Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

If you grew up in warm incandescent light, then you'll likely find "Daylight" bulbs harsh.  If you grew up with Daylight bulbs, you'll probably find incandescent bulbs very yellow and dull.

The heyday of Mcintosh tubes was the era of low efficiency acoustic suspension speaker, so perhaps they sounded drop-dead gorgeous because the had deep power reserves and clipped softly compared to all those solid state receivers.  I love incandescent tubes.

I Just want pleasant sounding with good realism. Presence and reality. We are all so lucky to be hearing music reproduction at the level our systems deliver. 

Some of my thoughts on this thread were about taste and taste-makers. 

Some of it however was wondering about the interaction of mastering engineers, speaker makers, and amplifier makers. 

In a very real way, THX film sound has things MUCH easier time than we do in music. There are objective measurements for frequency response and room acoustics which must be rigidly adhered to so a mastering engineer/sound editor isn't guessing about what speakers you might have, or amplifiers. 

That's not the case when it comes to music. There's tons of value judgements and expectations being made by the artists/engineers. 

I wonder about how this interaction defines the high-end. 

I remember a story,perhaps in Mix, about the producer for U2 using a boom box to check his mixes. 

Between that and Stop Making Sense, and the hyper-compression of the 1980s you can see some of the problems I am alluding to. The decision makers for the final mix are trying to guess how the audience will listen. 

If you look at a SS transformer diagram and internals, you will see is the logical consequence of a triode vacuum tube- emitter, filter, receptor. 

Bent