Schiit Freya + Class A in Stereophile

I've had an original version Freya for years and it astonishes me with how great it sounds every day...NOS GE 6SN7GTBs boogie my sneakers away.

Fwiw I own a stereophile "a" piece of kit ( AQ dragonfly cobalt) and can vouch that it does perform well and sound great. It may be the one of their cheapest recommendations but it has surprised a couple listeners with it's SQ. 

The Freya+ really is a remarkable preamp not just of the sound quality but for the features. Lots of inputs and outputs both balanced and single ended. The remote is quite nice. It's nice to have a remote controlled stepped attenuator despite the clacking involved with it. It has "passive", buffered, and active modes of operation. I'm pretty sure the active tube section is the Aikido circuit designed by John Broskie of TubeCad Journal fame. 

I put the passive mode in quotes because it does actually go through some minimal active circuitry so that single ended inputs can be converted to balanced. It's a clever design. So while it still is a passive stage in that there is no buffering, the fact that no signal goes through it when the power is off means that there is some active circuitry. 

All that said, I'm selling mine. My Supratek Cabernet gives me more of what I'm looking for in a preamp. I'm very happy with it. At 4 times the price I try not to think about the ugly reality of diminishing returns but I am happy with it. 

@bsme85 , 1000% true.

I love the Freya+, best $1k spent. That matches so well with my Yamaha MX-1, I'm blown away by its warm sound with so much details in mids and vocal.  I think its sounds better than my AS3200. 

Some here are getting it all wrong.

Reference to Stereophile April 2022:  "Class ratings are based on performance...[including performance on the test bench]."

Nowhere is it suggested price or value for money have any relevance.

This irrelevance of price in determining Class is why the $$$ symbol is employed to highlight products that strongly outperform at their price point.

That's all.

So, to move to OP's point.  Products in Class A obviously do not all have exactly the same level of sound quality.  There is a range.  Some just scrape in.  Others are state of the art.  So you do not just buy the cheapest one and expect the performance to be as good as the most expensive.

Stereophile publishes two pages of explanation of the ratings.  It does pay to read them.

I cannot write about Stereophile without including high praise for John Atkinson, possibly the best hi-fi journalist of the last 50 years (about the time he has been working).  He holds very balanced, sensible, well thought out views on all the controversies and is thus to be trusted.  He is a listener and a techie.  Indeed, and a musician.  And a recordist.  I have been reading him since he started in the 1970s in UK's Hi-Fi News and Record Review.