Tubes v. SS: can you mix and match?

You bet! Whatever sounds best to you. I'll leave the electrical compatibility issues to someone more competent than me.

Everyone is going to kill me but I believe that tubes can create tone that no solidstate device can achive ever!. Likewise, solidstate can do some things better than tubes. It's a tradeoff. I am totally into the tube sound if the equipment in question is the most musical/emotional available for the price. I think ALL tube cd players and preamps have limitations that do not allow them to reach the pinacle of what is possable today. These two components, with tubes of any kind, have limited dynamics and a loss of leading edge transients that make the music lose energy and to sound soft. This is unaviodable!! and unacceptable if you want all of the music to pass through intact. And I also believe that solid state amps of the non digital kind can not keep up with SET technology ever. This area is the biggest gap in all of audio. Single Ended Triode/no feedback etc. tech. is so far superior to the big SS. monster amps that it is hard to believe when listened to side by side. Digital amps have solved this problem but have only one drawback, TONE. If you can live without the ultimate in tone, then a all solid state system with digital amps or single ended low power solid state amps is the way to go ala the reasoning similar to what 47 labs promotes or placette or Final Labs. If you value tone in the ultimate, then SET amps with solidstate pre and cd are the way to go. I know this is backwards to conventional thinking (most would have a tube cd/pre and solid state amp) but the future is going to change this thinking I believe and an example is Audiopax which has SET amps and Solid state preamp allready! Check out Dr. Gizmo's site for an indepth discussion on why tube pre's are soft. These statements are for the cutting edge best of the best range. AT the other end of the spectrum, in the entry level world, tubes rule!!! Let the flogging begin.

Timo got it right. What ever sounds good to you! Electrically speaking, you would almost have to go out of your way, way out, in order to have Tube and SS electronics be incompatible.

I've been contributing to another thread which has gone in the direction of asking some similar questions. I'm going to snip and post some of my observations from that thread to this one in the hopes that some of the questions I ask may be seen by seen and responded to by more folks. The other thread started about Klipsch speakers. I'm not going to link to that thread as it is pretty long and there'd be much to sift through that is not to the point of this thread.

So here are some of my observations and questions regarding Tubes(+horns) sound as distinctive from SS sound. BTW, as a direct answer to the query of this post: Absolutely you can mix and match the two with excellent results. My reference system combines SET 300B's with Klipsch LaScala (horn loaded speakers). My taste runs along with Mahandave in that I've never heard anything that comes close to that sound (which is, needless to say, pleasing to my ears).

I'll try to snip the following down to just what is pertinent. The fine gentlemen I am referring to at different points are A'goners Bob_bundus and Tubeking:

...... I'm probably on another part of the audiophile spectrum than you and have only a fundamental understanding of the hardware, as well as lacking in ways to describe how it sounds to my ears (not hip to all the lingo, but I sure do know what I like).

I can't answer for Tubeking, but since I have a similar opinions about tubess+horns I can comment on what made me a convert. You will have to forgive my lack of audio-vocabulary to give creadence and color to my statements. The qualities that make tube amplification worth what little extra effort and $ it may take (though I don't know it's been a whole lot in my experience) are about air, atmosphere, soundstage and musicality. While SS has punch and dynamics in spades, bringing those quailities closer to a live performance in the way great SS can just knock the breath out of you sometimes....I do like that aspect of SS. What it lacks though, that the best of tubes, and even some really inexpensive tube rigs can impart, is a depth and airiness...an atmosphere that I've yet to hear SS give to music. There is a holography to the music with great tube amplification that I've never heard with SS. SS had the width, but lacks the depth in my experience (though I must say I was impressed with the Pass Labs Aleph 5 that I had for a short while in that it did have some sense of depth. I've also owned a tube rig that came close to having the 'slam' of SS (a Mesa Baron) but it was certainly at the expense of the atmosphere I get from my 300B SET amps. Ultimately I like the atmosphere over the amazing detail and slam. I was impressed at the detail listening to a good friends Levenson system. Around $50K+, wired well, in an outstanding room with NHT 3.3's (tight bass to write home about). We were listening to a cut on a Beethoven piano concerto disc I'd brought and was familiar with. By god I could hear the pianist feet on the peddles as he played. That was truly amazing. Yet still, bringing that same disk home to the SET amps, though it lacks that kind of crystaline detail (though the ALK's may bring much of that out), I just love the holography that is simply lacking on his rig. Another friend has a $100K Krell setup that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, but the novelty wore off as time went on and the listening session somehow grew tiresome. I never get tired of listening to my SET's and the sound remains engaging to me throughout, though poorly recorder music does become wearing almost immediately. I hope someone else may comment who knows more how to embellish their experience with all the fancy vernacular, or can add a different perspective on it.

