Schiit Freya + Class A in Stereophile

My elder Freya with NOS GEs is absolutely on par with other far more pricey preamps as I proved (to myself and a few friends) by group listening tests comparing it to some ARC preamps and others a few years ago when it was new. In the tube mode it's utterly excellent. I proved this fact to myself further when I recently bought a Pass XA-25 that would doubtless shine light on the flaws of a sketchy preamp...it's even better than I thought, and needs great tubes to shine...new Tung Sols and JJs just didn't cut it for me, GEs and a few other NOS vintage tubes did.

What other preamps did you compare it to besides the audio research? I personally don't like the sound of audio research preamps, might as well buy a solid state preamp.

Did Stereophile give it that rating for sound quality or features? The Freya+ has a killer set of features: Stepped attenuator volume control, RCA and XLR inputs and outputs, 3 output modes - passive mode, solid state gain mode without tubes, full tube driven output mode. And the passive mode can do XLR or single ended Hometheater pass-through. It also sounds good especially with better tubes. I agree with the rating although I don’t disagree that higher end preamps will sound better.

@wolf_garcia 

did you change all 4 of the tubes to NOS GE tubes?

is there a model number for the NOS GE tubes?

Stereophile gives ratings based on sound quality. There is an inverse relationship between sound quality and features. Feature rich audio stuff is mid-fi or low-fi. Sound quality is the important criteria in high end audio.