Raven Audio Tube amps

Hi avanti1960, did you sell your nighthawk? Just curious what amp you are using with your ls50 now?

I posted above, this is an update. 

I moved the Raven Blackhawk LE from my living room system into my home office where I previously had some excellent solid state Parasound gear (the "Z" half-width rack-mountable gear, very good). Well... All I can say is that I just upgraded my home office experience. Previously the Raven drove a pair of Avalon Acoustics speakers (wow). Now, it's driving (designing on my whim) either a pair of Martin Logan bookshelf speakers or a similar set of Mordant-Short bookshelfs. Both sound excellent with this amp. I've also ran a red other older speakers through this, including some excellent yet cheap Energy speakers. All sound great and in all cases I got absolutely excellent soundstages and holographic placement.

Well, I just auditioned a set of Legacy Audio Focus SE with Raven amplification at Dave's place, and, well, I don't even know where to begin or what to say.  I've always had SS amplification and pretty much mid-fi equipment at that, so it's not like I have much, if any, listening experience with tube amps.  But I have heard lots of speakers demoed with SS amplification over the years, some of which sounded very good.  Dave played CD quality tracks off his computer, no high rez.  Suffice it to say, I've never heard CD level audio sound anywhere close to this natural.  Ella Fitzgerald seemed right in front of me.  Bass like crazy, and with impact.

What I heard today is certainly eye opening.  There is no way to assign the percent of relative contribution to the awesome sound for each component involved, all of which are orders of magnitude better than what I currently have.  I've just never heard any reproduced music sound that good.  I attended the East Texas Symphony(better than you might think) last Saturday, so I have a very recent experience with live, large scale music.  What really got my attention is cymbals, which sounded pretty much exactly like they did at the symphony.  Very open and "airy".  The Focus SE are certainly excellent speakers, but my suspicion is that the Raven amplification played a huge part in the incredible sound quality.  Now, I'm going to have to re-think my whole approach to audio. 

@mtrot ...If you liked tube amplification, you would love a really well-made tube-powered CD player. 

mtrot: much of what you write about why you like the Focus SE is a result of the speakers themselves independent of the choice of tube amplification. The Raven's are reported to be great amps but I will tell you I've heard the exact same positive attributes you talk about and more out of my old Focus SEs and now my AERIS with pure solid state amplification (Edge NL12.1, Maker Audio NL14 and especially an Esoteric A-02 stereo amp that is the star of the show in my system for a couple of years now...