Tube Watts Vs. Soild-State Watts?

This is getting old has been done many times.

The watts are the same.

In the end as much as we audiophiles hate to admit it, its all about what distortions exist and how much.

Tubes tend to have higher amounts of lower-ordered harmonics (which sound like 'richness' to the human ear).

Transistors have almost none of the lower orders but tend to have more of the higher orders than tubes do. The higher orders (5th and beyond) tend to cause the amp to sound brighter and harsher.

Both are colorations.

Regarding detail, I have often seen brightness masquerading as detail.  Its my opinion and experience that when you are really getting things right, you have detail together with a relaxed presentation. Generally that means that the system is low distortion, as the presence of distortion can mask detail.

I also feel that tubes are generally better at low level detail regardless. There are a lot of design considerations that make up an amplifier! So its at one's own peril to try to point at a reason why for something like this but my opinion nevertheless is the inherent higher linearity of tubes.

The tube amp that I am looking at is about 80wpc single-ended class A. My current amp is solid-state 400wpc class AB. My speakers are Tekton Design Double Impacts. My previous experience with tube amps was mixed, as the amps had some characteristics I liked, but were not very dynamic. I like the sound of my solid-state amp, but am wondering if I could get more detail out of my music by going to a tube amp.

333jeffery.....400 wpc with Double Impacts? You can create rock concert sound levels with that combo! It must be dynamic as hell. I think you'll be very happy driving the DI's with tubes. I'm using a 24 watt Decware amp on mine and it's delightful unless I want to crank it up. I'll be switching to a Linear Tube Audio 50 watt into 4 ohms OTL tube amp to get me where I want to be.....the same pre and amp used in Terry Londons upcoming review of the Tekton Double Impacts. I would think an 80 watt single ended class A amp would work extremely well with your DI's. Start looking for some sweet NOS tubes! The DI's reveal every characteristic upstream in your system making tube rolling quite fun. Please keep us informed as to which amp you go with and how it lights up your DI's. 

Hi 333jeffery, 
What output tube does this amplifier use and is this a parallel SET topology? 80 watts is a lot for a SET.
Charles