"Warm Sounding" Solid State Amplifiers

Mapman wrote,

"Its all semantics but warm can only refer to an exaggeration at certain frequencies which by definition is not accurate."

Well, not really the definition. Presence is close as a synonym. Cold and distant and uninvolving are related and are antonyms of warm. IMHO opinion of course.

Regarding SS amps, ones that use MOSFETs are often cited as having a warmer sound. My limited experience with these supports that I think. Tandberg gear was known for MOSFET use I believe and the Tandberg sound was always a tad towards being warm sounding. Tandberg tr2080 was the warmest sounding amp I have owned personally. It was very sweet sounding as older SS gear goes.

Csontos,

"Fact is their is consensus that tubes are distortion for the most part."

Is this a secret consensus? Where can I look something like that up for myself?

Quite the discussion I have sparked!

I'm looking at a budget of around $2000 CDN but if I find a smoking hot deal on a Pass Labs piece I could see myself breaking the bank perhaps up to $4000 or so.

My speakers are Monitor Audio RX6's and before those I had some Axiom M80's. I replaced my Bryston 7B SST2's with the NAD C355bee but I still use my BP25 as a preamp. My transport is a Cambridge 751BD and my DAC is a Bryston BDA-1.

The reason for switching up my amps and speakers was because I moved across the country and downsizing was ultimately inevitable- though I quite welcomed the opportunity to try something different.

I absolutely love the RX6's and for that reason I can see myself moving further up the line to the Gold GX300's in the somewhat near future. So, I should definitely take that into consideration when selecting an amp. Thanks for all the feedback!

I've owned a Perreaux 2150B and several Acoustat TNT200 and 120. All pure mosfet so I have some insight into the warm/tubey/mosfet sound and imo it's nothing more than a softening of leading edge transients. In effect resulting in what to me sounds like a bit of IMD or TIM. Imo BJTs sound better because they're effectively faster even though the device itself may not be. Whether this is deliberate or not, I don't know but I find BJTs to have better, more refined low level resolution. I think once you reach a sufficiently high level of fidelity, the novelty effects disappear as a matter of course. If the goal is reproduction of the signal, then the last thing you want is to be able to pinpoint the topology of the amp, no?