That "tube sound" and power ratings

"09-25-14: Zkzpb8
From my experience I've seen a lot of tube amp owners who like distortion. Not SET guys with highly sensitive speakers, but the 10-20 Watt tube amp owners who mate their amp with a speaker rated much below 90dB."

I've never heard of anyone doing that. Are you sure they actually wanted the amp to distort all the time and not just prefer tube distortion if the amp distorts?

"A good friend of mine is a recording engineer and he always says "people love distortion"... In the studio throw a tube compressor on - and ''fatten" up the sound - warm things up. It's the same effect when someone uses a 10 Watt tube amp on a pair of speakers that are rated 25 Watts minimum. I see guys do it all the time - they're fully aware of the speaker's specs, and despite the manufacturer's advice to use more power they do it anyway. It's a seductive sound - but the product of distortion."

That's not the same thing. In the studio, what you're talking about above is signal processing. Its part of the creative process. Playback gear's job is completely different. The idea behind that is to reproduce the original event as accurately as possible. Making your amp distort on playback goes in the opposite direction of that goal. You don't want you home audio system to distort because you want to reproduce whatever is on the recording as best you can. Even if its distortion.

If anything, the move to tube amps in the last 30-40 years has been for the things that tubes do that are difficult or impossible for transistor amps. I don't see audiophiles that are into tubes doing it for any other reason then they want to get as close to the musical experience as possible.

I really don't think you have to know anything about tubes, how tube amps work or why people use them. All you really have to know to understand that they work really well for music, is that over half a century after they were declared obsolete, they are still around- and we still play them and even the tubes/transistor debate is older than many audiophiles! IOW the economics tells the story!

Ralph,
That sums up my preference for tubes. The only criteria that matters, the more natural sound quality.

Want to thank the OP and contributors, really enjoyed this thread.

"That's not the same thing. In the studio, what you're talking about above is signal processing. Its part of the creative process. Playback gear's job is completely different. The idea behind that is to reproduce the original event as accurately as possible. Making your amp distort on playback goes in the opposite direction of that goal. You don't want you home audio system to distort because you want to reproduce whatever is on the recording as best you can. Even if its distortion. "

That's definitely true that in the studio it's processing the signal - but at home, tube amps are often doing the same thing. It is a form of distortion. Not all tube based systems distort this way, but I do see lots of listeners using underpowered amps for the speakers they have.

Tubes are a great way to emotionally get close to the music - I think of tubes as a way to create an illusion that performers are in the room with you - but I never think of this as accurate or neutral - but it can be very involving...