Tubes vs. solid state.

I just bought a Sophia Baby Amplifer, my first tube amp, and was surprised at how good it sounded. I replaced all the caps and installed new Cardas RCA inputs, and yesterday built a 10' power cord for it. Shockingly sweet, powerful, you know the rest of the jargon. It's mighty 10 watts per channel is plenty to drive my thirty-five-year-Tannoys perfectly. My other amp? A 300WPC SS. It's a fine sounding SS amp, but it can't touch the Baby.

Tubes for the right load are untouchable, I'm now thinking. The right SS might change my mind, but if it could, I couldn't afford it anyway.

Sophia demo:$400
New caps and inputs$160
DIY power cord:$120

See if you can get this quality of sound with SS for the same money. I rather doubt it.

Regards,
Dan

I had a Jadis Defy 7 and made numurous comparisons between it and a Classe DR-9 yrs ago. I sold the Jadis and why? Because the Classe was so good at what it did that I saw no reason to dirve myself into a state of near panic waiting for tube replacement,and with the price of tubes I could purchase more software. True the Jadis was pretty to look at, but sound wise I could live with the trade off. Most of the older CJ amps were built badly rusting screws and all.

I don't know about bubes, but boobs are hard to leave alone...

I'll take boobs over both tubes and SS anytime! . . . however, in the frequent abscence of the first one, I use my ears. . .

Seriously, I would probably choose CJ over SIMAUDIO every time. . . on the other hand, I do not deem myself a tuboholic or SSian by any stretch. . . . to me it's all in the design, execution, and end result of an individual component, and whether it matches or not the particular emotional musicality that I am after. If you wanted to listen to some SS that moves me, Give a listen to Belles ref 350A, GamuT I250M, Bel Canto Ref 500M and 1000M, Rowland 312. Other brands/amps that I suspect may be of the kind I may like, although I have not had the opportunity of hearing them yet are: Pass XA.5 series, Accuphase, Chapter Audio.

The list of those I do not care about in SS, class D, or tube technology is far to long to be worth mentioning.

Interesting concept about our hearing becoming accustomed to bad sounding equipment. That does not happen to me. In fact, bad sounding equipment sounds worse with time. Positive changes tend to quickly become assimilated into the sound and they become less noticable over time.

SS amps need very careful matching to reach their potential. The correct preamp and cables will make or break a SS amp. In fact, a cable can make all the difference between music that is involving, and a sound that is unpleasant.

If your SS amp has been in storage, it probably need 200-300 hours to break-in again. That is the likely reason for some improvement based upon the information provided.