I've never noticed any degradation from freezing. The important point is that freezing is for bulk storage, not for the beans you're using every day. The beans you freeze should be sealed, frozen, and then allowed to come up to room temp before unsealing. And then they stay at room temp for however many days it takes you to use them. This eliminates the one problem with frozen beans—that they take on moisture from condensation every time you open the cold bag.
This is pretty standard practice in the 3rd wave coffee world. The only pushback I ever got was from someone who was trained at Starbucks and thought he was an expert.
I do think people need to reconsider what fresh means in coffee beans, especially now that we have higher quality beans and roasts available. I used to assume that fresher is better. Now that I'm mostly buying lightly roasted single-origin beans, I can say with certainty that this isn't the case. Beans like this that are too fresh off the roast give poor results. You get huge blooms of CO2, which lends a carbonic acid acridity to the coffee, and interferes with the aromatic flavors.
For brewed coffee, results seem ideal between 5 days maybe 14 days after roasting (I'm not talking about freezing here ... just room temperature storage in a sealed back, preferably one with a relief valve). For espresso, it's more like 7 to 20 days. Espresso is more sensitive to CO2.
The darker the roast, the sooner the coffee will be ready to brew and the sooner it will lose quality. Degree of roast corresponds with increased porosity of the beans ... darker ones lose CO2 faster, and take on oxygen faster.
