No. The Electro-Harmonix Freeze is a buffered bypass pedal, meaning that it contains a buffer, it might slightly color your tone even when it is switched off, and it will also kill your sound if something goes wrong with the power source, something that wouldn't happen if it were a true bypass pedal. One is not necessarily better than the other, though. In fact, having a couple of quality buffers in your signal chain (at the start and finish, for instance) can be beneficial as it will mitigate some of the high-frequency loss that occurs when you run a lot of long cables between your guitar, pedals and amplifier.