system, the balance of which is entirely SS, that I would be loathe to abandon it. Were I inclined to invest more money into my system, it would be in the area of room treatment, rather than switching out components. My advice is that you audition in your system anything you might consider replacing the Rhea with before "blasting it off", as you may come to discover that the lose of noise came at a greater sacrifice than you expected.
Time to blast off from Rhea
I made an impulse purchase 1.5 years ago of a Rhea phono preamp. I have a low output MC cartridge, and was actually saving for an AR Reference 2. The dealer sold me his demo for a good discount. Upon getting it home, with my smaller room and efficient speakers, heard the noise. Dealer not willing to take it back as it was a demo sale. I replaced all the tubes with a set from Jim Mcshane which made the situation tolerable, but with limited use, these tubes became intolerably noisy. Put in some vintage RCA tubes in the V1/V2 and it sounds great again. Is this just the price to pay for pure tube amplification of 56 db? Should I just sell it, and buy the Parasound JC3 and be done with it?