Hi there, I am glad that I stumbled upon this thread. I currently own the Freya + and two of the new TYR Monoblocks. All of my cabling is Balanced and recently purchased from the Schiit recommended vendor Snake Oil Audio. I went through one Freya + and it was defective right out of the box. The replacement is currently what I now have and appears to be working correctly. I have also gone through two Loki Max units with both of them behaving the same way (defective in my opinion), and now I no longer have one in my system or own one. Both my Loki Max units basically did nothing. I would actually flip between Bypass and Active and the volume of my music would get a little quieter in the Active mode while all Loki Max Faders were set at 0/ midnight. I tried multiple times to have one of the Schiit SoundBench Techs to give me a call so we could talk about what I was experiencing but that was a no-go. I am an ex electronic tech and electrician from the U.S. Navy and also a seasoned recording and performing drummer with a fully balanced home Mackie PA System with a 16-Channel Mixer. I understand how it all works. Schiit's final response to me after getting back my second Loki Max was that I must have been running Balanced into the Freya + and then out of the RCA SE Outputs of the Freya + to my two TYR Monoblocks. They further stated by doing that then I was basically halving my output signal and the reason why I was not hearing any influence from the Loki Max. I responded back no, that is not what I was doing at all. That I was running fully balanced in my entire signal path from the Source to the Speakers. They had no comment after that. I tried both of those Loki Max units situated before the Freya + in the signal chain and after it. Same thing. I even just fully cranked up each of the 6 Faders just to see what would happen. When I did that I got more of an equal balance of volume between Bypass and Active. I did hear a very minute bit of the EQ but nothing as advertised. I love the Schiit products in general but I think there is some design flaw/ characteristic in the Loki Max. It is a shame because I really wanted it to work for me. Anybody else experience anything similar with their Loki Max? Skins