Amplification question - PrimaLuna Tubes vs. McIntosh Solid State

I have used switchable SE/PP tube mono block amps for over 20 years.  I followed your link to the PrimaLuna site and note that they self bias.  That will reduce a lot of maintenance/time and hassle for you.  I did not see that they could be controlled by a trigger; if you want one button
"easy on" for all of your equipment via a single remote control (which I believe the Mac would offer), that is something you may want to consider.  Also, as a tube amp owner, I will mention that I completely turn off my amps--hard power off--after listening.  They do not have a "standby," as it would dramatically shorten tube life.  I did not observe a standby on the PrimaLuna (maybe it's there and I missed it).  That means that powering on a tube amp system requires repeatative bending to reach power switches and it means waiting at least 30 minutes for the amps to reach operating temperature and settle down.  If the system is going to be running all day, that once daily ritual and warm-up may be inconsequential, but you have asked, so I have shared what only a tube amp owner could know.
btw, I have the same DAC with the Bridge II.  I have A/B compared the volume control in the PS Audio DAC to two excellent pre-amps.  The volume control is a good one, but not the same as a high quality pre.
hope this helps...good luck....

The answer is simple:  to create the warmth for the digital music the tubes can work their magic.  Your ears will thank you

This post has had me spending some time with my mc7300 and mc302 and a mono setup of the Usher 1.5 that I haven't used in quite a while, I have been back and forth with several different pairings into both my ns1000s and ns2000s and even a pair of dahlquist D10s for good measure to see if after a couple years or so w/o solid state going back to tubes after a slight hiatus I can say that I do appreciate the benifets to the soild state crowd, but from little 30watt mono amps to 500 watt carvers, that I've spent sometime with in my comparison the detail in the tubes specially the el34 amps, and the monstor kt120s in the carver the tubes to my ears are so much easier to listen to music doesn't have to be perfect, with the DQ10s the staging and Sonic's was beautiful and very easy to listen to with out fatigue of any kind, vs the almost clinical no room for error of the solid state amps. Now I can say the ushers got me closer to a tube experience driving a pair of thiel 3.7s. As far as heat, wow the carvers lit the room on fire I forgot how hot those amps were, vs the mc275 monoblock I normally use. The point is  I forgot how great both spectrums can be, and how lucky we are to have such great options in hifi. everyone's ears are different determine what sounds best to you. Preamps, dacs and stage buffers can be used to get close to the sound you want with both options. Either way you go i don't think you will be disappointed, the look of both are just as beautiful. 

Having owned both, Primaluna without  a doubt.Running all day Id go with solid state but certainly not McIntosh

I returned from draft duty in early ’54, and from that time on I’ve been absorbed with high fidelity audio. Of course, the early years meant embracing vacuum tubes. Transistors weren’t ready for prime time, so tubes were the only option. And I soon learned that tube technology was far from perfect. Tubes suffered high incidence of failure, and their abundant heat cooked adjacent parts. But those faults could become my gain if I learned radio/TV repair, so I built (from kits) a tube tester, audio oscillator, oscilloscope, bought a multimeter, and began my career in the industry.

Tubes reflect their Neo-Victorian vintage (1904); they’re just not high precision parts. Why not? Well, to start, the tube manufacturers identify vacuum tube operating parameters only by listing “average” or “typical” characteristics. They never specify tubes by providing precise min./max. limits (as with solid-state devices), so tubes lack uniformity from the git-go. That’s why tubes of the same type often differ so widely. Further, all tubes exhibit random long term drift when put into service; plate current falls, grid bias shifts. These changes reflect a persistent degradation that begins at initial turn-on and ends in cathode depletion failure—barring other modes of premature demise (e.g. open filament, vacuum leaks, gassing, microphonics, atypical distortion, hum/noise). So vacuum tubes are not a wise choice when predictable, stable circuit performance is a serious design goal. Regardless, for some 70 years tubes were all that we had. Creativity got stale toward the end of that era. Tubes were just too big* (and too inefficient) to use more than the functional minimum. Innovation later revived with the debut of fully-complementary solid state technology.

Early angst: In 1963 I bought a “hi-end” Fisher FM-200B tuner, one of the top FM signal sources of the day, but its RF/IF stages exhibited incessant drift due to tube aging. I had to perform very tedious realignments annually. And my 1962 Marantz 8B stereo power amplifier needed quarterly output stage re-biasing to keep the measured IM distortion inside 0.5%, plus I had to install four new EL34s every two years. (CVA, in FL, currently resells Chinese EL34 tubes at $55 per matched pair.) Indeed, I got so anxious to dump vacuum tubes that I built my own solid state power amps in the mid-’70s, just as soon as PNP silicon power transistors became affordable. Free at last!

Vacuum tube commerce has collapsed in the 40+ year lapse since my escape. All of the principal domestic, British, Dutch, and German producers are now either defunct (like Tung-Sol Electric, my employer from ’57 - ’60), or they’ve long since ceased making tubes. The entire world market for (receiving-type) tubes is now confined to a small coterie of audio and guitar buffs, and served only by obscure Russian and Chinese suppliers with no previous market recognition. (There are other minor sources in former Soviet bloc countries; also, perhaps, one in Canada.) The quality and reliability of the tubes made by those arcane foreign suppliers is a subject worthy of concern. And those sources will persist only as long as there’s viable demand, so the outlook for assured access to replacement stock seems dicey. Further, this situation prevails at a time when every instrumented means of evaluating audio quality validates the measurable superiority of modern solid state design. Tube boosters reply that “my ears are more accurate than your instruments”, but their faith is mired in groupthink. There’s no credible A/B/X aural evidence to support the “tubes sound better” cult. Tubes were marching to the casket 40 years ago. Don’t consort with zombies.

*A 12AX7 dual triode tube contains two digital gates. A smart ’phone utilizes > 8 million gates.