Where do tubes matter most???

My system is all tube, as is even the CD player which is the Audio Aero Mark II. The McIntosh 2102 glows well in the dark as does my vintage Fisher receiver. Together they heat my room which is appreciated in the winter.

Oh yeah; sounds great,too.

I'm with Unsound, and Karls for perhaps the same reason. I use to be all tubes, including cdp. Then I was convinced into buying the Pass X amp by an amp builder. These things run so clean, that I found all I needed for tubes was my trusty cdp.

I can hear every nuance of each tube I try, most being objectional.

I happen to like the ss amp crispness. There are a lot of sounds that don't approach life without it.

Reducing tubes to the signal source promotes the valve liquidity, spaciousness, and air, while not suffocating the music as an all tube set up of anything but the greatest.

Anyway, great tubes are having their prices pushed to the stratosphere by demand.

Its a discussion that has gone on for years since the advent of transistor from bell lab's, one a transistor is a current device, a tube is a voltage device, most transistor amps are directly coupled to the reactive speaker load and thus can produce extreem low frequency response because of the nature of the device and no output transformer to saturate at low frequency however a speaker is a reactive load, not a totally resistive which is another complete topic in its self, but in a tube amp in push pull configuration, the even order harmonics are cancelled out by the output transformer and since the transformer has a windings in the secondary it produces a better matching to the speaker load and not getting into audio transformer design and therory the transformer acts as a choke and a capacitor kind of like sponge it is able to asorb large peak current and not totally reflect it back on the tube its self to try and put it simply so the amp produces a soft clipping many other things take place in both type amps and it can be discussed for another 30+ years or so.
Both devices have have their place in audio, I use a transistor amp crossed over at 250 hz down for subs and from
100 hz and above I love tube amps mixing and matching can produce cool results in any system providing the frequency response is suited for the amp used.