More on ss/vs tubes vs hybrids

keep the CDs and go vinyl

Tubes in the DAC is fine and IMHO affects mostly things like resolution and tone and perhaps a tad of liquidity. Tubes in a pre-amp is pretty much the same. Tubes in the amp output stage caps all of this off with a sense of spaciality which is, in IMHO, mainly missing with SS amps no matter their tone or liquidity. That is how I hear it anyway. :-)

You can't have too many tubes in your system. I agree with your premise about transient response, however I think that too often SS amps get a lot of credit for things like being able to reproduce a square wave precisely but the net effect is to truncate the decay (fall time) leaving the sound flat and sterile. But it is very system dependent and not all tube amps get it right either.

FWIW, I use both SS and tube digital sources, and while different not nearly so different as when I substituted in a tubed pre-amp for ss, and susequently a tubed amp for ss.
When I added the tube amp it was the frosting on the cake.

IMHO anyway..............

DAC by nature is IC and IC can't be tube. DACs can only have tube output stage which by default dictates DACs being hybride...