Schiit Freya + Class A in Stereophile

@output555 When you say passive tube stage do you mean a stage without gain? Those are called buffers and are really helpful if you need to drive long interconnects. The "solid state" function of the Freya+ is in fact a buffer and adds no gain. The "passive" mode does not have the buffer stage. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I don't really consider it a real passive stage since there is still active circuitry involved. Maybe I'm a purist but I want my passive stages to be nothing but passive components like resisters or transformers. 

If you search for tube buffers you will find a variety of products out there but you're right, the Frey+ is not one of them. 

https://forum.audiogon.com/users/lanx0003 stereophile  they take price in consideration as well as sound quality looks and build quality, so a $1,000 amp might be rated class A it doesn't mean it's as good as a 50,000 amp in sound and build quality. Motor trend once had the Vega as car of the year, does that mean it was just as good as a Corvette.

isaacc7: A tube preamp without duplicative/reduntant gain, which it seems the Freya+ isn't. I have no interest in the SS state.

@invalid 

+1

@invalid When Stereophile decides to mix the different price categories, sound quality is literally the only major determinant factor. I don’t know exactly the reason why they award Class A to Schiit Freya+ before the review is up, but the review on Topping Pre90 is up already. You could take probably 30+ minutes’ patience to appreciate how the reviewer stacks up the $17,500 Pass XP32 with $599 Topping Pre90 (both rated class A). I think having such a budgetary class A gear is a win-win situation for the audiophiles who does not have $17,000 disposable money and only cares about the SQ. The end game will be like this: The rich gets expensive Pass, the poor gets economic Topping and both of them enjoy preamp of similar SQ. No discrimination based on the socioeconomic status in the happy music listening wonderland.