That said, I very much doubt you did anything WRONG Bob. And, in fact, there may be nothing you are missing. Even if you listened to the two side by side you may still prefer the sound of SS over tubes. My bias is obviously strongly in the other direction, but I'm always open to hearing a system that will change my mind! I don't think it is a matter of either/or, but I sure love the combination of tubes&horns. For my tastes, I haven't heard better to this day.

Another post:

One thing Tubeking brings to mind in his response that I've been meaning to ask here: Just one more way I like tubes+horns......sitting there in the sweet spot you do get the full holographic effect and enjoyment of what they can bring to musical reproduction. But I also listen to my stereo at times when I'm not sitting in "the spot" (heresy!) and I've never read any posts on this. Perhaps no one wants to fess up....or do you all immediately shut down your system as soon as you leave "the chair"?! With my system obviously the holographic effect is lost once you leave the room. But one of the things I do like most about tubes+horns is that when I leave the room and go cook in the kitchen, or pound away at the keyboard in the office, it still sounds more to me like someone were down in my living room playing the guitar and singing (at best). The SS rigs I've owned and heard in others homes always seem to sound to my ears like there is a stereo playing in the other room once you leave that sweet spot and go off to another spot in the house. I think this can only be a generalization at best for me as my experiences are limited. It could also have a whole lot to do with the structure of the specific home and how the sound travels within that structure(?). But as a generalization it is certainly something I really enjoy about tubes+horns as well, and seems to be consistent in the limited experiences I've had. Can anyone else comment on that?

And still one more:

In an attempt to suggest a clue to the answer to my own question, .....and it may sound like I'm talking out of the side of my mouth here as I fully admit that I'm no sound engineer and the highly scientific and technical aspects of why this stuff works the way it does is as foreign to me as Chinese algebra. I had the pleasure once of visiting and speaking with George Wright of Wright Sound. When I asked him why tubes sound distinctive from SS, the explanation he offered had something to do with exactly how the two reproduced a signal. If you run a signal through a SS amp to an ocilliscope the graph will read as a stair-step hard straight line, rising and falling off like a cliff. Run the same signal through a tube amp and it reads as a curve, rising and falling off more gently. This reminds me of the difference between digital and analog reproduction where the digital represention of the curve of analog becomes a very fine stairstep that represents that curve. The other distinction that I've heard made is that tubes impart certain orders of harmonic distortion that our ears/minds equate more directly with music (or perhaps just as 'pleasing'). To further the description of what I like about tube+horn reproduction of sound that may relate to this: there is something about the way it lets the music just linger in the air and fade off that is very appealing and natural to my ears. SS tends to sound more abrupt and does not have the same sense of "lingering". OK, so enough of my butchering away at scientific (mis)information. Someone who is far more versed in this stuff needs to step in here and set me straight!

Marco

Marco, again I see myself in full agreement with your thinking. In practical terms this means in my case, that in the very complex system which I have built up through the years for myself, I have learnt to prefer all tubes preamps and amps for the midrange, class a solid state for the highs and SS again for the deep bottom end. Cheers,